The railway is ... riddled ... with mis-leads and opportunities to do better.

Brickett Wood
Bridge of Allan
Bridge of Orchy
Bridgend
Bridgeton
Brighton

... what the ticket machine (that was upgraded last week!) ... offers when I start typing in B-R-I ... for where I want to buy a ticket to.  Most sold Melksham tickets BRI are Temple Meads (which IS on the quick front panel) followed by

Bristol Parkway
Brighton
Bridgend
Bridgwater
Brighouse
Brixton

And, surely, it would be best to offer the most popular six first, not the first six in the alphabet?


And don't we love the information system gems that have two trains leaving from the same platform at the same time:

 

Sure, that's what the public are hoping for.   But let's look

1. There are no offers of a general better level of service, though there may be some bright spots.  Indeed nothing much is said about level of service and could we be in for another Beeching, or Serpell? That could save money.  I won't give any pointers in the South West ... but I could look at East Anglia and and ask about lines such as those through Berney Arms, East Tilbury and Emerson Park, and to such places as Sheringham, Sudbury and Southminster and wonder about their economic case.

2. More reliability and fewer breakdowns could be achieved by reducing the number of services run and increasing running times, could it not?  Swiss timekeeping has an excellent reputation, but I've made a number of journeys where we have paused to make up time.  And modern technology (I've see demos) can hide that slowing down by programming the trains to run slower than they could - not awaiting time at stations but running a little slower between

3. "Fare Simplification" is what is suggested, and can be achieved, can't it, by simply scrapping some of the lower fares?  Let's get rid of super off peak - no, it's not in headlines terms putting "fares up" but it'll sure as heck make a substantial difference in our parts to weekend travellers!

 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/articles/cx7vpe1p070mo


I find myself looking at this report and wondering if there are crossover lessons and alerts into public transport matters. 

 
This, in a nutshell.

The Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says that she wants to see subsidy levels fall. Meanwhile, Network Rail has acknowledged a squeezed budget means difficult choices, and shoring up the network against the effects of more extreme weather requires investment.

Prof Glaister says: "When the public is hoping for a better level of service, more reliability, fewer breakdowns and lower fares, what they're really asking for is more money to be put into the railway.

"I don't think it's likely the government is going to be able to find more money, probably [it will have] less, actually. And so I think there's a real problem with ministers raising expectations from this policy."

 
Our "rules of engagement" - the forum agreement - is written for direct (human) posters and not for automated agents. In the current environment / with concerns about AI, it makes sense to me for Coffee Shop posting to remain in principle limited to real people who we may meet on the train, who have life experiences, and who can agree to / sign up to our forum agreement.   

Occasionally in our many years, a real person has "gone rogue" and our team has been able to take actions which bring our posted content back within our guidelines, often with the agreement of that person though very occasionally through enforcement mechanisms we have, underpinned by the background of that agreement which does include a couple of safety nets that lets it cope with the unexpected.  I am uncomfortable with the thought of moderating an agent which does not have the characteristics / bounds of a real person, and so sign up requests from automata will be / are declined at present. That does not stop automata reading the public areas of the Coffee Shop, nor does it stop them communicating with us through our official email address, nor does it stop them making use of public material "scraped". 

At present, we've had very few sign up requests indeed from automata, and such requests where they want to sign up to "comment on a particular story" will be answered by an invite to email to us what they would like to say, and the admin or moderator team will consider sharing what's suggested, and with reference to the source as appropriate.  This policy means that we welcome and share information from the widest range of sources, but at the same time provide members and (in public areas) guests with a re-assurance that what they read is submitted with true thought, intent, and over which our team has backup tools to look after.

 
From around 10 p.m. on 12th, our server loads ballooned ... requests to the worker server up from around 350,000  to around 650,000 over the 24 hours of 13th (October).  And most of that extra loading was before 18:00, at which point I identified and diverted the loads - which were ... in my view ... from 'bots not useful to the Coffee Shop.  There's an element of this identification being a manual process - though I do have code in place such to help me describe a pattern and automate ongoing rejection once I identify it (and I can even do so from a very limited internet connection!)

 

Delighted that it worked ... I posted in some trepidation as to whether it might sink like a lead balloon as so many of our members don't get very far from the platforms - let alone the stations - on their travels.    In recent years, I have travelled to some of the furthest points in Europe and there's more of that to come in my current window between retirement and increasing limitations, but I wrestled with whether and how to share those experiences.

 
Railway YouTuber Geoff Marshall recently visited the Tarka Line (Exeter - Barnstaple) to tick off some stations, discuss the line, its history and its future. Some excellent detail on possible future work to increase capacity and frequency provided by RichardB of this very parish.

 

I'm going off at yet another slight tangent here (and I can, because I'm an admin ), but it struck me, even as a twelve-year-old at the time when our currency was dismalised, in February 1971, that there shouldn't have been provision for a 'half-penny' in any new decimal coinage - it was a contradiction in terms.

CfN. Grumpy Old Git.

 
You weren't tempted into making a bid, RichardB, for a possible retirement residence - close to the railway?

CfN. 

 
This topic has been moved to Bristol and Bath (WECA, now WEMCA) as the 'campaign' has (at last!) come to fruition.

https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=231.0

 
What's needed for XC in Cornwall isn't more trains, it's capacity on the existing, more coaches far more important throughout the week, a virtually impossible need I'll agree.

 
That photo's so evocative of a particular sort of damp wet day, that light, the stone, road surface, grass, it's making my nose twitch.

 
May I offer our collective thanks to grahame for his latest quiz challenge here.  I found it encouraging that there was, as ever, some friendly competition and different answers suggested for some of those locations.


I very nearly made a public fool of myself by bidding 'Tormarton, South Gloucestershire' for that one.



Oh, hang on a minute. 

CfN. 

 
Hopefully a bread and butter repair, albeit above water. But then... listed building, at least two agencies involved, negotiations to be had...

Off topic, from a quick exchange with a group of people working at Blisworth Tunnel in the late 1980s: they indicated that I think it was £27 per square metre was the going rate for brick lining repairs at that time. I have a faint recollection that didn't involve simple repointing but with brick lining, where do you stop...

 
All now identified correctly ...

1 Hayling Island - Chris from Nailsea
2 Hyde Park - Mark A
3 Melksham - Chris from Nailsea
4 Taunton - Chris from Nailsea
5 Dartmouth - RobT
6 Tavistock - AMLAG
7 Needles (Isle of Wight) - johnneyw
8 Temple Footbridge (River Thames) - TonyN
9 Reading Town Centre - stuving
10 Bicester Village - chuffed
11 Evesham - Mark A
12 Woodhenge - eXPassenger
13 Abbotsbury - eightonedee
14 Barry Island - Trowres
15 Yetminster - bradshaw
16 Chepstow - Red Squirrel

 
We walked under there on the Thursday as they were working above and I wondered how deep they were going!
I had a look on Monday from the East end of the tunnel but there was nothing to see.
I wonder how long it'll take to repair?

 
This man (BBC) simply walked.

 
From the BBC:

 
Booking via RealTime Tickets last evening for a short-notice trip to Oxford next Saturday for me and my other half, I saved a whopping 17p (yes, I know,  s e v e n t e e n  whole pennies) when it split the journey Honeybourne - Moreton in Marsh - Oxford

 

Not least more drivers at weekends.

 
Is 3 Corsham, by the library and community campus where a roof with solar panels has been added over some parking spaces

 
That's a good point, Tim.

I'm inclined to move that topic to 'WECA' now - unless anyone disagrees?

 

Looks like it arrived at 23:53 the previous night on a service from
Plymouth to Penzance that terminated at Truro.