Cancellations to services between St Ives and St Erth
Due to a points failure at St Erth all lines are blocked. Disruption is expected until 09:00 27/12.
Train services between St Ives and St Erth will be cancelled or delayed.

Not the first time this month those points have taken a rest day!

 
From Rail Advent

 
Where was the recent Sonning slip in relation to the historical one? Looking at the work done to both sides of the cutting just west of where the A4 crosses the railway at Shepherds Hill it can't be far different.

 
No Scotrail service on New Years Day though.

 
Report of plans to widen the crossing appear in Somerset Live

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/somerset-level-crossing-could-widened-10720337

this photo shows the manual gates in operation and dates to between May 1967, the singling of the line and November 1967 when the AHB was introduced. The diagram for the 6 lever ground frame is part of my local collection.

 
I met Timothy West, once. He was a true gent.

Your post,

... had me ROFL.

 

Added, and will come up next year.   An early example of a cutting sliding onto the track

 
The Reading to Waterloo normal route appears to be closed at Richmond, with the train diverted via Wimbledon.  If that's the case, under routing rules I would expect Reading to Clapham Junction or Waterloo to be offered on the direct train, but if you expand the route further so that it means you have to change trains between routing points, the train that runs via Wimbledon as part of the journey is no longer the shortest route so you have to go via the Hounslow loop.

Where are you actually going - Carshalton?   I wondered about changing you into Trameslink and Wimbledon and send you via Sutton, but it looks like that's closed for engineering too ...

 

Not watching the programme, I had no idea that Timothy West had appeared in Eastenders. It looks like the BBC didn't want to mention the many and varied things he did on stage and screen elsewhere.

 
A candidate for addition to our 'On This Day' topic on the Coffee Shop forum, from Wikipedia - two days late, for which I do apologise: I only just became aware of it, this evening.

CfN.

 

The X22 doesn't go past Tiverton Parkway, but through Willand and Uffculme, the X prefix being a bit of a stretch of the express principle. There are only 5 daily, the first leaving Taunton at 0905, so no use for commuters. You aren't the only person to park at Tiverton Parkway - commuters from all points as far away as Cornwall have been filling the car parks and roads daily, seemingly because of last May's timetable changes making direct trips past Taunton difficult to find. The bus service from Tiverton is of little practical use, being only hourly and finishing at 1845 from Tiverton, 2024 to Tiverton. It is less than 100% reliable, and I have never had the courage to use 0it.

The Swallowfield site would obviously have been far better, but I doubt there will be any change to the present plan now if the do close. A lot of time and money has been spent planning the new station, and pausing would risk losing it for decades to come.

 

Beware that the normal bus service does NOT run on 1t January.  I was planning to catch the first bus at 09:11, or failing that the second bus also at 09:11.  Fallback in case the train is cancelled is the bus at one of the following buses.   I don't have the bus safety net in Melksham either.   Also happy to stop for a breakfast at the Knights Templar ...

 
I note Glasgow has a good rail service today, ask them if it is worthwhile?

 
Hmm.    Things are looking rather more possible here, from my end of the line.

'Her Indoors' has decided that she would really prefer not to go into Bristol for her physiotherapy in the BRI (hospital, not railway station) on New Years Eve, so that frees up that previous day for me completely.

Moving on to New Years Day: what timings for trains and buses are you considering?  Bristol bus station is a bit of a doddle for me, offering an almost door-to-door service, and free bus travel now, with my 'old gits' pass.

 
One now named .....

From the BBC

 
Great to see the BBC using the words 'outage' and 'outrage' indiscriminately within their own news article:


I've linked this post to the original BBC item, but I bet they will have corrected their spelling by tomorrow morning.

It's Boxing Day, the sub editor is off duty ...

 
tl:dr - online timetabling is becoming more strange.

*   *   *   *

This is for Sunday 4th January, out and back in a day. GWR is out of action east of Reading until 11am, while via Salisbury will not work out as Basingstoke to Woking is a bus and in any case the first Sunday train Bath to Salisbury is 09:36.

Leaving aside the ticket, the routing advice from National Rail is... fickle.

Using the 07:58 from Bath Spa, with Clapham Junction or London Waterloo as a destination, the system doesn't mention the direct trains but offers changes at Reading, Basingstoke, with a bus between Basingstoke and Woking, then Clapham Junction at 11:57.

Put e.g. Carshalton as a destination out of the same train, the system offers Reading to Clapham Junction direct at 10.57, so, an hour earlier.

With Clapham High Street as the destination, this throws up a 'Direct from Reading to Clapham Junction' option, but rather than Basingstoke, recommends changes along the way at Staines and at Barnes to give the traveller the experience of travelling via Hounslow and an 11:32 arrival at Clapham Junction.

