You can't polish a turd: Voyagers are crap.

That's only my personal opinion, based on experience, by the way: not an official view from the Coffee Shop forum.  CfN. 

 

That reminded me of a train journey our family took into Paris, about 25 years ago. Several tall, crop-headed and determined-looking men in uniform overalls strode very purposefully up the gangway towards the front of the train, clearly intent on dealing with some issue.

I wouldn't have argued with them - and neither, apparently, would the itinerant accordion player, who had been rather annoying us in the carriage until then: he scampered off the train at the next station stop. 

 
According to HUAC UK*, in their "Safety at Street Works and Road Works - A Code of Practice" (which has statutory status" :


The Onibury crossing is manually controlled from a box next to the crossing, which is about the safest type available. It was recently reassessed under ALCRM~ and its score changed from G3 to J4, on a scale from A1 (very dangerous - do something now) to M13 (zero risk, e.g. closed).

As the operator knows what is going on all the time, I wonder what more could be done. Perhaps to provide the crossing operator with a connection to the contraflow lights controller, to monitor what it's doing and going to do next, or even to adjust its timing. Was there signage on the approach side at the crossing saying don't block the railway crossing, or similar?

* The Highway Authorities and Utilities Committee (HAUC(UK)) is the representative body that works with the UK and devolved governments to help make improvements to the management of works and the street and road network.
~ All level crossing risk model, Network rail's standard method. The letter is for the risk to road users per crossing, and the number for the collective risk to all users.

 
Saw my first 175 in GWR territory today at Totnes station just as I arrived at about 13.30.  It was Exeter bound and running about 8 minutes late.  20 mins later boarded my first refurbed XC Voyager... reasonable enough but they still seem not to have sorted out that unpleasant air in the carriages containing the WCs.

 

I think it's actually translated as "the true north".  Echte (true/genuine) sounds very similar to ecke (corner). 
I too have fond memories of one of the Schleswig-Holstein lines, the ANB (Alsternordbahn), which ran from the northern fringe of Hamburg right behind my Aunt and Uncles house with the local station -more a halt really- just a couple of hundred metres down the line.  That part of the line is now incorporated into an extended U1 line, part of HVV Hamburg, more frequent and efficient but without the charm of the somewhat antiquated original.

 
Onibury's the level crossing where the A49 crosses the line that runs up the Welsh Marches on the skew. Line speed I don't know but it may be 90mph. Driving the A49 northbound on Friday, the A49 has a traffic lights controlled contraflow, the southbound carriageway being out of use for some hundreds of metres. The contraflow extends across the crossing. Especially because the level crossing has a road junction immediately north of it, the arrangement felt a bit perilous, with the risk of traffic queues forming across the level crossing itself. Concentrating on driving, I didn't note what it was that made me feel uneasy - and by now, the entire contraflow may be history.

I've noooooh idea of the precautions that need to be taken when road works / contraflows are combined with level crossings, but presumably Network Rail gets involved and is involved in signing things off?

Mark

 
Fair enough: that shows why I shouldn't believe anything the BBC post. 

 
I shall send Heidi Alexander an e-mail, including our Coffee Shop forum's critique of her proposed colour scheme for Great British Railways, and post her (or her department's) reply here. 

 

No there isn't! It closed in 2018 when the Southern Bypass, with a bridge over the railway 1km away, opened.

 

......over somewhat less distance! 

 
When was this? The communications failure at around midday affected not just GSM-R, but phones and even signalling for a short period. Most SWR trains stopped where they were for 30 minutes and then started up, not all immediately, and were not in their paths for some time.

Mortlake  is a busy crossing (about 14 tph) and the timetable tries to have trains arrive in clusters, leaving several gaps of over 5 minutes in each hour. But opening the barriers depends that gap in the trains happening, and on knowing in advance that it will. I imagine that was difficult today.

 

...but will carry a few more passengers.

 
Yep, for two or three operators. This time it was a national outage but seemed not to last more than an hour.

Last time it was an over-zealous upgrade that wasn't ready. I guess it still isn't....

 
From that BBC news item:


CfN.

 

Helps to put it into perspective - HS2 is now expected to cost more than NASA's Artemis moon mission!

