Yes, an urgent need to discard the excess infrastructure - I was too young to witness much of that era and it riles me that from the way it was done that this comes across as the nationalised railway carrying out "External comms by timetable and by deed" on a railway that was still largely wedded to coal-fired steam power. That has resonances for the present day - especially in the west we have a railway run using far too much kit from 40 years ago in a world that's rapidly going electric.

Infrastructure... living in London during the sixties I was very aware of the changes to the local suburban line, with the freight yards disappearing. In 1982 or so, on a break in Paris and staying in a remote suburb on the Seine, downstream, walking up to its tidy station one evening, ticket office staffed despite that it was around 10.30 pm I was surprised to also find an extensive yard for freight, apparently in operational condition but with no signs of any activity for years, and every part of it wired with OHLE.

To further enjoy the excesses of SNCF infrastructure provision, its possible to do worse than set out on a Google Maps explore of Bordeaux, or more specifically the south bank of the estuary by Le Verdon-Sur-Mer, where you'll find a very generous provision of track / electrification. Good to see the electrification of course, but perhaps the track needed rationalising before it went in... and it has to be said that some of those lines are out of use.

Ah - and, just now, that European train tracker web site shows a service from Bordeaux approaching the terminus.

 
Looks great

 
11. Brighton

 
Just over 100 people on the train when it left Melksham - notable lack of kiddies for the most part; rather more people who can shelter in the pub for rainy periods.   A couple of dozen joined at Melksham and around a dozen got off there as well. [112/38]  Very damp - gentle rain and I'm soaked from the walk from home to the station.   The majority of joining passengers were dropped off by car - only a handful walked. No-one parked themselves, no-one cycled to the station, and no-one arrived on horseback ;-) . Happy with those numbers considering the weather.

Now in Westbury ... after a wait outside, I would presume for a platform.

 

Indeed, the Manchester to Waterloo train skipped Newport but reversed at Bristol Temple Meads. (For Newport there'd be quite a time penalty, & other services would be available). The event that put services onto the rhubarb curve was the move of the MOD to Abbey Wood and them closing down in Bath - a few direct services were put on to ease the change in location.

On travelling from Bristol up the Marches line, changing at Newport, on a number of counts that doesn't work well: it can be counted as a heavily suppressed passenger flow that the railway has arbitrarily and willfully decided to discard. I'm not sure why, for many inter-regional services, their franchise pattern adopted at privatisation has become a problem for the travelling public.

 
Interesting section on HEX tickets on Head for Points today
https://www.headforpoints.com/2026/08/23/how-to-get-a-discount-on-heathrow-express-train-tickets-3/comment-page-3/#comments

How to get a discount on Heathrow Express train tickets (2026 edition)
Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

It’s been a while since we last looked at the different ways of getting a Heathrow Express discount.

I thought it was worth an update, because the ways of getting a discount have shrunk since the removal of all group discounts, such as Duo Saver, over the last couple of years.  ...........continues............

 
From another forum re: 175s

You will never get them to work properly on the GWR. A good friend of mine worked on them in all over Wales in the last couple of years there before they were put into hibernation for two years plus. They were all on their last legs then and all need new computers in them. All sent to GWR with very little thought of need maintenance, just move then on and repair them as a when. No wonder their reliability is rubbish. But the new ones on the Welsh network seen Ok he says. They certainly don’t want them back.

 
Roger French latest post aims at GWR and Cross Country delay repay (final two items)
https://busandtrainuser.com/2026/08/29/seen-around-47/

Cross Country
And finally for this month back to the frustrations of train companies’ unresponsiveness to Delay Repay claims and in particular the complete absence of any communication from Cross Country – a company that just seems to be going from worse to very worse at the moment.  .........continues............

And finally, GWR
Meanwhile GWR are up to their familiar unhelpful tricks again. Coming back from Bath last Saturday afternoon all trains through Chippenham were cancelled due to signalling problems .................continues............

 

Yes and no.  Some thinning out was undoubtedly right, but it was done with a zeal and a vigour that was excessive and we now regret.  There isn't the need for large arrays of sidings, run round loops, even platforms mouldering in minimal or no use that you can still see in some foreign parts with modern trains wiping through efficiently, with perhaps more trains now even than there were at the peak of the railway age.   

I remember catching a train from Manchester (where I was staying) to Stockport (where I was working) - a 158 as I recall, and being bemused to hear announcements that it was running to London (Waterloo) and calling at places like Bradford-on-Avon along the way. I'm not sure if it would have used the Maindee curve and/or the Rhubarb loop, but there is a logic in such a service popping into Newport and into Temple Meads for passengers to and from those hamlets, and to provide a single interchange station.   I do note that the 1965 timetable included various footnotes "Stapleton Road" for Bristol, telling me that some of the trains still skipped Temple Meads.


