"Direct flows": what a revealing way to present the gains - and stands the argument "This is a duplicate service between Bristol / Bath and London" on its head, lays it on a stretcher, and carries it out of the room.

Mark

 
Many thanks for doing that Chris B.

 

Sorry - my (coding) bad - it was expanding the MKM and DMH abbreviations within the URLs. Fixed.

 
I can see John D's link, but as said, grahame's links not visible.

 
and someone adds


No and yes - the overcrowding is from West Wiltshire into Bath and Bristol at present. The trains that terminate at Salisbury from Bristol are much less heavily loaded as they get further from Bristol and this is an opportunity to help even out loads. Likewise, the Salisbury to London services that start at Salisbury start quieter and are picking up people all the way. So the though trains extra passengers would be biased towards the quieter section of the line.

Having said that, we were promised 5 carriage trains as routine on the Cardiff to Portsmouth service preCovid but they typically run with just 3 carriages (sometimes 2 or 4, very occasionally 5) these days even though traffic levels are back to where they were. There will be an element of relief once the Cordoba (175) fleet is properly in service in Devon and Cornwall and allows some 158 units of the type pictured to be transferred up to Bristol - but this is NOT part of the timetable update request, and we are being careful to ask for something reasonable and achievable in its own right and under the guidelines of it being a timetable change.

 
In response to a number of follow ups on Faceplant saying "they're not going to give you more trains ...."

Read my lips - NO MORE TRAINS.  Sorry to shout, but I have read so many social media posts in the last fortnight telling me that asking GBR|SW for more trains in their timetable review is unlikely to be delivered.   WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR MORE TRAINS - we are asking for existing trains to be retimed and joined up to make a better network product. It seems I have not got this message across; we know this is a timetable review and not an investment plan.

Current:
Bristol to Salisbury - 12 stations = 66 direct station to station flows each way
Salisbury to Waterloo - 9 stations = 35 direct flows (not CLJ to WAT as CLJ is set down / pick up only)
Total - 101 direct flows

Proposed:
Bristol to Waterloo - 20 stations = 189 direct flows each way (still not between CLJ and WAT)

I grant you that many flows (both current and future) are thin but look at some of the direct service gains:
* Basingstoke - that hidden hive of industry half way to London - gets direct Bath and Bristol trains
* Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon get direct trains to London
* Oldfield Park gets trains to Clapham Junction and Waterloo - great for student population from south of The Thames

It stikes me that this change of timetables is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to join things up into a network for the passengers, and bring us the gain from nationalisation as we move away from competitive fiefdoms which caused friction and poor service provision across regional territories.  A win-win chance.

Carla Denya, Dan Norris, Wera Hobhouse, Anna Sabine, Brian Mathew, Andrew Murrison, Caroline Noakes, Kit Malthouse, Luke Murphy, Will Forster, Marsha De Cordova and Florence Eshalomi - please take note; this will provide residents and businesses around stations in YOUR constituency with better travel options.

Pictures - current express Sprinter trains along the line.  Different paint jobs, maybe

 
Getting 'not found' pages for both those links

 
Don't know about other stations but at Chippenham in my experience they generally leave the barriers open at the top of the west bridge stairs when an IET arrives to avoid hold-ups.

 
Interesting ... and that's the first full weekday of the Nationalised Great Western operation.   There is sense in calling at some of the lesser served stations such as Stapleton Road ...

Looking at other services for the new timetable I note: DMH MKM WVS

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:DMH/2026-12-14/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt - a failure to address the peak gap that was been created at Dilton Marsh last December

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/gb-nr:MKM/2026-12-14/0000-2359?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt - and no significant changes at Melksham (weekend services look unchanged too).

Bristol to Oxford remains every 2 hours

12 trains from Westbury (and mostly from beyond there) terminating at Salisbury, and 11 trains starting at Salisbury and running to / via Westbury
Early days, of course ...

 
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/railway-fare-evaders-face-a-tougher-challenge-with-new-design-ticket-barriers-91093/ popped up on one of my news feeds.

I don't recall having seen this posted elsewhere on this forum - if that is not the case feel free to make use of the delete key.

Not that long ago, in a thread about fare evasion from memory, I suggested that the style of gates used on the Paris Metro should be used in the UK. Looking at the images in the IV article these new gates do appear to be a significant improvement on what we currently have.

 
Real time trains has some new services (some are extensions of services to/from south west Wales to Cardiff) running through to Bristol from December 2026 timetable

Example Fishguard to Bristol
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:L00529/2026-12-14/detailed

Looks like they will be worked by class 197 DMUs

In England looks like like stations served are Filton Abbey Wood, Stapleton Road and Bristol Temple Meads.   
Slightly intrigued by including Stapleton Road, but it is fairly east to park for free nearby so maybe it is for people travelling to Cardiff who object to paying for parking

I think this is first phase of proposed services calling at some new stations (usually referred to as Burns stations) along South Wales main line.

