Traveline.info has a new look

However I note that it does not use all station 3 letter codes and it no longer handles bus stop codes.

 

Which is the same reason that means your first paragraph is incorrect - because no one knows the day before whether there will be any empty 1st seats on any particular service.

 
I stand to be corrected but we may be at cross purposes.

As I understand it you can only buy a weekend first upgrade on board, subject to the discretion of the train manager based on the number of seats available.

You can buy a first class upgrade for an existing walk-up standard class ticket at any time prior to travel from a booking office. 

 
I think it updates normally once a week. I may be wrong.

 
Cancellations to services at Oxford

Due to a fault with the signalling system at Oxford some lines are blocked.

Train services running through this station may be cancelled, delayed by up to 30 minutes or diverted. Disruption is expected until 20:45 31/03.

 

The scheme is changing ... see (here) on Facebook


Saturday service withdrawn.  Finishing early afternoon.  5 mile limits in many parts. New zoning (?) "Improve efficiency" probably means "stop being taken advantage of for longer awkward journeys" and I suspect the time carrying passengers will go down while the proportion of time between loads will go up. But it will be cheaper to run - long £3 journeys down - 60p per mile for 5 miles.  I can't see if the five miles is as the core flies or as the minibus drives.

 
Delays to services between Hungerford and Newbury

Due to a speed restriction over defective track between Hungerford and Newbury trains have to run at reduced speed on the line towards Newbury.

Train services running through these stations may be delayed by up to 10 minutes. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

 
I was chatting with Cliff in the Market Place this morning.  He had come over from Bradford-on-Avon for a spot of Grand-dad duty - taking the two-generation-down person from home to an activity in Melksham, back to Mum's for lunch then off to drop little one off at Dad's in Warminster.  He was, of course, driving. There's no practical choice - at the moment - for this sort of activity; even where there are buses and trains they are too sparse and connect too poorly for them to be practical.  If the area were a connected city, then it might be different. "In London, of course ..." he said ... but could we be like London?

Bath and Wiltshire Metro, anyone?    Buses to the station in Melksham?   Connections, through fares, ticketing?   It's hard to visualise a full "London" service, but there are little things that could make a big difference.   "Going to Weymouth on Saturday" said John who I also met.  "Driving to Bradford-on-Avon and parking there" he says - "Connections from Melksham don't work".

 

An interesting map including some things it does not show - such as the walk from Lancaster Gate to Paddington which is well with their 10 minute window.

 

I liked your whole post.   I would have liked it alone for that one sentence, and look forward to it being achieved.    It IS possible.   How long was it between the last "old" passenger train and the first "new" one at ... Ashington, Alloa, Bathgate, Corby, Ebbw Vale, Galashiels and Okehampton?

 

From earlier on 27th


From 27th (evening)


And still today - 31st - showing the higher fare

 

Interesting question ... I would guess it's more than just the borders as the Core Valley Lines don't stray into England, do they?

 
Not quite got my head around on whether this concerns the entirety of TfW or just cross-border services.

Mark

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/rail-reform-in-the-wales-and-borders-area-publication-of-the-memorandum-of-understanding

 
Mixing Deck has now vanished from the SWR website.................

 

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/walking-between-stations-map.pdf

 

It is a gull with good tastes. If you enjoy good coffee and Turkish pastries, I would definitely recommend the cafe that is pictured there.

 
I guess that the London Underground tube map can give a misleading idea of distances between some stations.

(I do recognise the difficulties of cramming in so much detail, especially as the system expands.)

 
He's gonna need a bigger cat !!

 
As the school holidays start, the first London bound off peak service of the day was short-formed yesterday and again today:

 

What "move towards nationalisation"? The whole thing has been operated under DfT control for over five years. So far I don't think any of the government-owned bits of it have been merged into the new operating structure, even in shadow form, and that includes what RDG/NRE does.

For bookings we are still promised a single GBR service, which will remove anything for there to be differences between (within the railways, at least). Until then it's hard to see what kind of move towards that would make sense - you'd just get on and do it, wouldn't you? On the other hand, a TOC (whoever owns it) that ends up changing its software for some reason is hardly going to spend extra money on making it looked more merged for the short(?) interval before GBR gobbles them up.

 
Not sure about the parking rules https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kr40jxkglo
but maybe the council and GWR will do something to improve the situation. Hopefully more thantalk.

 
If there are more bananas than can be eaten before they spoil, they could be made into banana wine. Bananas contain a lot of sugar and therefore make good wine.

 
Diesel is also in short supply in the UK for another reason.
Many trucking firms maintain their own bulk tanks for filling their vehicles. If a shortage threatens, then drivers are instructed to fill up at retail filling stations, in order to conserve supplies in their private bulk tanks.
This tends to make shortages of diesel fuel more severe than petrol shortages.

 
From London Now


How many metres do people walk from within the two stations on this journey?

What other really close stations are there?  Culrain to Invershin?

 
From "Interrailing for the Older Crowd"


Err ... I thought the move towards nationalisation was in part about the removal of differences.

 

I wasn't very constructive in my answer there, was I?

Analysis

160 posts spread over 29 members have included images from Imgur in their posts.   Just four of those members have posted a noticeable number of images hosted on that site, the other posts look like quotes that include images from those four; 140 are 'original'.  The posts are all old ones now, but still relevant (IMHO) in our database.

Restoration - how?

If the four members can send me the originals, I can work out how to host and offer space to do so - changing the URL when posts are displayed automatically; this will fix their quoting by others too.  As an alternative, members can rehost the images elsewhere and I or another admin can set to allow retrospective edits of archive posts to, exceptionally, change history.

Advice as to how to get the originals if they are only on Imgur, at face value, would suggest using a proxy in a country where access is still allowed. I have tried a couple of those without success - different responses and the obvious ways did not work in differing ways - tried from UK, Germany and USA.  Not saying "impossible" but a much harder approach than going back to your originals.

 
I think you can buy weekend first for travel the following day,but no train station booking office will sell you a weekend first on the day.

The reason is that the booking offices would not know how many wanted to buy the weekend up grade on the train.

 



Please don't - you'll set member broadgage off on yet another one!