Many years ago - well, on 12 August 2010, to be exact- Coffee Shop forum member / FGW staff member Ollie and I enjoyed a 'line bash' down to Falmouth.  We travelled on his FGW Staff Promo One Day Ranger - which cost just £5.00.  I have that ticket in front of me as I type.

We had a grand day out: fairly smooth journey down and we both enjoyed opening the droplights to get a whiff of sea air going over the Royal Albert Bridge on an HST.  Changed at Truro for the Falmouth Line, had a bit of a nose around the Penryn passing loop (which was very new, then) and went on to Falmouth.

There, we strolled around the town, found an excellent fish and chip shop to buy lunch, then we walked up to Pendennis Castle. That is fascinating, going back to the time of Henry VIII and being significant as the departure point for 'the greatest raid of all' - the attack on St Nazaire - during the Second World War.

We then returned to the trains for our homeward journey. The only slight delay was at Par, due to rail delays, but we found an excellent pub there, while were waiting.

Fair enough, there were only two of us, but we found plenty to fill our time constructively in Falmouth during our brief visit.

CfN.

 

May be due to the wrong sort of leaves blocking the engine air intakes.

Attached picture taken yesterday afternoon at Cheltenham.

 
I know that I am showing my age, but I believe that programmers today assume that connectivity, processor power and storage will always be available and concentrate instead on the 'prettys'.

 
An update, from the BBC:

 
From the BBC:

 
175102/116 moved to Wolverton

Ely Mif :9:  175004/005/008/010 175103/104/105/109/110 (175008 is in two halves)

Wolverton : 13 : 175001/006/011 175101/102/106/107/108/111/112/113/115/116 Many of these must be ready to leave.

Laira : 5:  175002/003/007/009 175114 (only 003 is refurbished)

 
The Firstbus app put me in mind of the following as it appears to be particularly liable to being bitten by this - once the phone signal's contention ramps up, the app stalls and throws out a rather uninformative error message.

I'm wondering if the authors of these sort of apps need to concentrate on work to reduce the volume of data that needs to be exchanged at these times, or to make the handling of this situation more efficient so that the app has a better chance of continuing to work when the network connection is less than good. For starters, they don't appear to cache the image and therefore data-heavy operations such as their handling of maps.

Perhaps the likes of MQTT technology offer an opportunity to improve things? (MQTT is a communications technology much used by the 'Internet of things' to exchange small amounts of data on a network connection that may be poor quality or unstable. I've no idea what I'm talking about here so may be out on a limb).

Mark

 
A colleague was on that cruise.

His Facebook post said that he had a great day in Falmouth, with a nice walk, a pasty, and a trip to a local pub for a beer.

 
It is a shame ORR only include an annual change, and not a percent comparison with same quarter in 2019 (last April-June pre covid lockdowns) in their report.

But you can have some fun comparing the figures and changes in tables 1223, 1233, 1243, 1253 etc.

Soon find that GWR (SWR is far worse) that dividing train km by vehicle km shows average number of carriages per train has shrunk.   Comparing the passenger figures and km on GWR with vehicle km suggests people are on average travelling further too.   This rather suggests that crowding (and overcrowding) must be more common (although I accept IET carriages have more seats than some of the older stock, although IETs were generally in service by spring 2019)

Actually the figures make me wonder if GWR has grown in passengers, but failed to do much about it as it limps on in zombie management contracts mode.    Saying haven't done anything is not strictly true, they have secured some 175s (still not in service though), but lost the 769s (never used), and lost some 387s and a 158 without replacement.

 

One has to wonder if the transfer of 158s up from Devon and Cornwall to a Bristol base as the 175s come in will leave 158s rather that 165s dominant on the Bristol to Salisbury terminators.

When the GWR operation is nationalised next year, perhaps that would allow the GBR BRI-SAL stopping service and the GBR SAL-WAT stoppers - both to be consistently 158/159 operated and perhaps timetabled such that it's the same unit going forward.

 
No surprise that LNER is worst - what with their fares 'simplification'/rises

 
I still have a news alert set for 'Bath Waterloo train' and it's just flagged an article on the Bath Christmas market in an online publication called 'Town and Country'. Very optimistic travel times quoted 'Just over an hour from London'.

Mark

There are regular train services from London Paddington and London Waterloo that can get you to Bath in one to two hours.

 
https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/passenger-rail-usage/


I have mirrored fuller report (here)

 
Thanks for this.

I understand the objectives, but I do think they seem to forgotten that Bath is a relatively small city, and a lot of people working there live in surrounding towns. 

There doesn't even appear to be any thought on travel to big employers if don't live in the city centre. As an example how many people work at the university but live in Bradford on Avon, Trowbridge, Frome etc.  It's travel by car or take ages going indirectly by public transport.

