What a farce 

Not quite correct in saying no direct services on Saturday as there is one Plymouth to London train in both directions diverted between Exeter and Castle Cary via Yeovil.

But I guess better to say no direct trains in case the one train does get cancelled.

It’s a pity, particularly for Pewsey passengers, that no effort is made to run some direct services between Castle Cary and Paddington on the weekend. I would guess that will be down to reliability of having enough train crew on the weekend to operate them.

B is East West Rail.

G Cattistock Halt.
I used to have a GWR station nameplate from there.

The platforms are still in daily use. They replaced the wooden ones at Chetnole and Thornford

Essential track drainage work will take place between Castle Cary and Taunton from Monday 8 December to Sunday 14 December. During this period, buses will replace trains on this section of the route.

Train Service Overview

A limited number of trains will run between London Paddington and Westbury or Castle Cary on weekdays only.

No direct train services will operate on this route on Saturday or Sunday.

Due to these changes, replacement buses will operate between Pewsey and Swindon at weekends to provide onward connections.

Long-distance services between London Paddington and Plymouth/Penzance will be diverted between Reading and Taunton, adding at least 15 minutes to journey times.

GWR services between Bristol Temple Meads and Weymouth via Castle Cary will continue to operate as normal.

South Western Railway services between Yeovil and Salisbury via Castle Cary are unaffected.

3: Gatwick

6: Southend Central?

Why would you run an ECS to Blackpool North if all you do is run it back ECS?

Danger to life and flood warning as heavy rain hits again


The Afon Glaslyn has risen close to the top of the wall surrounding this house in Beddgelert, Gwynedd

Heavy rain could cause "disruption and probable flooding" on Monday with an amber weather warning in place for south Wales.

The Met Office said heavy rain was expected over south Wales from late Sunday and throughout Monday, with 20-40mm (0.78-1.58in) expected across the wider region and 100-120mm (3.9-4.7in) in a few places on higher ground.

A yellow warning of rain is also in place for mid and north Wales on Monday, with the Afon Glaslyn in Beddgelert, Gwynedd, nearly broaching the garden wall of a house nearby.

The weather alerts come two weeks after danger to life flood warnings were issued and homes and businesses in Monmouth and elsewhere hit after rivers burst their banks.

(BBC news item continues)

17:50 Gloucester to Salisbury due 20:06

17:50 Gloucester to Salisbury due 20:06 will be terminated at Warminster.
It will no longer call at Salisbury.
It is being delayed between Chippenham and Melksham.
This is due to a late running train being in front of this one.

Very good news if they are looking at seat cushion redesign. Don’t remember seeing the Train Manager actually.

Alright, let's get this one out of the way:

5.  Taunton.

CfN 

From the BBC:


Regulator backtracks on 'ghost train' plan

OBR head resigns over Budget leak


Chair of the OBR Richard Hughes said he took "full responsibility" for the shortcomings identified in the report

The chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has resigned following the Budget day error which saw a key document published early.

Richard Hughes said in his resignation letter he took "full responsibility" for the issues that were identified in the OBR's investigation into the error.

That investigation found the early publication of the OBR's forecasts was the worst failure in the organisation's 15-year history.

The UK's official forecaster confirmed the market-sensitive report was accessed 43 times from 32 different devices in the hour before the chancellor's speech.

In a letter sent to both the chancellor and the chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Dame Meg Hillier, Mr Hughes said he believed the OBR could "quickly regain and restore the confidence and esteem" it had earned by implementing the report's recommendations.

"But I also need to play my part in enabling the organisation that I have loved leading for the past five years to quickly move on from this regrettable incident," he continued. "I have, therefore, decided it is in the best interest of the OBR for me to resign as its Chair and take full responsibility to the shortcomings identified in the report."

Mr Hughes had been due to face questions from the Treasury Select Committee on Tuesday about the Budget and the OBR's economic forecasts, but Dame Meg confirmed that he would no longer attend.

In response to his resignation, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: "I want to thank Richard Hughes for his public service and for leading the Office for Budget Responsibility over the past five years and for his many years of public service."

But Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch accused the chancellor of "trying to use the chair of the OBR as her human shield".

Paul Johnson, the former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and provost at Queen's College, Oxford said he was not surprised Mr Hughes had resigned. "That was a really bad mistake," he told BBC News, but added that Mr Hughes had been a "very effective and very robust" head of the OBR. "I think it's a shame for Richard Hughes and a shame for the OBR."

Mr Hughes had only recently started his second five-year term as OBR chairman, after being renominated by the chancellor in May. He first took up the job during the Covid pandemic in October 2020. Prior to that, he had been director of fiscal policy at the Treasury, and earlier he was the division chief of the International Monetary Fund's fiscal affairs department for eight years.

Following the Budget day leak, Mr Hughes called in a leading cyber-security expert to investigate how the crucial document was put on its website too early.

On Monday the report into the mishap concluded it had "inflicted heavy damage on the OBR's reputation", but added that it was inadvertent. The "ultimate responsibility" for the circumstances which meant people could access the report early lay with the OBR's leadership, the report added.

"It is the worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR," the report said. "It was seriously disruptive to the chancellor, who had every right to expect that the EFO (economic and fiscal outlook) would not be publicly available until she sat down at the end of her Budget speech, when it should, as is usual, have been published alongside the Treasury's explanatory Red Book."

Monday's report also found that somebody gained early access to the equivalent financial forecasts in March while Reeves was delivering her Spring Statement, though they did not act on the information.

The Chancellor's Budget was thrown into chaos when the OBR's forecast was discovered online.

The OBR assesses the health of the UK's economy. It is independent of the government but works closely with the Treasury. Its reports are released alongside big government events such as the Budget, details of which are supposed to be kept under wraps until the chancellor announces them in the House of Commons.

The OBR's early publication effectively confirmed a number of new measures, including a pay-per-mile charge on electric vehicles, and a three-year freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds, before the chancellor announced them. The OBR quickly removed the forecast document from its website and apologised for the release, which it blamed on a "technical error".

The OBR brought in Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, to lead the investigation into how the forecasts were accessed early. However, the OBR concluded there was no reason to suspect the involvement of foreign actors or cyber-criminals, or of "connivance by anyone working for the OBR".

Prof Martin's technical account was that the OBR analysis was available at a hidden url for 38 minutes between 11:30 and 12:08 on the morning of the Budget.

An attempt was made to access the URL as early as 05:16. The review did not seek to trace who accessed or attempted to access the document.

Prof Martin concluded this was a pre-existing weakness in the OBR publication system because of the premature access to March's forecasts. Prof Martin said that breach, half an hour before when it should have been published, could have been accidental, but it led him to conclude the issue was not new. On the reason for the early publication, Prof Martin said it was related to the software the OBR chose to publish to its website, which was more suitable for a small or medium company than a major publication of critical market-sensitive data.

While OBR staff thought they had applied safeguards to prevent early publication, there were two errors in the way in which they were set up on the publishing platform WordPress that effectively bypassed these controls. WordPress is a content management system, and is said to be the most popular tool of its kind for creating and designing web pages.

One error was to do with a plug-in (an optional extra) the OBR had installed in WordPress, which had the unintended effect of bypassing the need to log in to access documents intended for future publication. And the second was the directory in which the file was put ahead of publication allowed anyone to download a file directly.

The OBR got an exemption in 2013 from using a more secure government publishing platform for independent authorities in order to help with its autonomy. In other IT security areas, such as secure email, the OBR had adopted the secure Treasury systems.

A Treasury spokesperson thanked the OBR for its report and said a minister would respond "in due course".