It's instructive to take a Streetview ramble around the station at Dinting. Are those 1954-era headspans from 1500 volt days?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/zsEeJEdnxxLUwUPg6

 
That short well-used electrified section from Southport, part of the line to Preston. Very careless admin to close that just because BR were pulling the plug on the rest of the line. Crossens: I should think they *were*.

 
Not much chance of the above policies finding wide support !
Today HMG have announced an INCREASE in natural gas production from the north sea.
Climate emergency, now?? very last year.

 

I have just moved another thread on this into "News and Assistance" and merged them.  So now answers for you "upthread' - thanks for asking / bringing it to attention - best twice than not at all.    I am taking a look at other sites on both servers too.

 
This topic has been moved to News, Help and Assistance.

https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=32649.0

 
Not sure if it's wise to muck about while this security thread/threat develops, but I have grabbed an extra copy of the Coffee Shop databases to my laptop in - oops giving the game away - Pravia.  And I have told the worker server that if it gets any requests from other that the receptionist, it's to turn them away - so the receptionist is to act far more as a firewall than [he/she] has done until now.   This may break a few older pages, but now makes sense.

The taking up of the backups does NOT  make us immune in itself to anything, but it does mean that as and when I have a decently fast Internet connection, I could restore things.   As we don't collect personal data, payments, etc, there is very little to be leaked or stolen anywhere on our servers - the risk of a problem on the worker is low, and the effect would be low - an outage until I could rebuild which while away might be a few days, and a risk that data in places like "frequent posters" and potentially registered email addresses could be leaked, but none of it would leak in an easy-to-use form.

 
Severe PHP vulnerabilities reported today times 2 - such that patches need immediate implementation with sites taken down until repaired.

I note that this site has a PHP logo - does it need the patches?

 

A 45-second delay according to RTT. 

Looks like a 'standby' TM ended up working it, instead of the one booked to arrive from Paddington on 1C77.

 
GWR are adjusting their timetable to mitigate the impacts of Friday's forecasted weather event.

 
and a regular pairing makes a reappearance:

 

At this moment of writing, I am not panicked, but our web space provider for the worker machine reports ...


... and I am watching

 
Just wondered whether this affects the forum?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmly0lg3w5x2o
The Finnish government, Edinburgh council and the BBC are among those to have taken down sites and pages ahead of a software update to a programming language which underpins many online services.

Two critical vulnerabilities have been found with the PHP programming language, which is widely used across the internet. A fix was issued on Wednesday afternoon.

The flaws were discovered by AI, with cyber-security firm Wiz saying they were the "most severe vulnerabilities ever discovered" by the tech, which is reshaping the cyber landscape.

Multiple national cyber-security agencies have urged organisations to rapidly adopt the updates, or consider taking their websites offline.

Finland has temporarily shut down the government's public web services, while the Netherlands' cyber-security agency said it was taking its own website offline due to the vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh council's website has become inaccessible, as well as the online homes for several BBC programmes including Doctor Who and The Traitors.

.........continues.............

 
Could be a symptom of the fortnight half-term some schools are having now?

 
1A77 0835 Plymouth to London Paddington had a mishap around mid morning, just before Castle Cary.
All West Country trains massively delayed by diversions.
1A82 0910 Penzance to Reading went via Exeter Central and Yeovil, delayed by 52 minutes and terminated at Reading.
Qudos to GWR (?) for providing a train crew with route and traction knowledge going via Yeovil.

 

The question of opening hours for the new entrance not matching train and bus arrivals and departures was also highlighted.  A response has been promised after investigation.

 

(gulp! )  I have now amended the definition for ATP on our 'abbreviations & acronyms' page.

CfN. 

 
Quite a few crew shortage cancellations listed - rather odd midweek?

