Recent content by absolutelymilk

There is a thread elsewhere about the extension to Manchester Airport, will try and find it

Anyone know if someone who had an advance ticket from Matlock to London on Sunday would be able to drive to Stafford and get on an Avanti train there instead? i.e. would the ticket still be valid?

Isn't the point to get miles in for testing, not to actually get it to Crewe as fast as possible?

Sadly it will delay other trains, meaning that I am delayed. I would ideally like staff to make this announcement for trains before mine, but not for my train!

On most trains outside of peak hours, passengers seem to stay fairly near the entrance to the station, meaning some doors are very busy, whereas others further away from the entrance are much less busy. Gatwick is the most extreme example I can think of, but it seems to happen at most...

Sorry my point was unclear, I was saying that for some leisure travellers (including myself), they would travel earlier/later to get a cheaper ticket and then do something else at their destination (or have a bit less time at their destination). For example we are going to visit some friends...

The problem is that off-peak ticket-holders won't spread evenly. So you have to leave a lot of seats free if you're aiming to have a max of (say) 105% capacity, assuming some people won't turn up and some are happy to stand. If you need to leave 150 seats free for off-peak ticket holders on...

I think we are all happy with charging more for peak services, and I don't see how this is different. Effectively what it's doing is 1. smoothing out the current shoulder of peak/off-peak services and 2. charging more for off-peak trains where there is a lot of demand if there is (for example) a...

Not quite - if the Treasury decide that the railways get £4 billion of subsidy, then the DfT can then decide how that should be split. Should it be (to simplify massively) £2 billion each for intercity and non-intercity services, £1 billion for intercity and £3 billion for non-intercity, or get...

Is anyone else worried by the fact that there currently seem to be very few orders for new rolling stock? In the five years from 2022 to 2026 (inclusive), we've had the following come into service: 99, 196, 197, 230, 231, 398, 701, 730, 756, 777, 805, 807 and 810. In the five years from 2027 to...

These are effectively the same point - if the Treasury decides that the railways will get say £4 billion per year subsidy, then every pound of extra revenue from LNER means an extra pound that can be spent on either operational subsidy for other lines, or on investment on increasing capacity on...

Cambridge South: If you build it, they will come! Network Rail have said that Cambridge South had 110,000 passengers in its first month. In comparison Cambridge North had 320,000 in its entire first year, so pretty good going! Cambridge North is one year old and it's changing the face of the city

FYI correct link is here: https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/OOCL-newsletter-March-2026-update-2-July.pdf

In adult social care, private care costs significantly more than Local Authorities pay for it, so effectively they are cross-subsidising care for those with low assets. Agree on local lines not necessarily being more of a social good than intercity routes, but intercity lines are generally...

If the total amount of subsidy is fixed, then any extra revenue from intercity services would go immediately into either paying for services that serve more of a social good, or investment for lines already at capacity