(And there'll probably be men on Mars before it starts running into Euston if the BBC article is accurate!)

https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/hs2-slower-speeds-costs-heidi-alexander-b2979336.html

 
From the BBC:


Click on the link to the BBC to view the latest update of their developing news item.

CfN.

 
I have had to wait a fair while at several level crossings over the years, but taking a trip to London this weekend with my folding bike I found one that beat them all. I took a train to Mortlake and then had to cycle south, crossing the level crossing, and later had to return that way (though not to catch the train). Sadly I didn't actually time my waits, but I'm sure the wait from exiting the station was well in excess of ten minutes, and 5 trains crossed during that period. When I returned a few hours later. as I cycled along Mortlake High Street there was a long queue of vehicles waiting, and I thought to myself "That's good, I won't have to wait that long this time." How wrong I was. The wait was at least as long as the wait in the morning, and several of the people waiting around me were getting extremely frustrated judging by their calls on their phones they were having. There seemed to be a gap of well over 5 minutes (it felt like about ten) when no train passed by, and people just couldn't understand why the crossing didn't open.

Yes this crossing, and others I have had to wait at for several minutes, had footbridges alongside, but they are always very steeply graded steps, of no use at all to those with mobility issues or heavy luggage or cannot manage their bike and luggage up steps that steep. On the return journey, I noticed that several pedestrians and some cyclists, who had been waiting longer than me, eventually gave up waiting and tried the footbridge route, not all with success.

So I wondered which crossings people have found themselves having to wait for the longest times. Before this experience, my longest have been when visiting Lincoln, and using the crossing immediately west of the station. I also travel to Shoreham-by-Sea a lot and that can involve long waits at the crossing next to the station, though on average it isn't usually too bad.

 

I can't think of a single railway vehicle on which this livery would look like anything other than a tacky toothpaste tube

 
On X there is a video of a class 387 painted in the new GBR livery leaving the shed  at the depot near Brighton.

Sorry that livery just doesnt look right

 

Absolutely.  The ‘meal deal’ isn’t terrible value (but better quality is available at most stations at a higher price) and there are often £1 bottles of fizzy drink available as a promotion.

Otherwise people no longer buy books or magazines for their journey, preferring to ‘doom scroll’ on their mobile devices instead.  Even the hoards of magazine browsers (i.e. standing in the way of everyone else and reading it cover to cover before putting it back) have long since gone!

 
Didn't the same thing happen less than a fortnight ago?

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgjpnww69pqo

You can perhaps understand a lorry driver with a high trailer behind him...............but when the "high point" is inches above your own head.....................Darwin Award

 
I'm not sure that near Hengelo the category "international station" means any more than "big Dutch station". Anyway, no. 3 is Enschede - the tradesman's entrance. Right down the east end is a non-electric bit of platform that German DMUs from Münster are allowed into, if they knock and ask politely.

A carefully framed shot, I think - you would not think that the contact wire just ends before reaching the red train. But in that part of the world the wire can't continue in use anyway; electrification (on classic lines) always changes at a border - even Luxembourg's.

 
Been announced that direct line via Chipping Sodbury and Badminton will be closed for a month this summer.

Trains will be diverted via Chippenham and Bath (no doubt with usual congestion delays)


https://www.gwr.com/travel-information/travel-updates/planned-engineering

 
A very interesting, informative, thread so far and a microcosm of (some of) the wider UK rail network's current issues, to wit:

Having to run 'hybrid' rolling stock along an E2E route when, if government and the industry had done their jobs properly, a fully electric service should be in place. (Thanks Mr. Grayling, you muppet!)

Insufficient platform capacity at busy stations.

Inappropriate track configuration at stations, particularly locations where trains reverse; operational efficiency should surely dictate that at Oxford, for example, the station footprint should have at least one central turnback siding which allows access to both 'Up' & 'Down' routes with minimal, or preferably zero, impact on other services. The north-eastern end of Exeter Central is another place where this should have happened; trucking empty stock the 2.5 miles (around 20-25 minutes of train crew time) to & from the stabling point near Exmouth Junction cannot possibly be best practice.

Network Rail failing to rectify faults, particularly with the signalling, in a timely manner.

Financial losses exacerbated by the failure of staff to deal with fare evasion properly.

 
It's early & late services that will take the cuts - an hour to wait rather than 30mins or 20mins....