I have updated my Facebook handle at "Graham4Melksham" to reflect my stepping down as a Town Councillor and looking forward to 2026 - see https://grahamellis.uk/blog1825.html

 
Really!
Alterations to services between Bere Alston and Gunnislake
Due to a fault with the signalling system between Bere Alston and Gunnislake the line is closed.
Train services running to and from these stations have been revised. Calstock and Gunnislake will not be served. Disruption is expected until 23:59 30/12.

 
04:54 Plymouth to London Paddington due 08:36
Facilities on the 04:54 Plymouth to London Paddington due 08:36.
Will be formed of 5 coaches instead of 9. There are no reservations on this service.

06:16 Swansea to London Paddington due 09:24
Facilities on the 06:16 Swansea to London Paddington due 09:24.
Will be formed of 5 coaches instead of 10 to Bristol Parkway.

06:59 London Paddington to Paignton due 10:17
Facilities on the 06:59 London Paddington to Paignton due 10:17.
Will be formed of 5 coaches instead of 9. There are no reservations on this service.

10:20 Penzance to London Paddington due 15:38
Facilities on the 10:20 Penzance to London Paddington due 15:38.
Will be formed of 5 coaches instead of 9. There are no reservations on this service.

 
Roger French (again) on Delay Repay at GWR

Virtually the last item on this months blog

GWR’s appalling customer service continues
https://busandtrainuser.com/2025/12/30/seen-around-40/

Sadly easyJet don’t do Delay Repay so no compensation for my delayed arrival in the Isle of Man mentioned earlier, but back on the tracks I wonder if GWR are aiming to mimic Ryanair’s notorious approach to poor customer service with its continued hassle-as-standard ‘built in’ for any Delay Repay claim that’s just slightly more complicated than a straight A to B one operator journey claim.

Readers will recall me reporting GWR cancelled my intended train from Paddington to Castle Cary on 20th November with passengers having to travel by another train to Reading where we boarded the curtailed train that left Reading over half an hour late.

...snip......continues.........

 
.......................nothing for Mick Lynch after all his efforts?

 
Congratulations to the following who appear in the New Years Honours list with a "Rail" connection in their citation

Robert David MCINTOSH
Managing Director, North West and Central, Network Rail. For Services to the Railway in the North of England.

William Chales JOHNSTON
Executive Director, Railway Mission. For services to the Rail Workforce.

Timothy Denning SPARROW
Founder, South East Communities Rail Partnership. For services to Community Railways.

Thomas Allan GILMOUR
Police Community Support Officer, British Transport Police. For services to Railway Safety

Carter Jack David GOODBY
People Business Partner, London North Eastern Railway. For services to Diversity and Inclusion

Mark Robert JONES
Customer Assistant, Southeastern. For services to Community Railway.

Andrew Kevin WINDASS
Senior Engineer, AGH Engineering Ltd. For services to Rail Engineering

Sonia Lynette HAZEL
Assurance and Controls Manager, HS2, Network Rail. For services to Diversity and Inclusion in the Rail Sector

Manjinger Singh KANG
Assurance and Controls Manager, HS2, Network Rail. For services to Diversity and Inclusion in the Rail Sector

 
IF ... Brunel's broad gauge had carried on in parallel to other gauges, with each new railway selecting the most appropriate of broad, standard and narrow.  This example from Facebook - a still from a video which, darn it, scrolled away - help with location and attribution would be appreciated.

 
I knew frustrated typing on a phone would catch me out somewhere!

I tweeted (or whatever it is now) Southern for an explanation, but they told me it was because of emergency services dealing with an jncident. I assume something happened somewhere so it became the default explanation for the day, but doesn't add up here.

 
That is NOT an HST.....

 

It does - it's the rescue train.  I suspect getting people off to get them into ambulances once they got to a road.

Also from The Sun ... the accident train. And there are inside pics with some features that I would not expect in an HST / derivative

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kppzkk7gyo

 
Throughout my long and varied career, my best boss ever was a lady called Liesl. She was an engineer, not a geologist, and deferred to my knowledge on that subject - but what a boss! She managed the team - Both up and down (the former being the most important!) and all worked like a well oiled machine.  Great boss - RIP Liesl.

Sadly, she died doing the one, and only, thing unique to her sex - childbirth. A real tragedy for everyone, especially her family.

 
Make of this as you will....it's the Mirror, via MSN



I reckon that looks very like an HST?

The other end of this train. Marked Interoceanic too.

 
"Mansplaining is a pejorative term meaning (usually a man) to explain something to a (usually) a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner without regard to her own expertise."

From LinkedIn




Oh dear!

Please feel free - on the Coffee Shop, or in my various posts on Facebook, to explain things. Sure, I may know already, but I may not. And your answers are not just for me - they are for the other members and guests too, and further clarification can help those other readers so much, as well as giving me an opportunity to clarify.

On the "Gender" thing - I was in the computer science / IT business when it was predominantly a male preserve.  My course of about 50 undergrads included only 4 women, and on industrial and work placements, the women were the "punch girls" who did the data prep from coding sheets into punched cards and paper tape. I joined Tektronix after Uni, taking the role of software support for the British Isles, supporting 12 salesmen and perhaps the same number of hardware engineers who helped with installations; the hardware engineers were all men too.

