Recent content by Michaeco

For Heavens sake, why not stop all South Western Railway trains at all stations. They are slow enough already and compare unfavourably with trains that run west and north from London.

Excellent plan! The stopper to Winchester could usefully be extended to Basingstoke. With the advent of GBR, the Southern service from Brighton could be extended to Bournemouth or perhaps Brockenhurst, so that this no longer blocked platforms at Southampton Central.

The main bugbear is the lack of a proper pattern of fast/express, semi-fast and stopping services on the main lines. If you compare Cambridge (about 60 miles from London), with two non-stop services per hour @ eg 50 minutes, with Southampton (about 70 miles from London) with two semi-fasts @ eg...

The problem we have is that trains on the SW Main Line and the Portsmouth Direst stop too often and, on the SW Main Line the two "fast" trains are at best semi-fasts. The service on both lines compares unfavourably with the service to similar destinations, such as Oxford and Cambridge. What is...

This is very disappointing personally, as I used to travel from Chichester to Cardiff to see my son and his family, living in Pontypridd. It is also disappointing, in that there was a groundswell pre-Covid for an hourly service from Brighton to Bristol. There have of course been plans to extend...

depends which is the chicken and which is the egg!

Did Shanklin to Ryde Pier Head on Sat and return. Shanklin Station fully staffed with booking office open. Trains all ran on time and were quite busy. Problem with 30 min interval service probably Brading, where BOTH footbridges are shut. Incidentally, how do we stop contractors putting paths...

On the Portsmouth Direct, we would almost be back to where we should be, with one fast, one semi-fast and a slow. All you have to do is drop the Godalming stop out of the "fast". However, we need to see what the timings will be. London Waterloo to Pompey (Harbour) has gone from 1 hr 23 (BR) to 1...

One of the reasons may be the lack of an independent, standing board of neutral persons, sometimes called a dispute avoidance and adjudication board or collaboration facilitation board, to head off and in the end "sentence" technical and people issues, which generally mean time and money. The...

A large part of the problem is that SWR trains stop too often! This has resulted in Portsmouth Direct trains over 10 or so years going from a standard off-peak time Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour of 1 hr 23 (and one at 1 hr 18) to 1 hr 35 or even 1 hr 38, which is hardly progress. We all know...

As someone who was at school in Portsmouth in the 1960's, I remember Platform 2 at Fareham being a through platform. It was probably terminated when the Gosport branch was finally cut off and the geometry for the Southampton platform improved? Anyway, a great report and let's get it all done.

Will try 1700 or 1715 off Waterloo tonight. Are they/will they be fitted with Dellner couplings