Significantly! As is station footfall sadly! Whilst my local community (can't call it a village any more) of Pinhoe has grown significantly with development over the recent past, the station is a popular split for long distance tickets. The increase in station usage shown in various statistics cannot be just folk genuinely starting and ending their journeys there.

I wonder to what extent point-to-point journey figures are distorted by split save? Certainly it feels like it's a long time since I did a journey on XC which wasn't split.

Split ticketing is where a passenger completes a single journey using two or more
tickets. Total entries and exits at some individual stations will be significantly over
estimated due to some passengers not boarding or alighting at the split point and
instead staying on the train.

From April 2022 to March 2023 year we have introduced an adjustment to account
for split ticketing in the LENNON data. Rail Delivery Group have developed an
algorithm to detect split tickets, and we have incorporated this into our data
processing. Therefore, in the latest year (April 2022 to March 2023) we only count an
entry and exit at the start of the journey and end of the journey, whereas previously
an entry and exit would have been recorded at each split point along the way.

Ranger/Rover infills (“Other”) – Rover and Ranger products, e.g. Ride Cornwall,
Cambrian Coaster, Anglia Plus, are tickets with non-geographic destinations so
estimates are developed to represent passenger flows on a selected number of
these tickets;

The ‘Digby and Sowton’ adjustment (“D&S”) – relates to journeys associated
with a season ticket product for students which are being made to Exeter
Central and Exeter St. David’s on tickets with a recorded destination of Digby
and Sowton. Adjustment uses data provided by Great Western Railway;

Depending on the cloud ceiling, you may be in sight of this. (Harwell's shining a laser vertically, though fortunately/unfortunately not their biggest and brightest. Not visible from here at a distance of ~47 miles and a not quite low eastern horizon...)

Mark

https://www.harwellcampus.com/harwell-campus-celebrates-turning-80/

**edit** The tech involved: https://www.horizonlasers.co.uk/titan-architectural-laser/

I wonder to what extent point-to-point journey figures are distorted by split save? Certainly it feels like it's a long time since I did a journey on XC which wasn't split.

Is that a taxi dropping its sole occupant down at the station rather than at their preferred destination?

Agreed - that was my reaction, too, when I saw that image. 

To all the 'armchair critics' - it's seriously broken wiring, somewhere down there along a 22 mile railway tunnel, with an understandably broken down train in the way.

That will take some time to fix: it's not as simple as, 'Oh, just push the plug back into the 13amp socket where Aunty Maud has trodden on the flex.'

From another thread, a site that displays point to point passenger numbers.

The figures for Worcester Shrub Hill to Oxford are wild - a bit of a rollercoaster. But there will probably be other curious examples elsewhere.

https://trainslive.uk/odm/journey.php?origin=WOS&destination=OXF

Mark

The ticketing: a Wales explorer, on the trains, has a 4 in 8 day validity, and this one is printed on the ordinary stock, has no machine readable code, so it isn't immediately apparent as to how it will record which days I've used it.

My thoughts are ... that I'm very happy with the way things are continuing to evolve, here on the Coffee Shop forum.

Thank you, grahame.

2025 has been a steady year - I expected a far more major perturbation from the start of this year with the move from http to https, and from a single server to the receptionist - worker model.

Is that a taxi dropping its sole occupant down at the station rather than at their preferred destination?

Mark

Beam shone into sky to celebrate science campus

Scientists have beamed a laser into the sky, which is visible from miles around.

The spectacle, known as The Beam, marks the 80th birthday of Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.

Harwell was established in 1946 as the UK's first nuclear research laboratory and is currently home to the Diamond Light Source science facility.

Jim Stretton, managing director at Harwell Campus, said: "The Beam honours Harwell's past scientific breakthroughs while signalling the next era of growth and innovation."

Operated by Horizon Lasers, the vertical pillar of light has been described as 2.2 million times more powerful than a typical laser pen.

It is shining from the centre of the Diamond Light Source from 17:00 to 21:00 GMT, and is visible across Oxfordshire, with scientists aiming to reach heights of about 8km (five miles).

Harwell described The Beam as a "visual celebration of the campus' world-leading expertise in light-based science".

It kicks off a year-long series of events, external to mark the anniversary.

Harwell Campus was originally founded as the Atomic Energy Research Establishment and played a major role in the UK's early atomic programme.

From the 1990s onwards it evolved into a wider research campus, eventually growing into a 700-acre site with about 7,000 scientists and engineers across 250 organisations, valued at about £3bn.

It has the UK's largest concentration of national research facilities, including the Diamond Light Source, which has studied advanced treatments of HIV, cancer and the Covid-19 vaccine.

It includes the synchrotron, which speeds electrons up to near the speed of light to produce intense beams of light that can probe matter.

Also at Harwell are the Rosalind Franklin Institute, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and European Space Agency.

Its Central Laser Facility (CLF) is currently upgrading its most powerful laser, the so-called Vulcan, which will have a power output of 20 petawatts, equivalent to 200 billion kilowatts.

A single pulse will be enough energy to recreate the extreme conditions of deep space, and it is 18 trillion times more powerful than The Beam.

Prof John Collier, director of CLF, said: "The Beam is a powerful reminder of the vital role the national facilities at Harwell Campus continue to play in advancing knowledge, technology and innovation on the world stage."

Prof Gianluigi Botton, chief executive officer at Diamond Light Source, added: "At Diamond, we harness the power of synchrotron light to reveal the structure of everything from viruses and vaccines to new materials and advanced technologies.

"The Beam marks 80 years of discovery and reflects the campus' ongoing commitment to collaboration, innovation, and using light to transform the way we understand the world.

"We're delighted to play our part on New Year's Day in marking this momentous occasion."