and not mentioned but the truncated 13:16 service was a two car Turbo.

 
If you gave an AI access (your login details?) to those databases/websites/whatever, that might come up with something?

 
We pay it abroad without questioning it. Couple of quid a night per adult. Every foreign place I’ve been with it hasn’t charged it to under 18s.

I’ve voted no view either way, it needs to be spent correctly.

Geneva for example it goes to covering free city travel for overnight guests, brilliant use of the funds raised.

 
The earliest use of the word inter-city itself that I can find in newspapers is in 1871. The applies to a cricket match between Glasgow and Edinburgh, which sounds plausible enough. Following that it is used for all manner of sporting events, and as an adjective (e.g. "inter-city player", as with "international").

Before that there are hits in BNA searches, but they are OCR errors for intensity (close), or Interest(ing) or even yesterday!

"Intercity train service" I find first also in Scotland, in 1899, though the subject is a proposed electric train service between Liverpool and Manchester. It was also described as "a scheme of lightning express", which is a bit odd. A news report of 1910 has a mention of "the inter-city train from Dundee". In the 1930s "inter-city railway" comes up, e.g. of "the first inter-city railway".

The USA also adopts the sporting usage, and is earlier to start using "inter-city railroad", from the 1890s. There are also early uses of "inter-city railway" in Ottowa in 1910 - though it's a tramway, and the cities we would think part of a single city. Another such is quoted in Aberdeen in 1907 about electric railways in Indiana and from there. Inter-city also appears in railway company names at this time.

The first named train looks to be the CNR's "Intercity Limited" - this ran initially from from Montreal to Toronto, starting in 1926. It was later extended to start in Washington. There was also an "Intercity Motor Service Limited" running tours in New Zealand in the 1920s.

But using just "Intercity" (hyphen or no) as a brand obviously comes later on. As it's impractical to search on that alone I can't look for earlier dates. (You'd need a more sophisticated search engine than either the BNA or Newspaper,com possesses.)

 
Is Peter Hendy really saying that what passengers should expect from the railway is to do something badly, with obvious faults that are pointed out at the time, and only several years later do it how it should have been done in the first place? It's still a bit of a muddle, thanks to the overlap in name and eligibility with the 16-25 Railcard and only partial acceptance in Scotland.

 
https://www.malmaison.com/locations/reading/

The Malmaison Reading, boasts the distinction of being the world's oldest railway hotel, built back in 1844.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tregenna_Castle

The Great Western Railway (GWR) opened its St Ives branch line on 1 June 1877 and it leased the Tregenna Castle as a hotel the following year, opening it on 5 August 1878. Early railway hotels had only been situated near large terminals or junctions, but this one was the first intended by the GWR as a holiday destination in its own right.

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp3458/british-transport-hotels

British Transport Hotels was the brand name of the hotels and catering business associated with British Rail, from 1962 to 1983. In 1981, the Conservative government decided to privatise the non-core activities of British Rail, this resulted in the British Transport Hotels. being sold off between 1981 and 1983.

 
Dartmouth 

 
From Europe by Rail

 

Hotels do indeed pay for energy and water used, at the "going rate" At present they do not pay the capital costs involved in meeting the increased demand (new reservoirs, and treatment works, new substations and generating plant)

 

Agreed.  I have been trying to quantify hotel rooms / overnight guests in Wiltshire and it's not an easy piece of research!.   

https://www.visitwiltshire.co.uk/dbimgs/Press%20Release%20-%20ACCOMODATION%20REPORT%20HAS%20REVEALED%20SALISBURYS%20POTENTIAL%20FOR%20FUTURE%20INVESTMENT%20AND%20DEVELOPMENT%20-%20FINAL(1).pdf


Out of date, and just one part of the county. A 20 year old study suggests that 10% are business visitors.

6500 bed spaces, 75% occupancy, suggests about 1.5 to 1.7 million taxable overnight stays per annum within 10 miles of Salisbury a decade ago ...

>>> 6500 * .75 * .9 * 365
1601437.5

Let's call that £3 million income, with goodness only knows what proportion of that being spent on the actual collection.

Interesting to note figures of about 1.3 million per annum visiting Stonehenge - goodness only knows what proportion of them are day visitors to the county, what proportion stay locally, and indeed how many are local residents in the council tax catchment anyway.

All these thoughts ignore age issues - and on a recent visit to Stonehenge, I noted a high proportion of school / college groups ...

 
The general idea in France, at least, is specifically to cover some of the extra costs incurred by the local authority - roads and parking, cleaning and rubbish bins, and the like. Otherwise these are paid by the residents, only a few of whom make money off those visitors which could be taxed as an alternative.

