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One has to wonder whether there's a perverse incentive to leave some of these 'obvious' fare evasion options open as a 'honeypot'. If most of the people being caught doing this are serial fare evaders, or regularly use invalid/expired railcards, catching them 'bang to rights' performing an...

The Great Cockcrow Railway in Chertsey is a 7.25" gauge miniature line, but is fully signalled to 'main line' standards and has 3 fully-equipped signal boxes, along with a 'gate box'. Two use miniature lever frames while the third uses an ex Waterloo & City 'knee frame' At least one of the...

Had one the other day at Marylebone, where an inbound 2 car from depot was followed into the same platform by a 4 car from Birmingham. Those 'in the know' knew that the two units would be coupled together to form a 6 car back out to Birmingham, and boarded the ex-Birmingham unit as soon as...

Oh, it's entirely possible: Permanently declassify the First Class in the Mk5s, and you've got another Standard class coach (albeit with fewer seats until you can re-seat it to match Standard). Financially acceptable to the DfT, that's another matter...

I received the following e-mail from Chiltern Railways earlier today: The link to the survey is https://www.research.net/r/WMFXFWV (I've removed the referrer parameters so anyone else can fill it in if they want). It looks like Chiltern are planning to introduce seat reservations, presumably...

Bentley (Hants) certainly used to be 4 coaches opening only, despite having regular 12 car class 450 services calling, so 2/3 of the doors remained shut. On Class 444 workings (up to 10 coaches), it was local door only, so 19/20 of the doors remained closed. I think the SDO on these may have...

VT have hired 37418 in the past, as well as Class 20s, so I suspect they may do the same if their existing diesel fleet isn't enough to cover their needs.

Public service never actually happened. It was cancelled at the last minute supposedly due to issues with the unit.

Was there perhaps an issue with the lift to the Plat 1/2 island and a mobility impaired passenger that needed to board/alight these trains? Or some other short-term work going on on 1/2 that means that using 3/4 for northbound trains was preferable?

Abolishing peak fares would deal with a lot of fare anomalies, issues around differing restriction codes, 'cliff edge' trains etc I'd also remove any time restrictions on railcards. Finally, 'proper' single leg pricing (half the price of current return fares) so that people don't feel ripped...

Tornado has most recently been operated by Vintage Trains, and is planned to be again on 26th September: https://vintagetrains.co.uk/the-great-northern/

I tend to present all tickets that are relevant to the train I'm on, but not those only valid on subsequent trains. In cases where I'm travelling with someone who has booked assistance, I want to make sure the guard knows exactly where we're planning to get off. Chiltern guards are often quite...

The forum site (and TrainSplit) will allow you to do this, just uncheck Just click on 'Set Options' and uncheck 'Use same options for return' and you can specify different Via points etc for each direction.

I use both sites and it's very much 'horses for courses'. This site tends to be good for modern railway discussion (fares, policy, NR infrastructure etc), while NatPres is better for info about heritage railways, steam tours, individual steam locos etc. There's definitely room in this town for...

I don't think there's any kind of ban on it these days, though, I suspect more thorough risk assessment is required: The Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland often run footplate rides up and down the platform at Porthmadog/Caernarfon during holiday weekends, without any issues, quite often with kids...

Despite many trips on the Cambrian over the last 20 years, I can't say I've ever encountered the split happening this way round, so it's not surprising that the information systems weren't able to handle it. Can the PIS on a 158 even handle multiple destinations anyway? I'm sure it normally...

Very common for the Anytime Return from [Commuter Station] -> London to be considerably more expensive than the London -> [Commuter Station], despite both having no time restrictions. This is because the commuter flow is very much in one direction and trains are almost empty the other. Some...

There's at least one at Porthmadog (NR) on the path leading from the eastbound platform to the road. Visible in this stock photo here, to the left of the barrier...

I've left a railtour on the return journey at my home station, it wasn't an advertised stop but a long enough planned patching stop that passengers were allowed to alight and take photos. Saved me spending 2 hours going to Birmingham and back Plenty of passengers from Gerrards Cross took...

At one point you could pretty much guarantee that a large percentage of Cambrian 'direct trains' to/from Birmingham would actually involve a set swap at Shrewsbury, depending on how many ERTMS-fitted 158s were actually working and in the right place. Don't know how common it is now that more...