(Plan 'A' is to ignore the National Rail routing confusion, have a ticket to Clapham Junction and use Oyster from there as it will offer flexibility of route)

Mark

 

We DO have our heartfelt thanks to add, Chris.  I suppose that comes under "comment"s.

 
Supporting grahame's message - that Network Rail Emergency number, 0345 711 4141, is programmed in to my mobile phone.

To be used only in times of emergency - but with immediate results - if required.

CfN.

 
Boxing Day rather than Christmas Day, from The BBC


Times have indeed changed in the last 60 years, and "Trains on Christmas Day" - the subject line - probably remains a "no". One would presume that the were withdrawn after 1964 by a combination of staff adversity and carrying fresh air around and running them in 2026 might have exactly the same issues.

We have covered / considered Trains on Boxing Day in the past, but times change and it is worth keeping an eye on. A handful run, and the idea of more is not such a rank outsider / silly idea.   The move to modern signalling centres reduces or removes the need for boxes all along the line, and perhaps a 2-hourly matrix of connecting services, with a single train running on many of the lines where a fast and a regional train both run on regular services.

Of course, the question comes "who would be using it?" and "how much would they be prepared to pay"? ... and the discussions start to get interesting.

 
From the BBC:

 
News from an Administrator's desk, here on the Coffee Shop forum:

Over the years, since they arrived, we have discussed many issues relating to these trains. The sheer number of pages of posts here on this forum was well over 200 .

I have therefore tried to break things down into rather more manageable chunks, by splitting / merging topics - generally in date-related order.  There are now three main topics related to our 'problems with Hitachi Intercity Express Trains - ongoing discussions'.  Click on the link to take you to the topic:

IETs into passenger service from 16 Oct 2017 and subsequent performance issues

Problems with Hitachi Intercity Express Trains - posts from April 2021

Problems with Hitachi Intercity Express Trains - ongoing discussion since 2022

I know that there are still many more, perhaps smaller, topics where similar issues have been discussed, and I will continue to review those and perhaps merge them, where appropriate.

This is all done in my spare time (I'm a pensioner now ) for my own enjoyment, and purely in the interests of clarity and ease of future reference for our members and readers. If anyone has issues, comments or suggestions, please do contact me - my details are all in my forum profile here.

Chris from Nailsea.

 
Coming back to confirm the emergency number of  03457 11 41 41 for Network Rail and that should be prominently displayed.

This confirmation come from Network Rail today ... a video of gravel / pebbles / sand washed over the main line at Dawlish shared with the question "who do I report to".  Confirmation it's Network Rail, and a follow up from Network Rail to say that it has been called in, to confirm that was the right thing to do and to say "Thank you" and it will be looked at / dealt with / handled before trains resume in the morning.

 
This is what happens when there's country-wide warnings issued - cold Health, weather, Mountains, RNLI, etc etc...

A traditional event with no organisation in charge happens on a certain day. No warnings put out so everyone has a SatNav moment - regardless of whether/weather one can see a problem, they do it anyway....

Dangerous things, those warnings....

 
St Keyne wishing well halt rail replacement pick up is a good mile up a very steep hill from the station.
Or in other words the station is at least a mile down a steep hill from the main road and village it serves.
Villagers who fail to check could find themselves walking a mile, to have to walk a mile back for the bus!
Rail replacement is more convenient for the village than the train. I suspect most villagers would use the 73 bus rather than the train.

 
" ...involving all passenger trains having at least five RMT staff on board... "

Hasn't the DfT occasionally already achieved that with the 5 carriage IEPs they specc'd, running two up, i.e. as a ten carriage set?

Mark

 
I tend to carry a copy of the local Ordnance Survey map when I'm out travelling. Even if I don't need it for geographic location purposes, it gives me something to read during any delays.

 

Probably second in my own earliest memories (the first is the birth of my sister, when I was less than 3 years old) is a visit to my maternal grandparents' house in Plymouth, just after Christmas 1962.  I would then have been aged just under 4.

Their house was on a hillside, with a raised path from the front to the back gardens - no safety railings, those were the days before 'elf n safety' was invented.  As a confident toddler, I remember striding down that snowy path, stepping slightly too far to the right and dropping vertically down into a huge snowdrift - well over my head height.  I remember my father and grandfather laughing as they reached down into the snow to lift me back up.

CfN.

 

That reminds me.

Recently, I noted references to 'NLS' on the Coffee Shop forum which were clearly not related to the station code of my local railway stop.

I therefore expanded the definition of 'NLS' in our forum's Abbreviations and Acronyms page, at https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/acronyms.html , in the interest of clarity.

The National Library of Scotland is an absolutely brilliant resource, particularly for maps: I commend them to all of our members and readers.

CfNLS.

 
Love it at first read and going back to enjoy in more fully in a minute.  I am very much aware that many a true word is written in jest.