Yes there are park and rides in south west, west and north. But why 3 on one side and nothing from M4 or Corsham/Chippenham or SouthEast etc.   It all feels half hearted with a few easy wins rather than a city wide approach.

We go to Bath a lot, we drive in with my electric car (about 40p return in overnight electricity, and £1.80 to park in Broad St car park for an hour).  We do occasionally use train (with our senior railcards, old enough for them, but too young for a Wiltshire bus pass), but only when we expect to be there for hours because it is more expensive to use public transport than the parking normally.

So yes I have a vested interest in trips to Bath too, but whilst the train and bus are diesel, and not electric like an increasing number of cars in our area, there is no quality incentive factor to use public transport

 
I'm in Falmouth most days and whilst I noticed it was slightly busier than normal for mid week, late October, it was nowhere close to what there is mid summer. I tend to gauge it by how far you can walk in a straight line without having dodge people and it wasn't really a problem.

I think the "nothing to do" people are use to having things laid out for them, as you would probably expect on a cruise. Sometimes you just have to think for yourself.

I doubt that all 6000 came ashore anyway as due to the MSC Virtuosa's size it had to be moored out in Falmouth Bay and the passengers tendered ashore in the ships lifeboats. Due to the weather, it would not have been a pleasant trip.

 

You are so right in what you write - this is an agreement far, far stronger than a like.

I have formally used FOIs before - on just a handful of occasions - and there is a tendency for the resulting information revealed to tell you what happened "after the horse has bolted".  So still a wing and a prayer - it's just that we might know later on why our prayer was not heeded.   Informally, in behind the scene discussions the fact that information might be later available under FOI can help give staff who would have to answer it permission to be more forthcoming early on.

The question, though, is how on earth we can positively motivate the people who can do something about this to the extent that they do something effective to fix the issues rather than being on a different course that does not lead to a situation in which trains consistently run.   Telling the people working for what you describe as a "zombie franchise'' to be more assertive on their zombiemasters is a very weak tool.  For sure, we can give them ammunition but that can't be the only string to the bow, and too much pressure could result in a hardening of their approach and a worse outcome for the people who want to use the train but can't if it doesn't run

 
Friday October 31

Two early warnings of evening short workings have now disappeared from JourneyCheck. But have been replaced by

 
Timely, thanks for this.

Mark

 
Consultation until 28th November https://banestransport.co.uk/


There are a number of consultation events ...

Although I do not live in Bath is of major significance to me, my family and neighbours. We are in effect a connected city, where many facilities and services are present in one urban element and people move between the urban element to access them.  See https://grahamellis.uk/blog1764.html

 
When living in Maiden Newton I walked over and under that bridge on many occasions. On the branch most of the bridges carrying roads over the line were of brick while this carrying the railway over the road were wooden. It was not until 1934 that the last of these was replaced. Even now, 50 years after closure only one bridge has been removed, although another, by Powerstock Nature Reserve is scheduled for removal in order to raise the road to stop flooding. See photo

Should the line reopen? I can see no good reason for doing so. The choice of route was determined in 1854 as being the cheapest and below the £5,000 per mile figure. An article in Chambers Edinburgh Journal in 1852 suggested that by keeping cost below that even rural railways would give a good return. Sadly, Wytherstone cutting saw the costs balloon by 50%, so the line struggled financially.
When the bus to Dorchester was introduced in 1920 it cut the time by two hours (wait fir connection at Maiden Newton) and cut the price by 50%!
The Bristol and Exeter looked at providing a line to Dorchester in conjunction with the GWR in 1844. They found a route from Langport through Crewkerne, Beaminster and Bridport would give a better return. This horrified the GWR who then put forward its Weymouth line to block the LSWR.

Th reopening has been discussed here four years ago and in the Bridport News
https://www.bridportnews.co.uk/leisure/bestofbridport/19009071.community-railway-plan-bridport/
I cannot find a website but there is a Facebook page on the Bridport Community Railway but nothing posted since 2023.

As I have mentioned before its future should centre on active, accessible transport using the trackbed as far as possible.

 

A few years ago you would rarely see this issue outside of BBQ Sundays, now it's virtually a daily occurrence, especially during half term/school holidays.

When recruitment was in GWR's gift, they made choices about where to allocate resources and the issues where put on the "too difficult" pile and kicked down the road repeatedly.

Now we are told that nothing can be done without the consent of the DfT, and there is nothing to suggest that Hopwood et al are applying any upward pressure to obtain that consent. I suspect that many of that ilk are looking at future, similarly well upholstered future employment opportunities rather than rocking the boat.

