1 Yetminster station.
It still shows evidence of he broad gauge with the distance between the platforms. It was first doubled in 1859 to ease congestion of the steeply inclined section to Holywell Tunnel and Evershot.

 
I did laugh at the ‘you can taste the Cardiff to Portsmouth diesels as they go past’. Oh please!!  That’s nothing compared to the original Valenta engines on an HST or the various other diesel locos that used to pass through Bath such as 37s, 47s and 50s when I was growing up. Happy days 

 

If I recall the events correctly.
The re-signalling works was being carried out in the main by BR S&T teams the small install team BR had was bolstered by overtime by local S&T maintenance techs.  This was not uncommon at the time.

The wiring had been disconnected from a relay style referred to a "jam jars" these relays were a glass jar (later ones plastic) which allows the contacts to be observed, however the terminal studs come out of the insulated "lid".  During the staged works wires had been disconnected and held up to the wiring harness with PVC insulating tape, possibly having been used before (budgets were tight in BR days and I am not joking I was working at the time for BR as electrician on the WR often getting essentials such as insulating tape, hacksaw blade etc has a challenge)

The insulating tape came unwrapped and the wire dropped onto a relay terminal.  The terminal connections had not been cut off or insulated with tape, if it had been taped the tape had fallen off.

There were a number of things that all came together to cause this disaster
The excessive working hours of BR staff tolerated and indeed expected by senior BR managers and engineers in what we now call safety critical rolls. 
No clear identification of out of service equipment / wiring, now a colour scheme is used, (green = to go / remove, blue =  modified, red = new to be installed). 
The use of PVC insulating tape to hold up removed wiring, not insulating disconnected wire terminals and terminations, today clear neoprene tubing is used to insulate out of service wire terminal; were possible redundant wiring should be cut back / removed at the time it is taken out of use.
No "independent" checks of the work carried out before return / entry into service, the S&T now have SMTH (Signalling Maintenance Testing Handbook) and STHB (Signalling Testing Handbook) and the implementation  IRSE Licencing (Institution of Railway Signal Engineers) for all involved in railway signalling design, maintenance, installation and testing

 
The return was even more impressive, although running nearly hour late, saw it pass through Bradford on Avon

61306 Mayflower and 71000 Duke of Gloucester.  Double heading.

Plenty of whistles too (presumably to advice second loco driver when to brake and accelerate etc)

My understanding is Duke had a problem on Wednesday, was rectified at Bristol and they opted to double headed the train to Three Bridges to return the loco.

 
No cannot be, the line was never doubled apart form loops at Cookham Bourne End stations, and a short section North from Maidenhead station to Grenfell rd bridge

 

It isn't.  I confess to not knowing if the Maidenhead to Bourne End and to Marlow line ever was double and / or whether there were loops on it; I did wonder about looking for a picture in my old set ...

As a (re) doubling candidate or scope for alternative capacity provision, this would be an interesting one. As it is, to get trains up to a 30 minute frequency passengers are required to change trains 'half way' along - a solution which I have also seen adopted in Slovakia but at which shudder at the thought if it were brought to the TransWilts.

 
0 - Maidenhead-Marlow?

 

If the trains have batteries for more substantial parts of their journeys, there may be potential to explore the option.  To my mind, though, having London to Bristol expresses equipped with batteries just for four or five miles doesn't feel economicaly sensible.

I quoted the comments on the original post to show just how complex the situation is, and how under informed some of the public are - no fault of their own; bright people just to experts in this complex world of railway provision and operation.  I am struck by the irony of road vehicles being required to be clean through Bath in a way that trains are not, and the comment about the smell from passing Cardiff -> Portsmouth trains. Perhaps those (and the short runs on the same line) are a case for batteries initially, rather than the London trains for which I suggest that full electrification might be the better solution.

 
I was interested in a past year to see which stations had the heaviest footfall per metre of operational platform and recall that Windsor and Eton Central bubbled up to being one of the busiest.  In GWR land, I would imagine that stations such as St Bureaux Ferry Road come towards the quietest; on a couple of uses the infrequent service there competes poorly with a frequent and quite fast bus service along the nearby main road.

 
Could new trains(a cheaper option?) on the London to Bristol route be run batteries between Bathampton and Oldfield Park?

 
Many railway lines that were once two tracks were reduced to a single track in the middle of the last century, and in some cases we may look back and say that the decision to reduce the infrastructure has stood the test of time.  In other cases, the capacity reduction is unfortunate for current times some 60 years later and some re-doubling has taken place.  Can you identify these locations and suggest which might benefit from a second track being relayed?

