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While out walking today I passed Yorton station and noted that the northbound platform is temporarily closed, which made me wonder what is being done to assist passengers during the closure period. By way of background, Yorton is a lightly used station in Shropshire, sufficiently so that all...

The local social media in the Shrewsbury today is awash with stories about there being no TfW trains to Birmingham. This is misleading people into believing that trains aren't running when in fact most or all are, so far as I can see from RTT, albeit with non TfW rolling stock. My question is...

A few days ago I travelled from Oxford to Southampton. At Winchester, two RP officers entered our carriage and began inspecting tickets, one from each end. We were only going slowly to S. Airport Parkway, but by Eastleigh they had only checked about six rows in total, of our half full carriage...

When I worked on the South Coast I used to travel frequently from the Midlands, but I could never understand why there were no through trains from Reading. Portsmouth has a population of 250,000 and is only 66 miles from Reading, yet to this day there are still no through trains. Is there any...

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but here goes. A trip from Euston to Crewe last week brought to mind the incredible inconsistencies of ticket inspections on trains that I've seen many times in the past. No-one expects every staff member or TOC to operate in an identical...

Credit to Network Rail where its due, it seems the line was indeed re-opened in time for the first of the four Caledonian Sleepers to pass through, ie the Glasgow/Edinburgh southbound shortly before 2.00am, followed by the northbound Aberdeen/inverness/Fort William soon after. But what about...

These days I don’t travel as much as I’d like to by train, but I have just had a return trip from London to Inverness on the Caledonian Sleeper (with two excellent full days of seeing the mountains of Northwest Scotland in between – once the clouds parted!). Our short holiday started in...

Just thinking about train punctuality and looked at my local station of Shrewsbury at 21.00 hours this evening out of interest. The NRE website shows the 20.53 to Manchester (from Cardiff) as running 16 minutes late, with the reason given as “This train has been delayed by this train being late...

A friend tells me he was travelling from Bridgend to Church Stretton on Saturday 10th August, and despite being 80 years old he had to stand all the way for this long journey. When he arrived in Church Stretton he left the packed train (the 11.38 arrival), but there were a good many more people...

Almost 20 years ago, in 2005, consideration was being given to high speed rail developments in the UK and in China. In both countries one of the proposals was Maglev, the Chinese were pleased with the success of their 430kph link from Shanghai to Pudong airport and gave much consideration to...

From 12 September trains will be replaced by coaches from Machynlleth to Pwllheli. Looking at the timetable there is clearly an attempt to provide a fast and a slow service as far as Harlech, with the fast service stopping only at Tywyn and Barmouth, and the slow service leaving at the same time...

Late last year I started a thread suggesting that it would be worth increasing line speeds between Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton. Other routes out of Shrewsbury serve Chester and North Wales, ie nowhere with any population over 100,000; Aberystwyth and Pwllheli with even smaller populations; then...

I've just discovered the Capacity Checker tool on the TfW route so I thought I'd try the next few days from Shrewsbury to Cardiff, bit it's very off-putting. I looked at a weekday 13.40 departure, thinking it ought to be as uncrowded as any daytime service, but it shows "few or no seats"...

It’s now six months since the Eastern Leg of HS2 was officially scrapped. When Shapps made the announcement he promised an alternative, with £96bn of spending on a scheme that would “improve services in the Midlands and northern England ten years sooner”. Does anyone know how this alternative...

mods note - split from here. Hmm, just when I was despairing about the state of UK politics, I've just listened to GMTV news this morning. In the USA, Biden's sister is saying Biden will be running for re-election in 2024. At his age! Then she says Meghan Markle would be a welcome addition to...

Please excuse this thought process from a non rail person, but comments would be appreciated. As I understand it, the reason for rail closures south of Milton Keynes during the weekend of the FA Cup semi finals in mid April is mainly for work at Euston. If so, then just how hard would it be to...

Out of interest I looked up the High Speed Rail mileages for Western European countries, with a criterion for high speed of 300kph. There are five large countries in Western Europe, namely France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the UK, the next largest after these is less than half the size of any...

I see that the previous HS2-HS1 thread has been closed, but that was about trains running between HS2 and HS1. I've always believed that this rail link had more merit than it was given credit for, and that judgement of it was based too heavily on the light loadings of the HSTs that ran from...

The days of exceeding speed limits on the railways seem to be long gone now, but some of my best memories of diesel (and electric) haulage was logging speeds. The goal was always to exceed the rated maximum speed of the loco, and also to set minimum times between stations, either stop to stop or...

A recent thread in this forum reminded me of just how good the Wrexham and Shropshire service was. The staff were always friendly and helpful, including going the extra mile when there were problems. My wife and I had a 48 hour rail journey back from northern Italy in 2010 thanks to the Iceland...