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I still think a massive trick is being missed not putting a chord to the camp Hill lines just outside the throat of Curzon Street. It would allow trains from Manchester / the NE / Scotland to reverse in Curzon Street and continue towards Bristol. It doesn't look impossible in engineering terms...

Wow! I saw rumours they were chartering Blue Star 1 - I assumed it was for an extra Dublin - Cherbourg ship or similar. This does seem a bit crazy - I understand most hauliers have standing accounts with DFDS, Eurotunnel and P&O, so they can just drive to Kent and take the most efficient route...

I think Leeds benefits from a single station. All of the other places you mention have awkward connections because of their multiple stations - if all the lines came in to a single site then things would be a lot simpler and more convenient. Practically all of the current Manchester issues...

Given it is a very short summary, and they have not yet had time to do their painstaking verification of the facts, I think it has sufficient clarity. 'Approaching the station' does clearly imply very close to the station and at a moment relevant to the investigation. No doubt the exact detail...

The heritage rail sector really does need to up its game. Incidents like this, the toilet on the South Devon Railway, and the signalling incident on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch will surely make the authorities start to look very closely at their operations and how competent they are to...

It does at least mean that if and when the government ever actually starts putting policies in place to provide this, it is a lot easier to achieve and minimal infrastructural work is needed. I agree with you completely that proper integrated transport is needed, but getting bus / train / bike...

Canvey Island has also been mentioned, and would also not count as being in the Island of Great Britain

Not by rails, but by railway (until Sealink privatisation) steamers and through timetables / ticketing they have been connected to the national network throughout

Although Dunoon has never had a station, it was (and is) well served by the railways - North British, Caledonian and Glasgow & South Western all operated steamers connecting the town to their respective stations and trains, and I'm pretty sure that through tickets, and most certainly through...

I would agree completely. This is exactly the sort of service that HS2 is freeing up space for around Birmingham and Manchester. I could see the logic in the current Avanti and XC fasts and the Northern slows being replaced by a 4tph semi fast service, giving a regular interval efficient service...

That is certainly true, but the DfT can probably afford a couple more big losses before they start to lose ROSCOs

The IET is a very different contract though. The 22x ROSCOs have set a fixed price as far as I understand it for the duration of the existing contract. They wouldn't be able to just whack up their lease charges just because they got their internal maths wrong!

I don't know, but it is not necessarily relevant. The ROSCO will be doing the depreciating and would have made the original business case. If the DfT / TOC decide not to continue using them, the ROSCO may record a big loss on their books if they had assumed the trains would be leased beyond...

If we were back in the traditional franchising era, I could easily have seen voyagers being replaced in the next XC franchise. Many people forget that for the TOCs, the trains themselves are an Opex, not a Capex cost, as they are leased, and I can't imagine that they are the cheapest trains to...

They also facilitate airline-type seating arrangements, popular with passengers who don't want to be fighting for leg space with strangers! I always choose an airline seat.

Well yes, I grant you that. But if the crayons were replaced by more moderately sized ones, that didn't try to solve an entire continent's issues in one go, then it just might be the sort of idea where there is a chance that the crayons get replaced by concrete one day, either there or elsewhere.

That's an interesting looking project. Pretty outlandish as you say, but a megaproject like this is an interesting concept for making the country zero carbon, as it would make renewables far more useful. A few tens of billions, and 40sq km of land doesn't seem a completely ridiculous price for...

Simple solution to avoid putting up overhead electrification - mount a wind turbine on top of a train. Mount it on the front of the first carriage, folding backwards onto the roof of the train - with a 12 carriage train you could easily manage a 200m diameter 2-blade turbine. Simply fold it...

At the pleading of the ferry operators - the previous station was horrendous for vehicle debark - the barriers were down so long that traffic backed up all the way onto the ships.

Sounds about right. Routes between 4 and 8 hours are a pain - too long to be a useful shuttle, awkward to schedule, expensive to crew (as you probably still need to double man many officer positions as the rest period at sea isn't long enough), but the day crossings are long enough to be boring...