Recent content by daveshah

They are for touching in/out with ITSO tickets, smart cards, carnets, etc

Brockenhurst platform 4 is used exclusively (at least as far as I know) by 4 car trains as far as scheduled workings go.

Impressively with the default settings on Android Chrome, Reading is pronounced correctly, I can only presume it picks up on the capital R. Other than saying "colon" for the colons in times it actually does pretty well!

I don't think that's true for "via X" tickets which is the case here (only via Westbury or via Soton tickets available).

On the other hand, I read today that UK tourism websites had seen a 40% increase in traffic (almost all domestic, not people visiting the UK) as people were avoiding planning overseas travel, so maybe that will offset things by the summer.

Yeah, these are definitely former hammers. The 450s and 444s have these where hammers used to be too. There was some RSSB research that found that the risk of ejection through the weaker glass for exit windows was higher than the risk of being trapped by fire, so they were reglazed with...

Very much trivia, but for Brockenhurst it describes the location of rail replacement buses as "Station forecourt, Lyndhurst side of level crossing by the 'Il Palios 2'restaurant.". Il Palio 2 (never Il Palios 2 as far as I know) has been called Enzee for several years now.

A remaining example at Brentford, in need of a plate covering the "L&" to bring it up to date! Sign saying L&SWR PASSENGERS MUST CROSS LINE BY BRIDGE

Is there even a plan for ECTS on the SWML yet?

Finding it rather amusing that SWR are accepting "Crossrail" tickets between London Waterloo and Windsor/Reading according to their disruption info.

I don't know the internals of the systems that issue them, but I strongly suspect these would be much easier to trace in an automated way, the encrypted/signed barcode and centralised (per seller) issuing being a start.

If LNR are using one of the smartphone based solutions, and without significant Internet access restrictions, he could probably just go onto the DB (or whatever) website and buy you an eTicket for anywhere in Europe!

Further to that, are they fixings specific to the Wessex route, given Network Rail mention checking them only in this region?

Mark Hopwood released his plan for SWR today: https://www.southwesternrailway.com/plan-for-improving-your-journeys Most of it fairly common sense, good to see a continued focus on trying to persuade NR to deal with speed restrictions. Incident teams using bus lanes is an interesting one, I'm...

I've seen vending machines that don't have a pin pad and are primarily intended for contactless, although at least some have a slot for the chip (so could also do chip without pin). No idea how these do limits, but unlike a typical transmit mode situation they definitely do online authorisation...