Timelapse video shows railway station construction

Timelapse video showed the development of a county's newly opened £175m railway station.

North Chelmsford's Beaulieu Park welcomed its first passenger train, a service to London, on Sunday morning.

It is the first new station on the Great Eastern Main Line in 100 years and features three platforms.

Network Rail footage shows its construction, which began in March 2023 and finished slightly ahead of schedule.

National League (formerly the Conference) is regarded as "non league" (Level 5), so surely the longest League journey remains Plymouth to Carlisle?

UK regional airline Eastern Airways has suspended its operations and is on the brink of collapse, putting hundreds of jobs at risk.

The company filed a notice of intention to appoint an administrator on Monday after several flights were cancelled, including between Teesside and Aberdeen.

The airline has operated across the UK, Ireland and Europe, and runs services supported by the Scottish government for people in the northernmost point of mainland UK.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) confirmed the airline has suspended operations and all of its flights had been cancelled.

A notice to appoint administrators is a formal step that gives the business up to 10 days of legal protection from creditors while it explores rescue options, restructures, or prepares for insolvency proceedings.

Airport flight departure boards showed Eastern Airways flights had been cancelled, including a 07:00 GMT flight from Newquay to London Gatwick, 18:15 flight from Teesside to Aberdeen, 14:30 from Aberdeen to Wick and 16:45 from Aberdeen to Teesside.

Selina Chadha, CAA consumer and markets director, urged Eastern's customers to visit the regulator's website for more information.  "We urge passengers planning to fly with this airline not to go to the airport as all Eastern Airways flights are cancelled," she said.

The CAA said people who had flights booked with the airline should make other travel arrangements via rail, coach or other airlines.

London North and Eastern Railway, Scotrail, TransPennine Express and Northern Railway would offer free standard class travel to the airline's staff and customers on Tuesday and Wednesday on suitable routes, the regulator added.

Scottish regional airline Loganair said it was offering stranded passengers special airfares in on flights between Aberdeen and Kirkwall or Sumburgh for departures until 30 October.

Passengers who had booked flights directly with the airline via credit, debit or charge card should contact their card issuer as they could be able to make a claim for a charge back, the CAA said.

Eastern Airways has been approached for comment.

Eastern is one of the UK's last remaining regional airlines and is based at Humberside Airport in North Lincolnshire. But the airline, which was launched in 1997, faced financial challenges following the Covid pandemic in part due to falling passenger numbers. It also operates out of East Midlands, Jersey, Manchester, Newcastle, Newquay and Southampton, as well as Esbjerg in Denmark.

It has been an operator in the North Sea offshore oil and gas industry, flying between UK cities with a significant presence in the sector such as Aberdeen, Humberside, Teesside and Wick. It has run a weekday service between Wick John O'Groats Airport and Aberdeen, which is seen as vital for people living in the most northerly point on mainland UK.

Oil protester 'drove petrol car to Stonehenge'

A Just Stop Oil supporter accused of damaging Stonehenge told a jury he borrowed his grandmother's petrol car to drive to the monument.

Luke Watson, 36, is standing trial alongside Rajan Naidu, 74, and Niamh Lynch, 22, who are accused of using fire extinguishers filled with cornflour, talc and an orange dye to spray the stones on 19 June last year.

Mr Watson told Salisbury Crown Court he had no intention of permanently damaging the monument or causing serious distress to bystanders.

Mr Watson, of The Street in Manuden, Essex, Mr Naidu, of Gosford Street, Birmingham, and Ms Lynch, of Norfolk Road, Bedford, all deny charges of damaging an ancient protected monument and causing a public nuisance.

The court was told the trio targeted Stonehenge as part of an ongoing fossil fuel protest by the Just Stop Oil group. The jury heard Mr Watson borrowed the car from his grandmother to collect the colour blasters and drive his co-defendants to Salisbury on the morning of the incident.

The court previously heard Mr Watson had driven from London to the Oxfordshire area in a Ford Fiesta the day before the summer solstice when about 15,000 people were due to gather and celebrate.

"I don't think going to Stonehenge at solstice is about having a particular tinge on the stones," Mr Watson said. "It's more about going to a site that people have been going to for a long time, throughout history. I think you can go there and have a very good experience with an orange stone, blue stone, green stone."