There is a rumour that rail growth in Wales will mean additional new trains will be ordered, so possibly bi-modes will get ordered for Burns station services

 
Not quite schooldays but near enough. One of my main reasons for choosing Geography and History as my principal and subsidiary subjects in 1972 at Worcester College of Education was the time we spent out the lecture room on field trips. It was thumbs down for doing fieldwork for  one of our lecturers on Bredon Hill,measuring the angle of poles stuck in the ground measuring soil creep......but it was thumbs up for visiting the very early Ironbridge museums,Black Country musuem at Dudley and the 2 Saxon churches at Deerhurst near Tewkesury.
In the 50 years since  I have travelled across most of Europe,giving thanks for the geography and history, that enabled me to see how they interrelated. This culminsted in the holiday of a lifetime earlier this year,when I visited Sicily..a literal melting pot of geology geomorphology and different invaders who all keft their marks on the island eg A Spanish facade on an Arabic temple on Syracuse Cathedral and trips up Etna and viewing Stromboli.

 
We are a very odd forum / place ... every digit in this report is odd ...

Of course, if we were in base 8 (and most of our trains have 8 wheels per carriage) the number would be 1332325 which is not as odd.

I - remember - numbers by patterns. My new passport, 9 digit number, is 2 x 3 digit train classes and the number of the oil exploration contract I worked on in 1972 in my pre-Uni job, and from which I gained an understanding of some geology and rock behaviour and formations which was fascinating but really doesn't have much practical application these days. 

This morning, our Friends of Melksham Assembly Hall Facebook Group has attracted its 500th member ... a numeric milestone which I will probably comment on there ...

P.S. The very act of posting this is going to break the pattern. Never mind - we look forward here!  Just over 26,000 more posts and we'll be all evened out for a while.

 
For me it began with a lifetime of experience - all six years of them - and a small pale blue bicycle with white rubber tyres. Destination of choice was a level crossing on the old Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway at Brownedge Crossing, near Bamber Bridge, south of Preston about half a mile away - this was the mid-sixties - a different planet, I know.

The roadway of the crossing was creosoted timbers that exuded a wonderful smell in the warm summers of my childhood, white gates, and sweet music of the telegraph bells coming from the adjacent signalbox. Black Fives - I was hooked.

Fifty years later I became a signalman, and S&T volunteer, on the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway, and relived my childhood dream.

 
With thanks for your update post, ChrisB, I have now added DfTO to our Coffee Shop forum 'abbreviations and acronyms' page. 

 
There was a slide shown at the Stakeholders conference recently that referred to a DfTO stock replacement Policy being formed for later 2026/7 to run in the 2030s outside the ROSCOS

 

 
Yellow card to TG, for mentioning barbeque anywhere other than on 'the lighter side'. 

 

 
An update, from the BBC:

 
I remember going back to the days of the class 50 being ordered. They were leased to avoid the upfront costs. Nothing changes.

 
Ah, and I bet personal acquaintance with certain levers helps too. Well out of the coffeeshop area, I can actually remember Martin Mill in Kent where the signalling staff had a more than usually extended range of duties. Also, one of the levers operated a signal at a distance of three quarters of a mile from the box. Perhaps resulting in the strongest member of post office staff in the country.

Mark


https://signalbox.org/photo-gallery/southern-railway/martin-mill/

 

'Failed' in the sense that I hadn't then seen the appropriate technique to be applied: I was just tugging at the lever, repeatedly. When what was required - and consequently demonstrated by the expert signaller - was one smooth pull through the whole length of its travel - with some bodyweight behind it.   

 

Right click on URL->copy->paste it into thread

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/first-look-two-new-stations-11059308

 
The Treasury likes to delay costs as long as possible, even when it means they are higher.  I suspect they would rather maintain the current set up and have operating costs over the life of new trains rather than up front capital costs.

 
Ahead of the rearranged drop in sessions THIS WEEK... Network rail have produced artists impressions of the Portishead and Pill stations.

They are featured behind a paywall on Bristol Live,,,but as has been reported before on this forum, many of those articles can be accessed without a paywall on Somerset Live...and yes, the same article is there.

However I am unable to copy the URL from my browser bar, to here.

 
Track temperatures can be double that

 
Hmmmmmm. London/Thames Valley mostly peaking at 28/29 degrees today.......does thst really constitute "severe" weather for mid July?

Alterations to services between London Paddington and Reading
Due to severe weather between London Paddington and Reading fewer trains are able to run.
Train services running to and from these stations may be delayed or revised. Disruption is expected until 20:00 14/07.