That's not all their costs for visitors, and in some places day trippers (who don't pay it) are more important. But that's just a further problem, as yet unsolved. The visitor tax is seen as addressing part of the shortfall, at least.

However, I don't think that is why it's found favour with Andy and his supporters in Andyland (Andymia?). I think its real attraction as something to do at once is that it is (and can only really be) a local tax, paid to local government. And devolution is one of his Big Ideas, perhaps the biggest, and needs a lot of locally raised government revenue.

Since the plan requires local taxes, set and controlled locally, a block grant doesn't have the right look and feel. Shifting existing taxes over (or down) to local level will not be easy, involving undoing current arrangements to remake them, and replacing lost revenu in some cases.

So a new tax is more attractive, even if it is quite small in revenue terms and so makes almost no contribution to the financial autonomy of local governments. The idea's the thing! But I don't think the need or desire to tax visitors because they must have money to be taxed is important here.

 
It was, down to one Oxford - London service per hour which was usually running late and no stopping services all day between Didcot and Oxford.

 
It's widely used abroad, providing it is used to recoup some of the costs associated with discretionary expenditure on leisure stays I'm fine. It must however be reclaimable by business travellers and contractors engaged on construction and maintenance. Additionally virtually all of the take must go to the relevant local authority and not added to central funds and distributed by central government. There are many documented cases of visitors to Cornwall staying in self catering accomodation arriving with their food and not contributing in any way to the area of their holiday. If these are captured it'll be a good thing.

 
Makes sense considering the numbers over 18 in full time education.

 
AFAICS from Open Train Times, the stationary 1J93 18:08 Paddington to Frome has been blocking the DM at Twyford for over 20 minutes with a queue of trains behind it.

EDIT: now moving with 28 minutes delay and with three other trains closely following behind.

 
17:50 Gloucester to Salisbury due 20:06

17:50 Gloucester to Salisbury due 20:06 will be terminated at Swindon.

It will no longer call at Stonehouse, Stroud, Kemble, Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge, Westbury, Dilton Marsh, Warminster and Salisbury.

It is being delayed at Gloucester.
This is due to a broken down train.

 
Looks like quite a mess this evening.

 

Update "Disruption is expected until the end of the day"

 
I probably have too much time on my hands, but came across this combination of words for the steam railway ticket office in Kingswear Dartmouth (of course) - vocal.stooping.paramedic

Anyone else found some standout ones?

 
We allowed half an hour to change in Frankfurt - but I don't think our connection will have been held.

 
I have posted further comment - as both a hotel user and a past hotel operator - at https://grahamellis.uk/blog2041.html

 

Hotels already pay for the water and energy they use.  Roads, car parks, public transport more arguable.

 
I would support this tax, provided that it is confined to limited areas that are very popular with visitors and therefore prone to overcrowding.
Hotels use a lot of water and energy and should contribute to the capital costs of providing this.
Similar arguments apply to roads, car parks, and public transport.

 
Alterations to services between Reading and London Paddington

Due to a points failure between Reading and London Paddington fewer trains are able to run.
Train services running to and from these stations may be delayed or revised. Disruption is expected until 16:15 04/08.

Customer Advice
Owing to a problem with a section of track near London Paddington, fewer trains are able to operate between London Paddington and Reading.

 
Thanks for the info on the service revival's early years. I seem to recall two weekday services of an evening that allowed a quick circular trip via Melksham from Bath for anyone needing a fix of train travel after work - with enough time to leap off at Melksham for a bite to eat before heading back for the second train. Thinking back to the early 2000s it would be pretty good, today, to have some of the train services that Bath had then** but it's really good that Melksham now has a somewhat more rounded timetable than it did at that time.

Mark

** Full disclosure: heading for the line to Buxton in the nineties we suddenly realised that there was a weekday loco-and-carriages service from Reading to Manchester that, on the way, at 8:30 in the morning, called at Oldfield Park, fitting our ideal travel itinerary like a glove.

 
Tuesday 4th August


RTT shows 1G01 0632 Swindon to Worcester Shrub Hill as being cancelled "due to the planned train being replaced with a slower train (MS)."

 
It's not as if our politicos don't already have their hands deep enough into our pockets and then find ways to waste what they've extracted

 
Great video ...the moment at the end 26 mins in or thereabouts made me think of Dr McCoy's ' It's life Jim, but not as we know it !', Absolutely fascinating from start to finish.

 
That's a definite 'No' from me. I wouldn't object quite so much if the government wasn't wasting lots of our money elsewhere.

 

A regressive tax is structured so that individuals with lower incomes pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes compared to higher-income individuals, even if the absolute amount paid is the same. It does not consider the person's ability to pay.

This tax is a textbook example of a regressive tax.