13:54 Reading to Gatwick Airport due 15:25
14:32 London Paddington to Cheltenham Spa due 16:31
14:38 London Paddington to Didcot Parkway due 15:46
15:05 Reading to Basingstoke due 15:32
15:29 Gatwick Airport to Reading due 17:03
15:52 Basingstoke to Reading due 16:17
16:10 Didcot Parkway to London Paddington due 17:22
16:32 Great Malvern to London Paddington due 19:29
17:03 Cheltenham Spa to London Paddington due 19:01
18:20 Reading to Gatwick Airport due 19:55
18:50 London Paddington to Didcot Parkway due 19:54
19:12 London Paddington to Bristol Parkway due 20:40
19:59 Gatwick Airport to Reading due 21:37
22:10 Reading to Newbury due 22:39
22:47 Newbury to Reading due 23:13
00:19 Reading to London Paddington due 01:13
00:48 London Paddington to Reading due 01:44
01:45 London Paddington to Reading due 02:34
Thu, 22 October 02:24 Reading to London Paddington due 03:11
Thu, 22 October 03:35 London Paddington to Reading due 04:24
Thu, 22 October 04:35 Reading to London Paddington due 05:34

 

I have a GWR smartcard, but also a senior railcard, and don't know if the one can take account of the other. I've read GWR's pages on it and still have only a wooly idea of what the GWR smartcard does or offers. I'm probably starting from the wrong perspective as I was sort of imagining it as similar to an Oyster card, allowing travel as long as the user has credited their Oyster account - which leads me to also also think in an emphasising way about the well travelled guy who expected his Oyster card to work the barriers at Cardiff Central station.

 

and the following 14:53 Paddington to Worcester Foregate Street which is usually a nine coach service being the five car 800009.

 

I asked Network Rail the very same sort of question well over a year ago and was told (from my recollection) that the room would be refurbished before being reused(although what for was not specified).
Since then I've observed that the room has gradually had it's utilities upgraded (rewiring, piping etc), has new wooden flooring, new plaster on the walls and looks ready for reusing.
I do hope that a room as architecturally striking as that will be home to the sort of cafe/bar that some other main stations are righly proud of but that this city currently lacks.

 

I raised this at the GWR forum this morning - Thomas Lydon said he would follow this up. I also mentioned the fact that the station map still hasn’t been updated…

 
Closed on Christmas day and Boxing day so not an issue.

 

 
Their concern might be that it becomes a right of way - if it can be proved that they've let at least one person every day through for a number of years, it automatically becomes a public right of way.

 
And yet if you have a GWR payg smartcard, at least their policy allows you to enter and exit the station without charge so presumably would allow you to use it as a shortcut (though I have not actually tried this in practice).

Given they essentially have to have a member of staff on the gates anyway, surely it would make sense to give that person a ticket a machine to allow the same of a small number of tickets (in a the similar way to the excess fares desk on Platform 3). Or of course they could have bothered to do what TfW did in Cardiff and have a ticket office at the second entrance too (though tbh I have no idea how often the Cardiff south side one is actually open).

 

A very - err - predictable delay as the crew comes off a main line service and they are up the swanny this morning


A good example of where things happen outside the contol of the railway industry, but one can't help feeling that their systems are planned in such a way that wider spread disruption than is necessary results.  At least this is not showing up as 2 x cancellations.

 
So, instead, she alights at the Temple Gate stop & walk up the ramp?

 

I had to look up ATP - "Automatic Train Protection" turns out to be "Accessible Travel Policy".  I don't have the context in which the reply was written - so I hope it's a term you used, chuffed, in which case their use of it in writing to you is AOK - otherwise, it's rail jargon, and shouldn't be used without explanation to customers.

The rail industry has "created itself" a problem with multiple gated entrance stations where they offer a complete staffed ticketing service outside only one of them.   Typically the reason for multiple entrances is to reach a different customer catchment area.   You see the same thing at Chippenham.  Bath Spa - less of an issue; it's very easy and perhaps reasonable there to some across the bridge over the Avon from Widcombe and walk under to the ticket office. It would be no shorter to go in and out through 2 sets of barriers.

As an after thought - why is this only an issue for passengers with a disability - or is in an issue for all?  Cynthia Doe gets off the no. 8 bus with her twins in their pushchair, and needs access to the ticket office / travel centre ...