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Thank you for that much more measured view,  which aligns much more closely with what we saw at the time that First (Bus) pulled out of our area.   Just as the people of parts of Cornwall are concerned at the losses and disconnects that would come with the closure without alternative of certain services, so were we.  That's five years ago now, and hindsight and experience tells me that we're now more appropriately served by a single operator rather than two who were both trying to make a living/profit over routes and flows that could not support both.   Strong lobbying at the time and the services added to fill the gaps were appropriate - how much effect our lobbying had and how much that would have been done anyway, I don't know.

 

Kernow space has had an agenda for quite a while against First bus. Some of his postings are valid, albeit perhaps not gone about in the best way. Some couldn’t be further from fact if he tried.

 
Its long overdue wiring from filton and Chippenham to Bristol TM and Parson street

 
It'd be good to know more about this and what has precipitated it.

Mark

 
I went up to Warminster station two nights ago to photograph 71000 on its return leg - but it failed at Bristol. I had already spent some time using the camera to get what I thought would be the best settings. When I got home I had a good play with them on the PC to see which were the best...........so the time wasn't entirely wasted - I'll know what to use next time, I won't be in the dark, in the dark !

 
I would hazard a guess and say Winchester would be quite high up the list too.

 
... in Bristol.

From the BBC:



It seems it didn't occur to any of the head-scratchers in the Bristol City Council planning department that bollards and planters, plonked into the roadway, might inconvenience ambulances and fire engines.

I'm glad I don't live in Bristol any more.

 

It hasn’t flooded.

Water levels at a bridge in the Marazion area has breached the closure mark. A diver is required to check the structure and assess the scour risk. 

Either this is something Network Rail has recently introduced or the river is no long dredged resulting in it no longer having the capacity it once did.

 

Yes!  Well done that man! 

 
Thank you for posting that brilliant picture here on the Coffee Shop forum, Clan Line.

For those of our readers who would like to know more about steam engine 61306, may I refer you to Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Thompson_Class_B1_61306

CfN.

 
The 3:30 departure from Warminster on the crossover today - the service terminates there and returns to Bristol.

Mark

 
Going back to Grahame's first post and in particular -

..do bear in mind for Reading that it still has the second highest number of interchanges (4.1m) in the UK outside London! This has to be added to the aggregate entries and exits used for the headline figures.

 
I have posted this before, here on the Coffee Shop forum, but it's a light-hearted spoof advert for Ryanair, from YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp4yczeiXwY

Watch until the end of the 70 seconds clip: it rather seems to sum it all up quite neatly. 

(With my apologies to any possibly younger readers here for the one sweary word).

 

I think at least some of the late night cancellations last night were down to crew shortages - and it looks like the same is happening tonight with the cancellations starting to pop up - not great during Christmas party season!

 
In the interests of continuity here on the Coffee Shop forum, I have now moved a couple of topics and merged them here - while retaining their original headings.

Wow! I'm becoming something of a wizard at this.

 

I bet the 181 passengers were glad they remained sitting on the fence, rather than being on board that plane

 

Well, my daughter was Miss Staffordshire in 2017 and was a Miss England finalist at Stockport that year.  Does that count?

Her then employer, West Midlands Ambulance Service, had pictures of her in paramedic uniform, high heels and a tiara out on social media

Miss England by then was not a "simple" "beauty pagent" contest.  The judges wanted more than good looks

Something you don't ever imagine, when you first become a parent

 

The report said work was being staged, couple of weekends apart.  The new signalling was installed correctly, but a feed wire to the removed signalling was just undone and left loose (it was not removed because circuit was powering a part that had not been changed).  Someone knocked this bare wire and it came into contact with the signals in question giving false display. 

The accident came down to lazy approach of not insulating an old wire that was retained temporarily and was going to be stripped out few weeks later.  Ironically had the work all been done in one big changeover as had been done in 1936 when the signalling was changed to colour lights, the old circuit would have been dead and no wrong signals displayed.

The trains did not have anti climb units (serrated panels that engage) on ends of underframes, were old mk1 design with separate underframes, no bright taillights which reflect off the rails (just red bars in headcode box), and had no emergency radio to signallers unlike today.   So lot has changed.

 
A very interesting piece on Facebook by KernowSpace suggesting that all may not be quite as First have suggested.  There is an exceptionally strong copyright statement on the piece - strange when it says it's just presenting the real facts - but because of that strong statement I'm not going to antagonise by quoting even a short section for critical comment.  Of course, Coffee Shop members in the know are very welcome to follow up directly here should they wish.