Recent content by Shrewbly

It looks like the Birmingham - Leicester service may be about to restart. A couple of ECS moves in progress from Tyseley and Barton under Needswood.

I have to say this works really well for my local stops, so much appreciated. It probably helps that at least some of the stops have half sensible names (I'll ignore the one further along the route called 'Shops')!

Just spotted that the Severn Valley Railway is intending to trial commuter services between Kidderminster and Bewdley to connect with Snow Hill line trains from 1st September for 8 weeks, with through ticketing. Details here (with the proviso that there is the usual news article confusion...

Interestingly, the WMR ticket site will produce a valid Longbridge to Worcester itinerary via New Street and Worcestershire Parkway for this Sunday evening (18:53 from Longbridge) using the £7.30 single fare. However the Cross-country element of the journey today is a rail replacement bus, so...

There seems to be something broken somewhere with Worcestershire Parkway fares which may be affecting this. I recently found myself near Worcestershire Parkway needing to get to Northfield. OK, I thought, I should just be able to double-back at University, but the site's ticketing seemed to...

I had problems with portable air con proving very awkward to hook up to the window in the bedroom, and also had some hot air coming back into the room. I started wondering if sending hot air up the chimney might be a plan. I took the innards out of the log burner downstairs and to my joy...

Tewkesbury is worth a visit. (As an aside my great, great grandfather was once stationmaster there on the long gone Malvern to Tewkesbury branch. And although it sounds like that route might have made your journey much easier in years gone by, I suspect the very sparse timetable would have...

Just to add, buried in the small print I did find: "If a passenger doesn’t have access to the app, bookings can be made via the telephone however, live information can’t be given if bookings are made by phone."

There is the Worcestershire on Demand service that might get you from Malvern to Tewkesbury. Both locations are shown on the South Malvern zone map as travel points that you can reach, but since both are just outside the zone, I'm not sure whether you could book a single journey between them...

The last Bromsgrove to New Street on weekdays used to be timetabled as a through service to Coventry (where it stabled). It still does this sometimes*, but it now runs as two separate services with separate headcodes and a lengthy layover at New Street. *Looking at recent days it seems a bit...

If I'm not mistaken it looks like some of the test runs between New Street and Kings Norton have begun.

I'm fairly sure that platform 12 can also be accessed from the bridge, it's just that access to platforms 12 and 1 are not as obvious as the other platforms - they don't have a straight flight of stairs direct from bridge to platform. Some of the stairs were altered during the station...

Daughter reports that her PlusBus e-ticket wasn't read by the machine on a First Worcester bus today, but was accepted without quibble by the driver.

Back in the early eighties, I went on a tour of the Droitwich transmitters. We were told then, that due to the lack of suitable valves, long wave transmissions probably only had another ten or so years left! Those valves seem to have lasted well.

My main recollection of BRUTES is that they could harbour a scary amount of static electricity, presumably generated by the blue nylon curtains, though the insulating solid rubber tyres probably didn't help. I was once knocked to the ground by the static shock after touching one at Birmingham...