On top of that, GWR are a zombie franchise with very little motivation to change anything.

Perhaps, Graham, an FOI request asking for details of representations made to the DfT in respect of increasing staffing levels etc may prove instructive, otherwise, I fear you're on a wing and a prayer.

 
Here is the full solution - working out old earthworks and bridges is pretty hard and I have filled in the four outstanding items in bold

1. Hayling Island branch
CyclingSid, and with a fascinating insight
confirmed by eightonedee

2. Foxhangers on the Devizes line
Chris from Nailsea

3. Weymouth to Portland Line at Wyke Regis
eightonedee

4. Yarmouth IOW
Ray951

5. Yatton on the Strawberry Line
ChrisfN

6. Cortyon
MarkA - with an interesting example of a line buit and not used (my understanding is that it was used by a single train)

7. Maiden Newton, on the Bridport branch

8. Marlborough, on the way to Chiseldon

9. Whitstaple, on the line to Canterbury

10. Hamble
Ray951
Interestimg further data from CyclingSid

11. Seend Cleeve, tramway to Seend Iron Works
bradshaw

12. Tramway - Caen Hill, Devizes
bradshaw - also noting tramway
Identified as Prison Bridge by Chris from Nailsea

13. Mangotsfield
chuffed

14. Near Midford, Somerset and Dorset
johnneyw, and yes it could make a useful part of the network

15. Ventnor
PhilWakely

16. Oxford - LNWR▸ Station
ChrisB

17. Between Tiverton and Tiverton Junction

18. Newquay
TonyN

19. Yeovil Town
brooklea and bradshaw - plenty of data

20. Midland and South West Juntion towards Ludgershall
Kennet and Avon,

 
 

Any hopes that GWR had in delaying by nearly 2 months a meeting to explain to the community why the service is so abysmally unreliable ... would give them a chance to tweak things onto a more even playing field are being repeatedly dashed.    Nothing I would like more that to go along in the latter half of next month and be shown improving stats.  But it ain't happening.

If they can't fix it themselves, they/we should go up a level and ask the layer above them - the political level - to help them fix it.   People travel on the trains, not on the timetable which at times can be found on the fiction shelf.  I went into the TIC yesterday, and they have no current train timetables ... "though people ask for them ..."

 
From the BBC:

 

Indeed - but the 4010 with 1024x768 addressing on an 11" screen was surpassed by the 4014 with 4096x3120 addressing on a 19" and the 4016 on a 26" screen.  And they were used for the very high res stuff.  All these years later, I can probably let it slip that the profit margin on the 4014 was - err - rather good and at the same time production could not keep up with demand - very long lead shipping times.  The production process at times was a bit delicate, and at one time it was said that the rejection rate suddenly shot up to 70% because of the deodorant (or was it perfume?) one of the production staff used.  Of course,  this was all pretty confidential stuff at the time but 40 years later ....

 
Well, 6,000 is a lot of people for what is not a large town centre, confined to a peninsula, but if you don't have that many the National Maritime Museum Cornwall and Pendennis Castle are both well worth a visit. I would imagine both would be absolutely overwhelmed by that number of visitors, and cannot imagine it is remotely possible to arrange a large number of visits to Cornish sites at short notice to absorb them.

I have some sympathy with the cruise line operators having to find something to occupy that number of people for a day. Do they simply go back to Southampton and offer a refund of most of the cost? With the benefit of hindsight, that might have been better, albeit guaranteeing spoilt holidays for all.

 

I'm sure production of core store was automated to some extent, but it remained expensive. Core was also inherently slow, with only modest improvements over time. By the later 1970s it was semiconductor memory that was taking over, and of course since it had learned Moore's Law it got rapidly cheaper and faster.

For example, for a typical block of 4K of 16 bit words you need 16 core planes, each with an array of 64x64 cores, and three or four wires threaded through each of them. Tektronix's main competition was DEC's GT40 terminals, based on a computer with core memory. At the start of the 1970s that cost twice as much as a Tek 4010, but the difference dropped over a few years. And customers preferred the live vector display (though no-one liked the light pens!). You also got a proper computer built in, and a free copy of Moonlander.

 
From the Western Daily Echo

 
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_tube; "They were replaced with other technologies, notably core memory."

Somewhere I worked I can remember rows of ladies sat winding core stores. Not my work area, but presumably each one was one bit. There was a programming device, presumably same technology, consisting of eight lamps and nine switches. You set your lamps (1 or 0) and used the ninth switch to load the byte of data. All in the name of hardening equipment for military use.

How the world has moved on.

 
From WECA, see https://www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/news/final-enabling-works-underway-for-portishead-line/