Recent content by TheLastMinute

Not completely pointness - we've all been reminded that it's Imber Bus tomorrow. Thanks @Nicholas Lewis :)

and certainly nothing to do with it being connected that particular ex-chair of Network Rail. Have a read of https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/06/uk-rail-minister-peter-hendy-says-sorry-threatening-texts-over-euston-station-concerns for some context.

And this page states that Lord Hendy is still in post.

What do you mean? Go-op have decided that their failure wasn't due to any of the reasons discussed in this thread, but rather that their previous plan wasn't difficult enough! :D:D:D

The sitting dates for Lord's committee stage of the Railways Bill have been published. At the time of writing, they are: 8 September 2026 10 September 2026 16 September 2026 12 October 2026 19 October 2026 21 October 2026 26 October 2026

OK, just for fun(!), let's do a quick "back of a fag packet " calculation of the staff costs for running a twice weekday service from Minehead to Taunton and return, one morning peak and one evening peak. To run this service, at least six jobs need to be performed; driver, guard and 4...

The second reading of the bill in the Lords is scheduled to take place on 7 July. The version of the Railways Bill as brought from the Commons is available here, along with the explanatory notes and the other documents.

There's also the Met Office's YouTube channel, which is a must watch for anyone with more than passing interest in the weather. As well as the thirce daily forecast videos, there's a weekly "deep dive" that explains why the weather is doing what it is, a weekly live Q&A, a twice-weekly 10-day...

I'm not being critical of either of these two posts as they are both valid points of view, but they are the perfect example of why, whatever the Met Office does, they just can't win. @Bletchleyite says Yellow warnings are unhelpful, while @MikeWM says a Yellow warning should have been posted on...

The Red warning area has been extended to include Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex and extended to 2359 on Thursday. Edit: And as expected, an Amber warning has been issued for all day Friday covering eastern and central England up as far as Manchester and Hull.

From watching this morning's Met Office forecast video, it looks like they will likely be issuing a heat warning for Friday later on today. To be fair, it is still 40 hours away and there was less certainty about how quicky the less hot air would move in. The trend of each model run over the...

GWR are advising on their website that a revised service will be in place on Wed 24 and Thur 25 June and that travel on these days should be for essential reasons only. Tickets for Wed and Thurs can be used any day between Monday and Friday this week. They also point out that their older...

While Berth Maps is an internal TOC system, it uses the same publicly available data from Network Rail that the other systems uses, including signal aspects. Importantly in the context of this conversation, Berth Maps is not a safety critical system. To aid the user in everyday use, it makes...

It's possible that they could get some external funding to run a few inter-urban bus routes around Somerset, but everything else on their list (including the "charging hubs") is just pie in the sky.

I've had a go at summarising the published phased plan. As no doubt Sir Humpergy would have said, it's extremely brave and ambitious. The fact that it lacks even an indictive timeline is somewhat telling. Build four "charging hubs" (provisionally Worle, Taunton, Castle Cary and Frome) powered...