Recent content by bigfoote

Have had this situation once from Hartlepool - Kings Cross Was advised by GC twitter team that I had to wait for the next GC in 4 hours. I advised them of PRO and asking for acceptance to re-route. Got the same. Spoke to station staff (Northern), told "officially" they couldn't go over GC's...

BBC article about the strikes. There's an image with full info about all TfL services all weekend. Was unable to embed image directly

I echo the earlier suggestion to make the Southern DaySave available on the day, and as an extension to that, perhaps split it into a zonal product - West Coastway (Chichester [or Portsmouth if they can agree something with SWR] to Brighton), East Coastway (Brighton to Hastings), and suburban...

Not in regular timetabled use (to my best knowledge), but during disruption or engineering, Havant does see this sort of use since the avoiding road was removed and both platforms made bi-di.

This is probably cheating, but I'm going to say it anyway. Plat. 2 at Portsmouth Harbour, fenced off and track lifted now. Due I believe to structural concerns about the underlying pier, was taken out of use a fair number of years back now.

A couple I remember from my time as a contractor (3rd rail land). "popped mushroom" = broken insulator. Arnie for a teminating train/terminator. Not so much slang as local jokes, was BBQ, for example, trains suspended between x and y due to shopping trolley contacting 3rd rail - "BBQed trolley"...

Not on a train I was on, but when I worked gateline for South Central 20 odd years ago. Following disruption, a lot of Vic - Pompey fasts were given extra stations to replace cancelled service. A lot of SSOs meant it was almost bound to happen. I can imagine for drivers, having a diagram and a...

"ladies and gentlemen, the next station stop is Portsmouth Harbour. This train will terminate. If it doesn't, lifejackets are under your seats" Station announcement following trespass incident: [insert train company] would like to apologise for the severe delays to your journey this evening due...

I would say, as others have, that in 2019, the NRE app could and should be much more "live". In this era of instant news/social media/always-on, to have the ability to enter your service in the app and have it notify you of any changes en route (disruption etc) needs to be a priority. As for...

Across my years, I've heard the gamut of various animals and inanimate objects on the line. Two come immediately to mind. Tent on the line (minus occupants) and back in the days of local signalling, pigeon in the signal box at a level crossing. Yet to experience a llama lineside.

Bell-Veer? Some have already been covered, for a Portsmouth local, Cosham (cosh-ham) and Bosham (bozz-em) are the normal ones, rarely Rowlands Castle pronounced as the argument Row-lands, although on a trip the other day I did overhear a couple call Swanwick; Swaan-wick (long a, emphasised W in...

I have no personal additions to this thread, but an observation that maybe we could see this more commonly going forward as a way to spread the load at peak times. If the information becomes available that some trains will be less busy, can short-notice advances be made available for those...

I had a similar situation with an Advance single m-ticket from Waterloo to Havant. Scanned at the gateline, didn't work, waved through and thought no more of it. Conductor scanned it, showed as deactivated and cancelled, but given the time of night, and my genuine disbelief, he endorsed me for...

It's usually the case that advances are released around 3 months before, so would reasonable expect them to be available around the middle of September. This of course, as with all things rail, subject to change.

Ford has a lot of scheduled stops, I believe, to prevent congestion with the Bognor shuttle. Preferable to have a scheduled stop rather than to hold it at signals closer to Barnham.