I recall being asked by one of our salesmen to phone David Jennings, the technical director of a startup in Cambridge to go through his graphic terminal requirement and re-assure him that our product was an excellent fit for him.  Phone rang, and answered by a female voice; I asked for David - "sorry, he's not in the office - can I help".  "I've been specifically asked to speak with David, but maybe" and the lady was very clearly aware of the project and its technical needs, even if she was (wo)manning the phones.  Conversation concluded with the me knowing this lady understood how our product fitted in.  To conclude - report back to our salesman, I ask "Can I tell Brian who I've spoke to".  "Oh - I'm Julie Blackwell". "And what's your position?".  "I'm the Managing Director".

It was very much that way - the few women who were around / made it into the normally-male roles were breathtakingly good - they had to be to get there.  When Lorraine joined the sales team, her colleagues were scoffing and suggesting she wouldn't last. Whenever I went on site to support her, I got ribald comments from certain other salesmen about her needing help, even though I spent just as much time with many of her male colleagues.

The software support role was unique in that it was both pre- and post-sales, and also it was regarded as not being totally a man's preserve.  Indeed, my predecessor who was promoted to support other products was a lady. And, my goodness, going out on site - often to help a crusty old professor researching at a university, I got a sad look and "where's the nice Canadian Girl?" to which the answer was "sorry -  you've got me" and I could see disappointment.  I suspect that at I was about the same age as some of their students, they had no faith that I had the experience to do the job, but I don't recall any problems left unfixed on first visit.  It's not age, it's not gender, and I didn't mind having thing manspalined to me based on my age.  The very act of mansplaining helps the person being explained to come learn about the explainers - what they're thinking, and often helped point to the solution to the problem.

 
The suggestion / other pictures are that the train involved was NOT an HST; the presence of an HST in various picture probably because that was used as a rescue train to ferry people away from the crash site.  No indication as yet of any cause - not that I would expect that quickly.

 
"No on this day events fo 29th December" - the lull after Christmas? I did a search and found the usual lists of people who were born or passed on this day, and of battle amd accidents with major fatalities.   I also found:

1852 Emma Snodgrass is arrested in Boston for wearing trousers
1860 The first British seagoing ironclad warship, HMS Warrior, is launched
1876 11 passenger cars crash in a ravine near Ashtabula, Ohio, 92 die
1908 Patent granted for a 4-wheel automobile brake, Clintonville, Wisconsin

And for - today - 2025 - Regional Highlights:
* Pershore railway station installed solar-powered docks for foldable bikes to improve station connectivity.
* Greater Manchester's Bee Network froze tram and bus fares for 2026.

Finally, a couple of musical videos which are my taste, have railway content, and are guarantee to irritate anyone else in the room the second or third time you play them:

https://youtu.be/y6120QOlsfU

https://youtu.be/cD3QlR98--A

 

Shouldn't it be "To Be Decided" 

 
Agreed: I have added TBD to our 'abbreviations & acronyms' page. 

 
The Bath walk will walk 'Bath's seven crescents', but if the question of how many there are ever comes up in a quiz, be cautious as there are eight nine. Day Crescent in Twerton tends to be overlooked.

Mark

 

TBD - Three Bridges - I suspect

 
Now I'm as guilty as the next squirrel of using CRS codes to save a bit of time, but I have to say you rather lost me there Hafren! What was your intended destination? I managed to decode most of them, but the only thing I could come up with for TBI was 'Traumatic Brain Injury' - which, I sincerely hope, was not where you ended up!

 
Monday December 29

1W02 11:49 London Paddington to Hereford : Oxford +12, Shrub Hill +27, arrived Great Malvern +27 and cancelled thereafter (RTT : "due to the emergency alarm having been called (VH)").

Departed +9, Reading +19, Oxford +34, arrived Shrub Hill +41 and cancelled thereafter.



EDIT (18:50) - Updates

 
Just a reminder the times quoted hitherto are in what I still call GMT.   Add an hour as we will be in British Summer Time.

 
I've heard of events being planned and venues with outdoor dining booking up. The timing however at the end of a working day could lead to gridlock. I'll probably head to tin country to view.

 
To save time on reading the whole article I will summarise -  it's going to cost a lot more and take a lot longer.

 
Same but the train broke down somewhere in cold grey weather, in the wilds before it reached Guildford. Train manager had shoes most inappropriate for walking on ballast but needed to retrace the train's path for many hundreds of yards to lay detonators. It took ages to organise rescue. Arrival at Tonbridge just missed the I think hourly onward connection two trains after the connection I'd hoped to make, and no one was remotely interested in arranging a call for one of the other through trains to Ashford that passed rather gingerly across Tonbridges complicated trackwork, threading the remarkably tight single arches of the road bridge there.

Mark

 
I remember in my youth taking a tadpole from Reading to Tonbridge and it felt like an incredibly long journey. The Hastings unit power cars were not really best suited for the all-stations, stop-start and in those days the North Downs line was one service an hour (every 2 hours on Sunday) calling everywhere.  Rather like (and I will was my mouth out) the HSTs with slam doors were not suited to trains making lots of stops with return commuters on the evening run out to Westbury.

 
From West Wiltshire Ramblers


Their program for early 2026 includes walk from Bath Spa Station on 7th January, and a walk from Bradford-on-Avon station on 14th January. Other walks available, some do-able by bus, others needing a car.

 

Will these be known as Pill Boxes? 

 
Looking back. A poster on Bluesky: 1965, a new DMU service, promotional fares and accelerated timings of 49 minutes end-to-end. (Now down to 38 minutes.)

Mark

https://bsky.app/profile/mikeyashworth.bsky.social/post/3mb4oe63znc2t