Great Western Coffee Shop

Hold on to your hats everyone, looks like the railways are going through the looking glass.

Mark

"The RBawards Rail Business of the Year is Southeastern @Se_Railway"
https://twitter.com/RB_Awards/status/1628886482353065986

Based on what criteria? Is this another internal industry backslapping event?

Given the 'Change at London Bridge' debacle it's just provocative. As for London Bridge, the redevelopment brings a (mostly) brilliant step change in quality, but an optimised interchange involving platforms 1 to 9 it is not, and a 'Concourse the size of Wembley Stadium' isn't quite the selling point that people think it is.

It's the concourse size that is partly responsible for the 25 to 50% increase in journey times for many people. The other culprit is the difference in levels between platforms and concourse, which is ten metres, quite exceptional for a major station, leading to some fairly long escalator runs (or flights of stairs when things get busy or escalators fail).

There will have been a case to be made for a mezzanine floor for interchange purposes - but then the current need to change there has been imposed on very many travellers by the new timetable that breaks long-standing service patterns.

Mark