An update, from the BBC:

 

Ah ... that is NOT the message I would have guessed.  Taking a look as I get a chance.  Maybe overnight but as I missed it and it's waited a while anyway, another 20 hours won't be an issue.

 

It is reported in the Bristol Post


and in the Swansea Bay News on the Lumo proposals:


Could it be that First's team at GWR also see an issue with more though services to England from west of Cardiff reducing income for First's team at Lumo ... on beyond 2026 ...

 

 

That's what I thought too - odd for a zombie franchise to be rocking the boat in this way, unless as you say it's at the bidding of another organisation (..........and if senior people at GWR are hoping for a nice, taxpayer funded job going forwards with GBR, they are probably quite biddable to the right people just now!)

 

Hi Grahame
Please see below, as requested

 
Given that GWR will be back in public ownership later this year, it seems odd that they protested, other than under the instruction of someone senior at the DfT or GBR who didn't want to be seen directly interfering. So perhaps there's some kind of English/Welsh railway turf war going on?

Of course the Welsh could have sweetened the deal/mixed up things by offering to rebuild and return services to Pilning station and contribute to electrification of the Filton Bank. Hard to object to that.

For their part, GWR could quietly whisper in the ears of AM's how direct trains will make it more convenient for those in West Wales to fly from Bristol instead of Cardiff. That might provoke a few reactions.

 
Problems caused by leaf fall are starting early this year. 

 
Uber One comes bundled with Monzo apparently, if anyone uses them. And I've been told the one month free trial period is 3 months if you pay by Barclaycard.

 

In whose view? Yes to the DfT, not necessarily for the open access operator. There have been many requests whose obviously main reason was to extract from the franchisee.


Never a problem when they're both the same operator. GWR in this case, where all farebox goes back to the Treasury. Doesn't matter which farebox.

 

Never seen a 4 carriage train on this service before yesterday, previous max was 3.



Edit note: Quote marks fixed. CfN.

 
Same today - perhaps the 2 are related?

 
Tree blocking line near Netley this morning

 
There have been a number of traffic (or, rather cpu) spikes in the past few days which have left the Coffee Shop unreachable for a few minutes. I think I have identified the issue (actually in my Well House Consultants site which shares the server and applied a fix ... but only time will tell.

 

Oops - I missed picking that request up.  Please send me an image of the page you get - I THINK I know what the issue might be, but want to check that I address the right question.

 

Sounds about right as to what happens.  But the theory is a crude one to be always applied.

First thought - open access license applications are supposed not to be primarily abstractive.  In other words to develop new markets.   And those new markets in many cases can help the older markets too.  Not Open Access, but the re-instated services from Oxford to Swindon and the west will abstract traffic from Oxford to Didcot locals and from trains heading west that call at Didcot.   But then many more people should make the journey from Oxford to Swindon and beyond, attracted by the new service - perhaps to the extent that many more people that before (rather than less) will do the "Didcot Dance" rather that waiting for the direct train which this year is only every 120 minutes.

I haven't data to say which way that balance goes in the case of Bristol to west of Cardiff, nor on the Oxford to Swindon example ... but I can tell you with some certainty that an extra service (whoever and however it's run) combed in with an every-2-hours Swindon to Westbury service run by GWR or GBR would (under the right conditions) increase the passenger numbers on the GWR/GBR service.     That may sound perverse, but analysis suggests that annual passenger journeys at Melksham (for example) would rise from around 70,000 to around 300,000 - in other words, twice the number of trains and each would be twice as busy..  I do need to qualify that; the service would truely need to be hourly (not two trains following each other closely then a long gap for the rest of the two hours), and the ticket system would need to be such that passengers could routinely get on the next train no matter who was running it (integrated fares).

 
Will have to try that.   I currently have Uber One to save on my weekly plaice and chips!

 
However... I've just discovered that if you join Uber One, you get 10% of your ticket cost back in Uber credits (plus a few other benefits). Uber One is £4.99pm after the first free month.

So even with my relatively low usage of 3 trips per week at £10.25 each I make it a saving of about £12pm, £7 more than the subscription.

Anyone tried this? I'm giving it a go...

 
The Department for Transport has always instructed franchised train operators to object to new services, or service extensions, by non-franchised operators - because they (in theory) reduce the amount of money flowing back to DfT. Remember way way back when Virgin's objections, at the behest of DfT, stopped Wrexham & Shropshire calling at Birmingham New Street.

What's different here is that the other operator is the Welsh Government, in the form of Transport for Wales. But it's the same principle there's always been.

 

The next year his "Railophone" company was demonstrating (on the same line) using his radio link to control trains - CBTC, no less!

 
This thread, plus thoughts of the long wave transmission from Droitwich finishing at the the end of this month, combined to remind me of some pioneering experiments with telephone communication from a train - this was in 1911 and involved the Stratford on Avon and Midland Junction Railway no less.

Mark


https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/im-train-wireless-messages-trains-1911-12