Great Western Coffee Shop

That closure led to the construction of the Laverstock chord for diversionary traffic, and a curious arrangement whereby two interweaved lines were used through the tunnel for many months. Hence only train could use it at any time, but trains in different directions used different tracks. Never heard of it used since. 

Fareham 1054 to Woolston (about 1110 IIRC) on the SN service ex Brighton, which
carried on ECS down to St Denys to reverse. Waited for the following SWT stopper
at 1124, arrived at St Denys 1130 ish.

Then a leisurely walk over the footbridge to catch the 1134 onward to
Southampton Central failed miserably, because driver and guard of the 159 from
Romsey decided to head off on the normal timings, ie 1131. SWT management
present rustled up four taxis to Central pretty sharpish.
You'd assume the train crew had been advised of the temporary timings - the PIS
had definitely been changed...

Train movements in up and down directions from Southampton, including a number
of freight services, were basically happening on time, although FGW were having
one of their 'bad hair days', with arrivals in both directions around midday
being well off schedule. The 1207 ex Cardiff arriving about 1300, with pax
transferring to the following 1307. 1310 to Cardiff arrived about 17 down ex
Fratton, and the 1410 started at Southampton having laid over for about an hour
in the up goods loop.

You don't normally notice so much how the trains run in directional groups in
the normal timetable, but it is far more obvious with single line working. For
example around 1310 onwards the FGW Portsmouth, the SN Victoria, the XC Man
Picc and an EWS container train (waiting in platform 4) all left one after the
other as the signals cleared, it all looked pretty efficent to me. Got me
wondering if the normal timetable is already set up to allow for short periods
of SLW?

Returned on the 1412 Victoria service with no issues, and got a reasonable view
of the tunnel, despite the rain covered train windows. There has been a huge
change over the weekend. It is the up line that remains in normal use, but there
is now a big space where the down side ballast used to be, with men working in
it as trains passed. Surprised to see that much of the exposed floor appears to
be concrete slab already - I wonder if this dates from the previous work in
1981? Excavation proceeding at both portals, and a train of engineers trucks
between the east end of the site and Northam Junction appears to be a source of
materials such as precast slabs.

Passed another SN unit between Mount Pleasant crossing and St Denys, sitting on
the down slow, waiting to form the next departure form Woolston, I assume it
followed my train through St Denys, via the crossover to the down fast.

City rail tunnel reopens on time
 
A railway tunnel under Southampton has reopened as planned after being closed since Christmas Day.

Rail users travelling towards Eastleigh from Southampton Central were forced to use buses during the 10-day closure.

The tunnel has been undergoing work since November to increase its height for lorry traffic.

The work is part of a ^71m upgrade to allow a new generation of larger freight containers to travel to the docks by rail instead of road.

Network Rail said the upgrade would mean 50,000 fewer lorries a year on the roads.

A revised timetable affecting off-peak and weekend services will continue to operate until Sunday 10 January.

BR gauntleted the track to allow full size stock to run in the centre of the tunnel. It saves having to have a point. It's very common on continental tram systems particularly at junctions where the poiunt are put back on the reserved right of way and the divergence is on the public road, so that road traffic doesn't run over the moving part of the  points.

A classic place where it should have been used is the junction from Altringham at Piccadilly Gardens where the route to Bury and Piccadilly Station diverge. Instead the point was placed in the raod just where all the buses had to thump over them. Had the point been put a 100 yds back on the reserved right of way, point failures would have been a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, the Americans don't go in for tunnels and have a huge loading gauge, which means that they can stack the containers one on top of another. The Union Pacific has just run a double-stack test train that's 3.4 miles long. There's a video of it on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY9xlnPpinU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY9xlnPpinU).