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Touché. Though given the small cost of a national railcard as a proportion of expenditure on the railway, I'd rather it were absorbed into ongoing savings and efficiencies of the railway budget or overall transport budget. £300m is the sort of cost that can be absorbed without having a major...

It doesn't, but we have (and had in the 1960's) the ability to decide our transport policy.

We have backlogs of maintenance and renewals. As a taxpayer and farepayer I'd rather pay a little bit more tax for a rail service that is more accessible to people in terms of fares. " Every little helps" works for passengers budgets as well. 1787930197 Is anyone suggesting being able to...

We're not beholden to foreign countries experiences. There were many initiatives to rationalise secondary routes later on in the 1960's/70's - East Suffolk, Marshlink etc. That these weren't tried earlier was a political choice. Remember, Dr Beeching was a more hawkish member of the...

One would expect those organs to find a negative spin on any pro-public transport initiative. 1787929244 Let's see. They haven't stopped yet. In terms of the network "falling apart" as has been mentioned elsewhere, the likely cost of a national railcard would be orders of magnitude less than...

But you'd get a bonus with a national railcard by being able to get a discount outside of the South East area.

Absolute nonsense. A read of Beeching's own re-shaping report shows that routes such as York - Beverley could have been made to cover their costs through rationalisation. That this wasn't considered was entirely a political choice by Beeching/Marples/Fraser etc.

Yes, the EMT/R HST's always seemed to have a perfectly pleasant ambience in terms of lighting, whereas I do remember the GW ones being a bit bright. Loveliest of all is of course tungsten !

The closure programme in the 1960's was, and continues to be a national bane. Up until the late 1960's there was no attempt to make economies. The only recognised justification for objecting to a closure in law was the rather woolly concept of "hardship" which could be overturned by the...

It's spoiling the railway fares ship for a ha'porth of tar. 1787925692 Their electorates might appreciate the public service, as might ours, given the opportunity. Of course, a national railcard would be far less ambitious than these.

@Bald Rick estimated the cost of a national railcard to be around £300m a year (including long distance), and given his position in the industry, I suspect his estimation is as good as you'll get. That's less than half of the 7% reduction in annual subsidy beetween the last two years from the...

Some sort of dim mode, that's light enough to see everything but gentle enough to have a snooze would be preferable

The concrete cable conduit ?

I think with the DMU shortage, someone needs to life extend existing units around the network. There have been a lot of new built trains in the last ten years, but too much scrappage, hence why we always have a shortage (the Skegness line thread is another illustration of this).

Ah, thanks for the confirmation.

True, they're the mainstay there. I was getting mixed up with the Cardiff ones, however they're TFW of course !

Is this the one reusing the old Brunel train shed ?

150's aren't everyone's favourite units, however if the GW ones were sent up here, they could all be reformed into 3 carriage sets more suited to modern needs. Also worth noting that the GW 150's have less tired interiors and many have 2+2 seating which is better suited to modern needs. So...

But now they'll be able to put their coffee down on a train to Brighton - which is a good step forward.

Of course, there are always passengers to "sell" the service to. However the passenger railway isn't and shouldn't be solely commercially focused. I don't think we'll get to European cost train travel through things such as Bahn Cards or climate tickets, but as a society we shouldn't be closed...