You have a conundrum.  Looking back at history, the old way was for commuter trains busy with flows of the working class into the big cities to be used for weekend and holiday flows out when people weren't at work.   See pictures of the annual works outing / holiday from Swindon to Weymouth and it's formed of trains that carried people on other days the rest of the year into Bristol, Gloucester, Swindon, etc.   But with the specialisation of trains, you can't do that these days.   The last "hurrah"s were the HST that ran to Weymouth on summer Saturdays

I can only dream of 12 car trains from Didcot into London being shortened to 8 cars in August, and 2 carriage train into Weymouth being increased to 6 carriages.  Can't couple a 387 to a 165.

And the change of the metrics so that "peak" is no longer peak is huge.  Trains that may have been carrying fresh air and a sprinkling of influential people into London on a Saturday are now almost as crammed as the rest in the summer anyway.   Good news that flow loadings are spread, but it does take out redeployment band wriggle room.

And so I head for Weymouth today. .  Whereas our through train from Swindon on a Sunday a decade ago arrived in Weymouth with five or even six carriages, these days it's down to three and running on a Saturday.  We at MTUG are trying to judge our promotion right to avoid overfilling the train;  we could do a lot more but that would be making trouble.  We did that once - in 2011 to prove that people from our little village of Melksham could be reached and persuaded.   

A single Facebook post - without being paid for - made 48 hours ago has been viewed 14,000 times.  Someone commented "I didn't know Melksham had a station". Someone said "that's expensive" at the £23 fare (before groupsave / railcard). Someone else asked "can I use the car park at the station - do I have to pay for that?".  It's a guess as to how many people will travel - as it is from Swindon and Chippenham. In some ways, I'm happy that the weather forecast suggests it's a traditional bank holiday of the sort we used to have - wet and windy - as that will put off enough people to make it manageable.

 

I had to think but - yes - that IS part of Italy.


Sorry - no.  Interesting to note several guesses here which (correctly) are British, but haven't identified the city it's in.

 
I have been reliably told that the 175 units are also underpowered. None have been recorded cresting Hemerdon bank at more than 40mph

 
It looks like the east entrance opening time and date will be 16.00 on 7th September according to the Network Rail announcement (link below).

https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/new-station-entrance-to-open-at-temple-meads-transforming-access-to-the-railway-and-creating-a-new-gateway-to-bristol

 

I have been a few hundred metres on an underground mining, unsprung, solid steel - unpadded, derailed man carriage with a 2 foot gauge and a 3 foot sleeper spacing. It was a very unpleasant and painful experience.

 
11 Hastings?

 
4 - Italy (from "Trenitalia" in mirror image reflection in the glass!)

 

Sorry Jaymac, but in the emerging brave new world it's also awkward to want to use your bank account or buy a train ticket unless you have also paid to acquire a smartphone or a PC/laptop and associated internet services even if you have no other use for them or have positively decided you don't want one....

 
New, perhaps.

https://traintracker.live/

 
Or rechargeable batteries at least.....

 

20:06 Westbury to Cheltenham Spa due 22:06
20:06 Westbury to Cheltenham Spa due 22:06 will be started from Swindon.
It will no longer call at Westbury, Trowbridge, Melksham and Chippenham.
This is due to a fault with the signalling system.

21:16 Westbury to Swindon due 21:58
21:16 Westbury to Swindon due 21:58 will be cancelled.
This is due to a fault with the signalling system.

22:31 Swindon to Westbury due 23:12
22:31 Swindon to Westbury due 23:12 will be cancelled.
This is due to a fault with the signalling system.

 

 
Here are the correct ones
0 Paddington - stuving
3 Arbroath - broooklea
5 York - Chris from Nailsea
6 Marlow - Mark A
14 Prague hlavní nádraží  - DR7835

But these are not
10 - not Swansea
11 - not Fishguard
13 - not Swindon

 
10. A guess - a memento of the copper works in Swansea

 
"Warminster Journal"

 
13. Swindon?

 
From the BBC:

 
0 is at Paddington - specifically on the linking walkway in front of the Paddington Square building. Quite what it links, or will, I'm not sure; it mainly seems to block off Tanner Lane (what was London Street) where the change in ground level is now incompatible with it continuing.

 
Only a week or so since the one at Bermondsey burned - and for the second time. If this relates to disposable vapes, they're... imposing costs on us all.

Mark

 
11. Fishguard harbour

 
... particularly if the on-board toilet facility is not available...