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No doubt that is the source of the urban myth.

Absolutely, but that’s outside the (immediate) control of any one individual and takes a bit longer to achieve. And, tbh, is going to be very hard to achieve while people are only thinking of their own short term comfort.

Not to mention the degree of route knowledge required here. And, to be fair to TPE, they were having to cope with COVID at the same time (both the restrictions and the effects on passenger demand).

How about “there is such a thing as society - and what’s more, it comes first”.

Is the story about the 4-SUB that ventured beyond the lower-voltage inner suburban lines (? Further out than Woking) only to have every bulb blow when it hit the first truly 750V section true - or an urban myth?

Surprisingly enough, I would imagine that GWR would quite like it if: 1) they hadn’t bee forced to ditch the HSTs 2) they hadn’t been forced to ditch the 769s 3) the 175s hadn’t been left to moulder for so long 4) the 175s actually worked. The only one of those that they have any influence...

And, to be somewhat nit-picking, the number of people affected by a two-hour gap at Barnstaple who have either just seen, or are going to see, a line-up of 175s at Laira is pretty small. (As a proportion of those affected, Newquay probably slightly larger)

Not sure I’d use the word “best”. “Most vociferous”, certainly.

In a busy shop it’s not easy (nor necessarily desirable) to go through a bag of donations “out front”, and the donor can’t be made to hang around. 1791979596 Having a reputation for being “good for a bargain” is also likely to increase footfall and thus (potentially) overall sales.

There would have been no explanation to an individual. Notices on (eg) lifts would just say “Remont” (repairs). More generic issues would be blamed on “reactionary enemies of the state / proletariat” (particularly if it gave the opportunity for a story about the heroic way the sabotage was...

Am I imagining it, but wasn’t there even one in Paris?

The idea that you can spread demand enough to counter overcrowding by advance pricing just doesn’t cut it while XC trains are the prime mover for so many short and medium distance flows.

Could this be a sign that they have been tipped the wink about a policy announcement?

They are surely there to make the wires themselves more visible and thus prevent birds flying into them - swans being among the few bird species big enough cause damage by doing so. The fact that they make it less likely that they mistake the trackbed underneath for a nice bit of uninterrupted...

They returned to service as 155s though, long before the single car conversion.

Though the reliability point has to be considered in the context of the maintenance run-down that usually preceded the changeover (itself frequently delayed). Yes - in general reliability would have improved, but the improvement wouldn’t have been as great as it actually appeared.

Replacement of North London 313s by 378s - although that was in tandem with other developments and followed a period of (deliberate?) neglect.

The problem, when swans mistake land for water, usually after rain, is that they can’t take off again. They can only take off from water. A swan is large and heavy enough to do quite a lot of damage to a train.

Either we were on the same train or the fault went unfixed for quite a while!

The burglar is the offender - but your insurance company might have something to say about fault in terms of the loss sustained!