Coronavirus: Great Western Railway reduced services

[whole diary]

[IndustryInsider]

It's on quite a curve so I expect you're right.  Old picture of Pangbourne showing the four platforms is available here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pangbourne-Railway-Station-Photo-Reading-Goring-Didcot-Line-GWR-22-/252198738228

[rogerw]

It was part of the track improvement works for the introduction of the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train).  The curve through Pangbourne was re-aligned partly through the site up the up fast platform.

[SandTEngineer]

It was part of the track improvement works for the introduction of the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train).  The curve through Pangbourne was re-aligned partly through the site up the up fast platform.

Tut, Tut.  The GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)/WR doesn't do FAST^▸ (Federation Against Software Theft) and SLOW LINES. They are MAIN and RELIEF LINES

[TaplowGreen]

It was part of the track improvement works for the introduction of the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train).  The curve through Pangbourne was re-aligned partly through the site up the up fast platform.

Tut, Tut.  The GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)/WR doesn't do FAST^▸ (Federation Against Software Theft) and SLOW LINES. They are MAIN and RELIEF LINES

……..but both generally pretty slow 

[rogerw]

It was part of the track improvement works for the introduction of the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train).  The curve through Pangbourne was re-aligned partly through the site up the up fast platform.

Tut, Tut.  The GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)/WR doesn't do FAST^▸ (Federation Against Software Theft) and SLOW LINES. They are MAIN and RELIEF LINES

Oh! Smack my hand. 

[BBM]

Talking of Main and Relief lines, I've noticed in the last week that the remaining semi-fasts from PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) to DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) in the evening (first stop MAI^▸ (Maidenhead station), departing at 16.50, 17.51 and 18.49) are all being routed via the Down Relief adding anything up to 15-20 minutes of delay by the time MAI and TWY^▸ (Twyford station) are reached even though the Main lines seem to be open as normal. Is there a reason for this? I can't see any additional stops appearing in RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website). (It's purely out of curiousity as of course I'm not travelling at the moment but these are my usual evening return trains when I do go to London for work.)

[stuving]

Talking of Main and Relief lines, I've noticed in the last week that the remaining semi-fasts from PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) to DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) in the evening (first stop MAI^▸ (Maidenhead station), departing at 16.50, 17.51 and 18.49) are all being routed via the Down Relief adding anything up to 15-20 minutes of delay by the time MAI and TWY^▸ (Twyford station) are reached even though the Main lines seem to be open as normal. Is there a reason for this? I can't see any additional stops appearing in RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website). (It's purely out of curiousity as of course I'm not travelling at the moment but these are my usual evening return trains when I do go to London for work.)

Guessing - but is the pathing being simplified so as to call for less planning and signalling effort, and so fewer signallers and/or timetablers?

[SandTEngineer]

Talking of Main and Relief lines, I've noticed in the last week that the remaining semi-fasts from PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) to DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) in the evening (first stop MAI^▸ (Maidenhead station), departing at 16.50, 17.51 and 18.49) are all being routed via the Down Relief adding anything up to 15-20 minutes of delay by the time MAI and TWY^▸ (Twyford station) are reached even though the Main lines seem to be open as normal. Is there a reason for this? I can't see any additional stops appearing in RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website). (It's purely out of curiousity as of course I'm not travelling at the moment but these are my usual evening return trains when I do go to London for work.)

Guessing - but is the pathing being simplified so as to call for less planning and signalling effort, and so fewer signallers and/or timetablers?

Wouldn't have thought so as the signalling generally runs in Automatic Route Setting mode so no signaller intervention is required.

[Marlburian]

Given what appears to be very few passengers on some services, I wonder how long it will before the emergency timetable is further pruned.

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

It's on quite a curve so I expect you're right.  Old picture of Pangbourne showing the four platforms is available here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pangbourne-Railway-Station-Photo-Reading-Goring-Didcot-Line-GWR-22-/252198738228

Here's an even older picture showing Pangbourne with just the 2 original platforms.  Whitchurch Toll Bridge, crossing the Thames (built 1792, before the railway), is in the background.

[BBM]

Given what appears to be very few passengers on some services, I wonder how long it will before the emergency timetable is further pruned.

I popped into Twyford at lunchtime do do some food shopping and I briefly stopped by the station. There were just two cars that I could see in the main (non-season ticket) car park, none in the season ticket parking areas and no passengers on the platforms, the automated announcements were speaking to a non-existent audience.

[Zoe]

Newbury seems to have lost most direct services to and from London this week.  The GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) site says that the hourly service will alternate between fast Reading to Taunton and calls at Newbury, Pewsey, Westbury and Castle Cary but all of the slow services before the 1504 off Paddington are first stop Pewsey after Reading.  In the up direction there are no calls between 0835 and 1935.  There is however hourly all stations shuttle is running between Reading and Bedwyn, hopefully no-one from Newbury is going to need to travel further west.  Maybe this has been done to try and discourage any non-essential trips to London and also to prevent overcrowding on HSS^▸ (High Speed Services)?

[IndustryInsider]

Maybe this has been done to try and discourage any non-essential trips to London and also to prevent overcrowding on HSS^▸ (High Speed Services)?

I doubt it has been looked into in that much detail - the emergency timetable had to be thrown together over a very short period of time and is catering for a market that is now so tiny it's unlikely to cause any issues either way.  Certainly not with overcrowding anyway - even overcrowding when social distancing measures are being adhered to.

[stuving]

Certainly not with overcrowding anyway - even overcrowding when social distancing measures are being adhered to.

We've all had a ringside seat over the last couple of weeks to observe a linguistic phenomenon; how words and phrases suddenly change their meaning when they jump from one user group to another. There ought to be a proper academic name for this sort of semantic jump - it's quite well-known, especially between languages - but I can't find one. It is also common from a regional or professional user group to the wider language, and oviously the media are often involved in that.

Last month "social distancing" was an obscure bit of jargon among epidemiologists and social scientists involved in planning for pandemics. It's a parameter needed in numerical modelling, to account for differences of behaviour, affecting infection rates, between countries and subgroups of the population. In the model it is changed by "non-pharmacological interventions" of various kinds, to predict how a pandemic can be influenced by us altering our collective behaviour.

This is a typical definition, from a paper* fast-published on 16th March 2020, defining one specific form of social distancing they had modelled, complete with numbers:

Social distancing of entire population

All households reduce contact outside household, school or workplace by 75%. School contact rates unchanged, workplace contact rates reduced by 25%.

So, nothing there about how many metres apart we are spaced out in trains or car-park crocodiles! That's spatial or physical distancing, or just spacing. Or it was last month. In fact, looking at this forum, the shift has happened since last week.

More seriously, if that label has been redefined in common usage, what do we now call this collection of behavioural changes we've adopted to reduce interpersonal contacts in number and usefulness to viruses?

* "Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand", Neil Ferguson et al for the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team

[Marlburian]

"Ramping up" and "furloughing staff" are also frequently being used. "Furlough" as a noun was once a common word when it came to leave for soldiers or British people serving overseas and returning home on long leave, but appears to have become more of an Americanism until now. But "furloughing" as a verb ...

"So" as the first word in a reply made during TV and radio interviews has become more common in the past few years, but its occurrences have become a spate when experts on Coronavirus are responding to questions.