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Central has now overtaken St Davids as the busiest station in Devon and Cornwall - no mean feat considering it doesn't have any 'Intercity' services and its custom is heavily centred on local over long distance services. If additional double track is installed to the east allowing the hourly...

I travelled from Bristol to Weymouth and back yesterday. The journey down on the 0904 was thoroughly unpleasant - RTT initially indicated the service was worked by a 165 and 166, but it was a single 166. It was hot and sticky to begin with and got worse as the temperature rose, particularly when...

I believe XC's official policy is that seat reservations are valid even if the screen displays aren't working. Needless to say, on many trains the TM would have no chance of getting through the train to enforce it even if they wanted to, so it can be rather reliant on goodwill from the seat...

Going back to the original question, as a user on a monthly basis, I don't think it's a single cause - more a mixture of: - The age of the 159s - they've been great workhorses for the line and very well maintained at Salisbury for most of that time (SWR's changes at the franchise handover in...

Don't think it's been mentioned but Weston super Mare's ground is visible from the Weston avoiding line. This means that you can't see it on trains stopping at Weston super Mare (as they use the loop), but you can on trains which don't. It's quite hard to spot as unusually it has a large...

After 23 years of inadequate capacity, XC finally gets longer trains. It's just that 44% / 50 /56% of the train is carried around as a deadweight for a significant number of journeys. Fuel consumption significantly increased, number of usable platforms reduced, passenger dissatisfaction also...

As @Bald Rick has pointed out on this and other threads, what is technically possible is the sole operational concern. However, political and economic factors certainly play a part in creating the differences that are seen today. There are lots of factors affecting linespeed on long flat...

XC's problem is basically politics. Any 'London to...' operator' will have MPs pushing for plenty of capacity on the basis plenty of them and their staff will use it. Any 'local' operator can get local politicians championing more capacity. TPE may cover a wide area, but being northern, centred...

Bristol - Worcester - Birmingham is quite cheap if splitting tickets - even more so than the split at Cheltenham. Bristol - Stafford - Tamworth - Derby? Pretty sure it wouldn't be a permitted route, but with split tickets it could be done.

Avon only existed for 25 years. I don't think anyone misses it. This definition would mean that Yate is in the South West, but Lyme Regis, around 70 miles further south-west, is in the South East. I grew up in West Dorset and certainly no-one there would regard themselves as South-East - it was...

I travelled on the 1154 east out of Fareham as far as West Worthing on Sunday, and then the 1651 out of Barnham back to Fareham. Both trains were busy but there were both plenty of standees and plenty of seats. The bigger issue was the number of people with large luggage who decided to sit in...

A fair point about Looe - my memory was clearly playing tricks on me. Once Newquay goes hourly and it's established if there is a demand for direct trains from there to / from St Austell and Truro (I suspect Falmouth is too long and indirect), Newquay may also change to a route where holding...

'Good customer service' is usually taken to mean whatever personally benefits the person referring to it. As has been said many times elsewhere, holding a train for connections is not good customer service if it means the delay to the connecting service causes other people later on to miss their...

Not going to win, but I climbed up White Horse Hill in Oxfordshire on Saturday and you could clearly see trains going past on the Swindon - London route. I'd estimate that's about 2.5 - 3 miles away. It was far enough away that they didn't look like they were going particularly fast even though...

IIRC there was a proposal around 2003 for Exeter - Waterloo to be transferred into the Wessex franchise so that Wessex had a route into London giving it more prestige (ignoring the long stretches of single track). However it was then decided that it was preferable to have a single operator out...

I don't think there have been any significant third rail electrifications since around 1990 when Southampton - Portsmouth and Eastleigh - Fareham were electrified. The Office of Rail Regulation is not a fan and it would seem any new projects need to show rather stringent safety measures which...

The current proposal for replacement of the 159s on the West of England is discontinuous 3rd rail electrification and then fitting class 450s with batteries. I understand the 450s would be refurbished - I don't think anyone is suggesting 2+3 commuter seating is ideal when a sizeable proportion...

Whilst electrifying the major stations has obvious benefits, it would also take rather longer and be more complex than electrifying the sections in the countryside. It would also realistically require multiple total shutdowns of those stations for prolonged periods of time to put the wires up...

I was travelling back to Bristol from Stockport today via the Marches. As the 1040 was cancelled due to yesterday's fire but was shown as starting at 1110 at Crewe, I got the 1019 Northern service to Crewe arriving 10:58. The 1110 was a 2 coach 197 sitting in platform 8 with the doors locked...

This might actually benefit the Far North line - there might be a military benefit in bringing materiel that far north which can't be shot out of the sky and which is kept off the roads. It might depend in part on whether such a war is fought in any conventional way, or entirely by people...