Recent content by Westboy

There was similar incident to the Cable incident on this show a month after at Reading West Junction, which RAIB did investigate, and released the report a few weeks ago. http://www.raib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/130128_R022013_Reading_West.pdf Looks like in that case also they didn't...

Thank you for correcting me. I hope you recover quickly from whatever ailment is causing you to be passive agressive this evening.

First probably told them where to go when they asked. You don't rise to being an all-conquering intermodal behemoth by letting people with a camera and microphone poke around in the dusty corners. They will have a global corporate media/PR strategy that is watertight, and wouldn't have let...

Enjoyed the old chap on the customer service course telling the young manager stuffed to the gills in BS whats what.

Tackley in Oxfordshire has it's only acces from the Village to the Oxford platform across a foot crossing. Was a fatality there a few years ago (07?) where the report concluded the victim confused the train that hit her with the train she wanted to catch (and which would have stopped before the...

Be radical. Scrap returns, or make them a fixed 150% (or whatever) of a single A peak single, an offpeak single and a single category of advance single (to be no more than X percentage of seats). Lets even be kind and let the TOC's decide to set what each band costs, with the proviso...

Or the London Bus model. They can compete for a franchise, but all trains (busses) look the same, have to meet certain service standards and fares are set from above to ensure consistency. Do away with the (insulting in most areas) pretense that there is competion, and do away with the...

It's a captive audience, so they can charge what they like and people will pay. Same as motorway services. Most have long ago paid off the capital cost of their construction, but if people will keep paying then why lower prices? The simple solution is take your own stuff, and avoid the need to...

Eh. There was a thread on staff reciprocal travel where people openly state they travel free on a nod and a wink from other staff when they are not entitled too acccoriding to the rules. That's fare dodging too. Or is that different? Amazes me how high and mighty some staff get.

Taunton has the Minehead bus showing. They had a brief fad of having it on the auto announcement loop last summer for a few days with the full destination (Butlins holiday camp, Minehead). Mercifully they switched that off, but its still on the boards.

Funny how passengers are never allowed that excuse for whan an RPI is breathing down their neck, eh? But obviously, it's fine when a TOC makes a mistake, bless 'em.

It's the adhoc temporary manual "gate" lines that grate with me. FGW have a habit of sending a small army of staff to Digby and Sowton station after Exeter Chiefs games. All they manage to achieve is cause a crush on a narrow public footpath while they figure out how to issue such complicated...

£2.10 is the cost of a school meal in many areas for example. To some people that is not a trivial sum. I see it frequently with some of the kids I teach who have to pay in coppers because that is all the parents can scrape together. Sadly that is getting increasingly common.

As does David Heath, the Minister of state at DEFRA, who is often to be seen on the early train from Frome on a Monday morning.

Where does this 80k come from? He uses a pool car and driver. The car and the salary for the driver would exist whether he used them or not. It may be an internal government accounting trick that deducts 80k from dft and gives it to another department, but the money is still spent by someone-...