Recent content by olympus

Railway Herald says that GWR have confirmed a HST 'Farewell Special', to include Oxford to Hereford via the Cotswold line, on 1st June. Tickets to go on sale at the Long Rock open day. I also heard, while photographing today's HST, that 1W02 London Paddington to Hereford on 04/05/19 will be a...

I only record numbers seen while taking photographs, so there's an instant record in the camera. The software I use for organising photographs allows arbitrary tags, so I use the locomotive or set number as a tag and the computer gives me a list of the numbers I've seen.

CrossCountry do this between Birmingham New Street and Cheltenham Spa; an early morning service (1V01 Birmingham New Street to Cardiff Central) goes via Kidderminster and Worcester. I can't imagine many passengers use it as the next Birmingham to Cardiff service overtakes it. The route...

43193 and 43197 moved from Laira to Long Marston today with eight coaches (one coach in GWR green livery, all other vehicles blue).

Saturday's 1V44 became 5V44 due to "Door and Door system faults" between Leeds and Bristol. 1V44 resumed at Bristol about 20 minutes late.

43017 and 43174 with eight coaches moved from St Philip's Marsh to Ely Papworth Sidings on Tuesday 5th March.

The name on the bubble car is 'Pandora' and it was for some time a 'video survey unit', further information can no doubt be found online.

Bicester Village (previously Bicester London Road) to Bletchley is a short trip at only 2 hours 23 minutes, though the stations were connected by the Varsity Line until 1968. Sample timetable from 1964 here on the forum Oxford-Bletchley Historic Timetables? suggests a journey time of 30 minutes...

Thank you all for your comments about the trains being five car rather than nine car. I hope the five car trains will be sufficient for demand on the route.

The first Class 800 on the route, recorded in the video, is a five car train. Is it known whether the two services to Pembroke Dock will be five or nine car trains? The 800s will be taking over from eight car HSTs.

There's a line in this week's Railway Herald about the Bletchley to Bedford route. "It is understood that the use of Class 150 DMUs on the Bletchley to Bedford route ceased as of 16th February, with single car Class 153s taking over until the Vivarail Class 230s start public services, due for...

In theory, smart cards could have a piece of electronic paper embedded into them, which is refreshed when the card is read or written to. Such a system would be a huge challenge for the railway to implement, but we are in the 'Speculative Ideas' forum.

Mobile tickets are fine for people who want them; they shouldn't be the only ticket type available (the original post was about paper tickets disappearing).

There may be another GWR unit coming from Bristol tomorrow; http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/K56280/2019/02/11/advanced .

I've had magnetic tickets, especially from the handheld machines, that haven't been written correctly and therefore not accepted by the barriers. As passengers get used to exactly how to hold the barcode against the scanner they may speed up.