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If you went just a little beyond Westbury it would be possible to electrically haul the stone traffic up to Acton. I wonder what difference that would make to the case.

I used to live in Maidenhead. Trains to London 4 times an hour but buses only once or twice an hour. Not ideal but at least, with a bit of planning, you could connect from one to the other. Then there was the branch line terminus in Demark. The train arrived along with several buses...

Purely on the subject of schools I put 2 sons through Reading Blue Coat at Sonning whilst living in Maidenhead. One went to Oxford and the other Nottingham; one followed on to do a masters and then PhD at Bath. Both have good jobs and I put that down to (a) the parents! (b) the school which...

Don't rule out the line out of Paddington. Yes, Slough has an image problem but parts of Burnham towards Burnham Beeches are very nice, Maidenhead riverside is also worth looking at. There are several places between the Paddington line and the Waterloo which would be worth looking at. The...

Trying to work out what causes a specific IT failure can be a real problem. I used to work with IT systems ranging, over the years, from Z80 based systems in the early 80s through to mainframes when I retired. When testing a system once I found a problem and the programmer said "I wondered...

I've been on the new(ish) "cruise line" double deck superdomes on the Alaska Railroad and, at the other end of the spectrum, the heavily modified (1950s?) carriages used on the Tranz Scenic from Christchurch to Greymouth in New Zealand. They both have open areas so that you can get pictures...

The clientelle at Castle Cary is much more diverse than at Charlbury. I've no doubt there are some daily commuters and there are definitely some regulars who go to places like Reading and London for part of the week (it's usual to see multiple cars in the car park after the last train)...

Paddington/Plymouth runs once a month. It also does a run from OOC via Reading, Basingstoke, Salisbury, Honiton to Exeter. The return from Exeter seems to vary a bit but generally comes back as far as Yeovil then to Castle Cary and Westbury (reverse) back through Castle Cary to Weymouth...

Surely it's not the train but the station pair. As an example trains coming out of Bristol in the late afternoon will be full and standing to Bradford on Avon and then empty out the nearer the train gets to Weymouth.

South Kenton (or the footbridge a little north) on the WCML. Stratford. Both spring to mind immediately.

This is pure fantasy; I suspect it would lose the national debt quite quickly! I fancy a small "WessexRail". But before I committed myself I'd want some changes to the track on the routes I have in mind plus electrification. So Weymouth/Bristol, Tauton/Reading, Salisbury/Swindon would be...

If you really want it here's the blog link http://letterstofgw.blogspot.co.uk/

Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted did try and produce some kind of integrated marketing at one point but it never got beyond an attempt at common branding. There is an EU "initiative" at the moment to try and make the purchase of rail tickets as "easy" as air right the way across Europe...

Some time around the end of the 60s/early 70s I made my first trip to New York with my parents. We boarded a bus and the driver welcomed us. We just sat down but then we noticed everyone else was sitting as far back as they could. Other people got on, were welcomed and headed to the back...

The discussion so far has not mentioned the issue of stock. IF (and it's a big IF) a new set of trains is required for the Caledonian service it raises the question of whether it makes sense to retain Mk3s for Cornwall. As you say, it also raises the question of whether to build MU stock...

The BBC has an item on the "wish list" issued by the Scottish Government for the Caledonian services http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-23733201. It includes showers on board. I suppose the existing stock might be modifiable and there have been some suggestions that we...

The paths can be found on http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced but the problem is knowing which will be used on a given day. Some only get added to the schedule a couple of hours before use so you need to keep searching. You'll also find that they can be a real pain when it comes...

There are now radar based devices being used to monitor level crossings as well as/instead of CCTV. The issue of radar giving false positives has already resulted in some elements of the systems having to be switched off. In particular there is a LIDAR element which scans for crossing...

I think you're referring to the reader pad (usually yellow, occasionally pink) that you see around the London Underground network. Most obviously they are seen on the entry/exit gates but they also appear stand-alone and attached to Ticket Vending machines. If so, they are Near Field...

Southampton can get into London by changing at Basingstoke and Reading. Go further out from Southampton to Weymouth and you can use FGW up to Castle Cary (2 obvious routes from there via Pewsey or Thingley Junc (on the odd occasion diversions work that route) and 1 that was used during the...