Recent content by chris_in_salop

Trains running late, short-formed or being cancelled altogether are issues across the rail industry. Cross Country Trains have been running inadequate funsize trains for 25 years. But I don't see any particular urgency from the "rail industry" to deal with these issues. As a mere passenger...

The two trains leave Shrewsbury and Telford very close together. Typically the via Smethwick train leaves Shrewsbury at xx.57, then the via Tame Bridge train leaves Shrewsbury at xx.05. For travel to Wolverhampton or Birmingham the via Smethwick train is more attractive, as it only stops at...

It's an utterly charmless building. However it does seem to be practical for handling passenger flows.

I wish them well! It may not be commercially viable to begin with, but it fills an annoying missing link in Shropshire's bus network. I've long felt that there ought to be better links between Drayton and Telford.

Plenty of examples of a bastardised mix of English and Welsh in the placenames of west Shropshire. Many of these hybrid placenames are very old. And despite being completely English, I'm not unsympathetic to Welsh grievances. The English treatment of Wales has often been thoughtless. But this...

What's he ever done? To the vast majority of the British people, "railway mentality" is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Longer trains?

Don't think anyone's mentioned Barnt Green. EDIT: Oh yes they have! Sorry I should read more carefully.

There should not be ticket checks on rail replacement buses.

As TFW write in the FAQs This is a brave move, if not to say courageous. If it leads to overcrowding and a poor passenger experience, it could well backfire.

It looks like a very good report to me. Vast amounts of taxpayer cash gets poured into the railway. I doubt that many taxpayers are too impressed with what they get in return.

I can never get over how great the Merseyrail Electrics are every time I use them. Smart new trains with lots of carriages, low fares, regular service even on Sundays, tidy stations. Frankly any Scouser who's complaining doesn't realise how good they have it.

The Flora of Birmingham and the Black Country (2013) lists the following plants as being particularly associated with railways in the West Midlands. Buddleia (Buddleia davidii) Danish scurvy-grass Common stork's-bill Common fumitory Common toadflax Common mallow Long-headed poppy London plane...

I started commuting to school around Birmingham in 1988, and I can't remember as much casual anti-social behaviour on the train then as there is now. Of course the trains were much more noisy - a 1950s DMU struggling up Old Hill Bank drowned out most passenger sound - and no-one was using loud...

But surely that politician has a point. A transport system that seemingly can only deliver massive overcrowding or massive over-capacity is not a good transport system. Just because a solution is an operational impossibility at the moment doesn't mean that we should just shrug our shoulders.