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One might have been the second driver, and might there have been a traveling fitter too who would have helped?

https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/traffic-and-travel/hundreds-evacuated-petersfield-train-over-suspected-fire-1371230

I suspect what you saw is that they don't do specific seat reservations anywhere on the network - but they still have advances with "counted places" for many journeys.

No trains terminating, but Southampton Airport Parkway has just one train starting there every day, as far as I know (the new morning 442 service to Waterloo).

Rather wonderful coincidence of a route code!

TfL briefly owned the Class 345s (or at least whichever ones had been delivered at the time), before selling them off and leasing them back to raise money for the new tube trains.

Does anyone know if any significant signalling works are needed to use ABDO, or is it just a case of putting some passive balises (like the selective door opening ones) to trigger it down overnight with no link to the signalling?

Also saw a comment where someone was confused about the letter system for coaches; although last time I used the 442s the guards were pretty good at explaining it in announcements.

The cynic in me says they wouldn't want to because they'd rather keep the relatively good brand image of Virgin (many people still see it as Virgin CrossCountry...)

As someone else with dyspraxia, I imagine the "visual stress" is problems with controlling the eye muscles making tracking/convergence harder; combined with general visual perceptive issues it can make seeing small things correctly at a glance (eg when leaving in a rush) harder. Dyspraxia does...

Not sure what the exact level was, but I noticed that during the flooding around Sway on the SWML the other night, CrossCountry Voyagers were able to keep running at a reduced speed, it was only the SWR 3rd rail stock that couldn't run.

To be fair, it has been very wet here the last few days and some of the soil round here is pretty poorly draining - hence the rather special New Forest bogs etc

At least on the long distance services Clapham Junction is "pick up only" in the timetable so this is very much official (I'm not sure if it is the same of Chiltern or not).

"Broken rail" across 3 TDs around Sway tonight

Suspect might just mean someone hasn't overriden the timetable yet, but I notice that advance tickets are available on a 442 service (1848 from Waterloo) from 6th January onwards.

Nope, regardless of any ongoing 442 issues, the strike means that the 444s are more than sufficient stock wise (and contingency guards aren't trained on the 442s). There have been fairly '5Q' regular test runs though, so pure speculation but they might return to passenger service shortly after...

Although it further increases the cost and complexity of adding 3rd rail power whilst reducing the benefit (some diesel still used). Given that 3rd rail is a fairly small part of XC's mileage anyway I suspect they may not bother - unless perhaps they only fit a percentage of their fleet with it.

Whilst fitting shoes does seem sensible particularly as attitudes towards diesel trains in electrified areas change; I do wonder whether the power supply would actually cope with them in addition to the current service which seems to be about the limit.

I have seen guards do this for railcard discounts (I think their own initiative rather than policy) on the train in the past, it does make sense.

Recently there have been diversions at the weekend via Guildford and Fareham too, presumably due to works around Basingstoke and Winchester.