Recent content by ThreeIfByAir

How else do you get employees onto a secure network that other people can’t access?? Even if it’s in the cloud and/or at a remote data center, you need to secure the path from someone’s phone/tablet/laptop to the business data. Heck, I even have a VPN in my house to get to servers there…

I've seen this before at London Bridge terminating platforms before the rebuild. 8-car train called on into a 12-car platform with 8 occupied. We had to walk through the train to alight. I'm assuming that London Bridge in the nineties didn't have any way of telling trains whether the platform...

The Paris RER does something very similar -- there's a pronounceable four-letter code that denotes the stopping pattern, which means that commuters in the know can say 'oh, that's an EOLE so it won't stop at Rosa Parks'. (not a real stopping pattern -- I THINK!)

But bizarrely, only between 0900 and 2300! 0800-2200 or 0730-2130 would make a lot more sense -- I've been away from the City a while but a large percentage of workers will arrive before 9, surely?

Oops! I saw VT as the operator and failed to translate to Avanti in my brain...

For instance, Burton-on-Trent nearby is managed by EMR but served exclusively by XC. (Back in the day, Lockerbie was managed by ScotRail and served exclusively by XC. It's still managed by ScotRail and still has no ScotRail services, but now everything except one Virgin train each way is TPE.)

According to Google Street View, the crossing on Commercial Road was removed between September 2020 and May 2021. The one at the north end of B&Q was still there as of November 2021. Then, sometime between November 2021 and June 2023, the section outside B&Q was converted into a footpath and...

For instance, there is (or at least was when I was at school!) a pretty significant contingent of kids taking the train from the EK line to Crossmyloof for Hutchesons' Grammar School. I think it was that daily journey that got me into trains in the first place!

80 on the Up (but about to reduce to 40), 50 on the Down (but about to increase to 80). Oddly the M74 bridge marks Network Rail's Territory Boundary between London North West and Scotland. I don't know why the boundary isn't quite at the border, but from Network Rail's perspective this accident...

There's decent passive provision for a double link from Primrose Hill to HS1 already. You just need to move the North London/Mildmay Line onto the northern pair at Camden Road, and there's a double formation already in place (with only one track currently laid on it) from the southern pair...

So... the first of these possessions has been extended by two weeks (and counting) after Network Rail found 'displaced ballast'. Does anyone know more about what's going on down there? Was this a new landslip, or was it something that was there all the time but only discovered once they got to work?

Brinklow to Nuneaton was left as three-track -- is that a bottleneck for Down trains? If they quadrify it, it'll need a flyover because the Down Fast from Rugby to Brinklow is on the outside, so I'm guessing that they did a cost-benefit and decided that adding the fourth track wasn't worth it...

Whereas on the other side of the Atlantic, the Secret Service would have a conniption if the President tried to use 'regular' public transport. So for campaigning they use Air Force One and then reimburse the government for the price of a first-class plane ticket. Joe Biden famously loves...

What it _looks_ like is that 2D54 (1722 Darlington to Saltburn) had an issue at or approaching Middlesbrough station, leading it to lose a few minutes into the platform and then be cancelled beyond the station. I'm guessing that's the SPAD, although there were already some major issues with...