Recent content by chriskeene

Stratford upon Avon? As a major tourist and leisure destination, most options from the national rail site require 2 changes and a walk between two Birmingham stations, though I'm not sure why these even show up as options when changing at Leamington Spa is quicker and cheaper. Even then the...

Moderator note - we have it on good authority that this was all down to a TPWS defect. I'm on the 13:03 Paddington to Plymouth today. Left 20 mins late due to waiting for the Train Manager (as she explained to her credit many times) for her mandated rest period. Watching OpenTrainTimes Maps...

Agree, it's easy to say go with the cheapest option, but that would never get the green light in this cash strapped treasury run railway. I don't think Gatwick needs an explicitly stated supplement, the network if full of inconsistent ticket pricing quirks, just a consistent price, which may be...

When something like this happens, which blocks a number of lines and could cause a serious accident if a train was to hit it, presumable there is a way for drivers and platform staff to communicate to the signaller 'set all signals near me to red urgently'?

Is there a reason Thameslink is not using ETCS (and ATM?) in the core yet? Obviously, they have had timetable issues and are not yet up to full capacity but is this stopping the role out of ETCS?

Which means reversing trains at Lewes (which from experience when they divert in disruption has very limited capacity to do so). Unless you build a nice tunnel - which are never never cheap (££££) And once they get to Uckfield, it's then single track, so very limited capacity... Unless you...

Being an optimist, at some point things will have to start to slowly improve, if only as they can't really get any worse. I was wondering what metrics and statistics would be good to track this. Could some be deceiving, i.e. statistics around lateness may become worse as less trains are...

Has there been some headcode changes? I notice that there seems to be Gatwick expres Brighton/Victoria services with 1W (which was used by thameslink) and 1M. 1W for down, and 1M for up (which itself seems unusual for these parts)

To me this thread is around exploring how the railways can operate without a strict route knowledge requirement. it wasn't - as I read it - a calling for no drivers, or zombie drivers or mass deskilling. In any event the driver of a train will normally have run the route thousands of times in...

I've thought about this in the past, but never dared ask. I think it's a question that's interesting to explore, so thanks for asking it.

Is this also true then for Southern/Gatwick Express? I have a season ticket, however a friend I was with had bought a Southern only ticket to Brighton, only noticing this once on the train at Victoria. As (nearly) all Brighton trains are now the red Gatwick Expresses and all stop at...

That's interesting, thanks. So parts of the BML have got slower, presumably 100 down to 90? I'd be interested in the background/reasons behind this. thanks chris

I'm completely confused, and any insight from others would be appreciated. The recent RMT strike days have had an odd effect on the Brighton to London peak trains. They all run (well, albeit with usual random Southern cancellations), but extra trains seem to be laid on. Trains seem quieter...

in the 2000s I remember there was a Friday service leaving Brighton platform 1 around 5pm heading somewhere west which was a loco and a set of carriages (it seemed a long train, but i only saw it from onboard trains arriving in to the station and they may have been another train in front of it...

Thanks to all for the informative responses. Impressed this doesn't happen more often, must be easy to presume there is room for a 4 or 8car.