Mr Watson went on to explain that he became involved in activism while working on an organic farm, first joining the Extinction Rebellion group in 2019 before getting involved with Just Stop Oil.

When Mr Naidu and Ms Lynch were arrested wearing white Just Stop Oil T-shirts, forensic examination of one of the colour blasters provided a DNA link to Mr Watson, the court was told.

Simon Jones, prosecuting, told the court there were concerns that if the substance got wet it could become a paste and that there was a "pressing need" to clean the stones ahead of the solstice event. The cost of cleaning the stones was £620, he added.

The trial continues.

I may be a bit biased......well OK I am!

National League (formerly the Conference) is regarded as "non league" (Level 5), so surely the longest League journey remains Plymouth to Carlisle?

I have friends who have done that trip, midweek, watched a miserable defeat in the pouring rain and travelled back overnight, soaking wet, on the one coach that made the journey, arriving back at Home Park around breakfast time.

You'd have to be keen!

What does the interior of this train look like?

Further north but still in England - Berwick Rangers. But yet they play in Scotland leagues.

Looks like it running booked route again.

You might want to review that date in the light of planned engineering work.    The line will be closed in stages between Plymouth and Exeter St Davids between 21st February and the 8th March.  Work is scheduled on two bridges during that time.

There is also a closure from Weymouth to Yeovil Pen Mill between the 28th February and 8th March.

There are engineering works that are planned to close the Heart of Wessex line to the south of Yeovil and the West of England main line to the west of Totnes that day (and in the days before too), and the plan is to have buses run direct to the meeting from Plymouth, and from Bournemouth/Poole with intermediate pick ups (?) at Yeovil for the meeting.

Fan cycles 900 miles to support football team



A football fan cycled more than 900 miles from Cornwall to Tyne and Wear to see his football team play in the National League says he had a "quite incredible" response to his trip.

Chris Willian travelled 914 miles (1,471km) on two manually-powered wheels from the county to see his team Truro City FC face Gateshead on Saturday.

The team drew with a 2-2 result, which 185 fans travelled to watch in what was the longest journey in English league football history.

Mr Willian said his journey "really was the work of a madman" when he was cycling late into the night with the darkness, wind and rain working against him.

He said: "I knew it would be a challenge, I knew it would be touch and go with the weather, and I thought: 'The opportunity's there, why not give it a go?'"

"First and foremost, I just wanted to be at the game, so I made sure I actually had booked the Friday off work so I could get there whatever."

(BBC article continues)

Yes - confirmed for the Saturday.

19:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Swindon due 21:59

19:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Swindon due 21:59 will be terminated at Westbury.
It will no longer call at Trowbridge, Melksham, Chippenham and Swindon.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.

There can be "up to a dozen incidents" of trespassing each day on train lines in Sussex and Kent, Network Rail has said.

Paul Langley, head of security, crime and resilience for the southern region, said the railway environment was "inherently dangerous" and trespassing exacerbated this. He was speaking from Three Bridges Rail Operating Centre incident control room, where staff demonstrated how the team ensured the smooth running of one of the busiest lines in the UK. He said: "Our message is, stay off the tracks. You're putting not only yourself at risk, but also those people who have to respond to it."


Network Rail invited the BBC to tour the Three Bridges control room to see how staff ensured the smooth running of the rail line

Mr Langley made clear the "huge impact" such incidents had on staff, including those responding on the ground and "the people who are managing this on a daily basis in control". He said: "These can end in really tragic incidents that we see, unfortunately, quite regularly on the railway."  With trespassing being one of the "key drivers" for delays, he was also keen to highlight the significant "human impact" that had.

He said: "We're not a million miles from Gatwick Airport. People that are travelling there can miss flights."  Hospital appointments can also be missed, he added, while trespassing can also create "childcare issues", and result in missed meetings. "This impacts thousands of people, almost on a daily basis," he said.



The security head said that, while there can be up to a dozen trespassing incidents per day, numbers do fluctuate.

When it comes to spotting trespassers, drones are a key tool.

Insp Paul Donovan from British Transport Police said drones offer "fantastic situational awareness" which allow the force to help reduce disruption on the railway. He said: "We can turn up and deploy the drone, it's a lot quicker, it's a lot more effective for getting the railway back to normality. Most importantly, it's a safety thing as well, because it helps us minimise risk ... The important thing for us is to get the railway moving as soon as possible when it's safe to do so."