Anyone would think that the vegetation management policy might just be in need of review

 

There has been a bit of a thing about collecting details and dates of electrification programmes, on RailForums over the last 2-3 years. The sources include books, technical magazines and papers, ferreting about on line, and the many ex-railway members of the forum who worked on them.

The consensus of that work is that Liverpool St - Shenfield at least was all converted 1500 DC - 6.25 kV, and then later all uprated to 25 kV. One of my few contributions to this collection was to locate the 1962 Langley Report, "Railway Accidents -  Failures of Multiple-unit Electric Trains on British Railways". This inquiry was set up to explain the alarming series of on-board explosions in Glasgow Blue Trains, including the Renton accident which injured a guard and seven passengers (three seriously). However, it contains a thorough description of the Modernisation programme electrification work to date.

That report includes the attached table, which confirms that the GE network was done with 6.25 kV continuous over the suburban part to Shenfield and onward to Southend (Victoria).  It was the "north-east London suburban" network that had a mixture of voltages, and so did the Glasgow suburban lines. The LTS lines are missing from the table, as electrification work was still underway when the inquiry started. There is a mention of a limited electric service starting there in 1961, and many of the TLS stock which were built earlier and used on other lines temporarily.

You can't tell from the table how long the 6.25 sections were (or how many) but the similarity of the total route miles at 6.25 and 25 kV (25:24 in NE London, 20:32 in Glasgow) suggests more than just a bridge or three at a time. After all, each transition needed a neutral section with APC magnets to open and close the pantograph circuit breaker.

 
There have been/are trees down/been struck at:

St Austell
Luxulyan
Cullompton
Bruton
St Keynes
Bere Ferrers
Perranwell
Yeoford

The Dawlish sea wall was closed this morning due to broken ballast boards.

 

I’m sure chuffed can speak for themself, but are there not circumstances where people might want to discuss their travel arrangements at the ticket office? This, surely, is why we faught to keep them a few years ago…

 
Over an inch of rain in Swindon between midnight and 9am.

 
...but getting going now...

 

Add to that sadly there will be people who see it as a way to get a free ride on a train

The part about reduced mobility, I don't know Chuffed personally, but I also have a disability card, but I don't have a physical disability, unless you knew me personally you would not realise why I have the card

I am confused why a ticket was not bought at one of the ticket machines, if there is uncertainty about how to use the machine I would expect the member of staff to assist

 

I am confused now by the post from Chuffed - why did they just not buy a ticket from the machine and walk through the barriers?

 
Trees barely moving in Melksham

 
My eyes glazed over when reading some of the techno-jargon in preceding posts!  I access this website only from my home PC, which has become slow with age, with no fancy (if desirable) add-ons (except an adblocker). I've never had issues with Coffee Shop performance.  I did try a free Proton VPN  but found it took a while to find an overseas location; it blocked me from a couple of websites that I do visit and was reluctant to be closed.

I use a cheapo mobile phone, mostly for texts and emails, and, being clumsy, find it difficult to use it to compose anything other than a short message.

 

I hope the emergency services dealt with the Great Bin Disaster before dealing with boring old trees, etc. . .

 
Some really useful feedback thus far - please keep it coming.

 
Tree down on the Falmouth branch.   Same on the Gunnislake and Newquay lines.

 
...............no need for storms to make the railway fall over in the Thames Valley, we have this sort of thing virtually every day.........."until the end of the day" 

Cancellations to services between Reading and London Paddington

Due to a points failure between Reading and London Paddington fewer trains are able to run on some lines towards London Paddington.

Train services running to and from these stations may be cancelled or delayed. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

 
No VPNs, nothing particularly fancy. Occasionally access via public wifi or mobile hotspot, but usually from home.

 
Hot off the press: my son, in Falmouth, tells me that their bin blew over…

 

In the event it picked up a few minutes delay through Dawlish, a few more by Newton Abbot and over the banks, but was less than half an hour late into Plymouth where it terminated.

 
Thanks for highlighting this, Trowres.

 
I access in the UK and at home use Vodafone broadband (FTTC) with them providing their Secure Net filtering system. I also use an iPhone 14 when on the move which also has Secure Net when linked to them and Sophos X for mobile when not.

 

The 6.25kV was used for electrical sub sections under bridges / tunnels and multiple bridges where they were close together.  The EMU Class 306 (AM6) were converted from DC to AC.

Yes it was used on the Glasgow system for tunnels and bridges although this was never a 1500V DC system

6.25kV sub electrical systems would have been kept as short as possible because of the Voltage drop and higher current hence large conductors there would have been a balance between this and the cost of the additional transformers and circuit breakers

 

I think that the the repairs and refurbishment must have been longer ago than I realised, and prior to your visit.

 


Yeah - one man's anonymousisation is a bit of a webmaster's nightmare in helping to identify the genuine traffic.  I can see the benefits for you much of the time ...

 
Most of my internet traffic goes through Cloudflare WARP on desktop and Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 on Android. These are network tunnelling programs. I'm on FTTC, a fair way from the cabinet, with my internet speed topping out at 38Mbps. Cloudflare noticebly speeds up my webpage loading times. It also better handles web traffic like streaming while I'm background downloading games and content. The data and DNS encryption are a bonus.

This forum doesn't like it though so I switch it off to visit here. Hence voting for option 1. But could be option 6.

 

It does look good - lets me see what is seen by overseas guests - and also to check blocks from a very limited number of distant countries that typically have "travel advisories" on them anyway.

"Lean over and ask" is not an option right now - middle of night and six hours on a metre gauge train rockin and rolling has left her sleeping well beside me.

 

Probably it would look good, while perhaps with a Florida accent. 

 
I'm going to help with a couple of sample answers ...

I have voted for two options - that
* I visit the Coffee Shop from the UK and
* I visit from outside the UK (currently in Spain)

My wife Lisa - who very occasionally reads as a guest - would vote
* I visit using a VPN
She has a virtual private network activated most of the time, primarily to allow her to access USA based content not available in the UK or Europe. I can also lean over and ask her to check how the forum looks for a guest from a different country if need be.

 
With the security concerns about PHP that have hit the headlines in the last 48 hours, on top of regular noise levels, I am reviewing the receptionist and worker filters. Part of this is looking around to see how the various bits of code (web servers, and then after them Coffee Shop code) filters out noise.

The issue with PHP is not something newly added to the language - it's just that it's newly discovered in a relatively obscure corner. Now that it's been discovered and documented (that was necessary to define the fix), there is an almost-certainlty that some malware or maligned humans will look to exploit the hole for unfortunate purposes. So we are taking steps to minimise or eliminate the risk. The question in this poll is an important one to help educate us on further on the balances of the forum.

Over coming days, backroom research and other work will be ongoing. Members answers to this poll are a vital piece of that research and I ask you to vote even if you leave most of our polls alone.  If you are a regular guest/viewer this is a really good time to register - it's free - but if not please email me ( graham -at- sn12 -dot- net ) to help me build up the best possible picture.

There are - always - various automated processes ongoing, and manual ones from time to time too - which keep an eye out for rogue visitors and activities. Over coming days and beyond, these processes may well be tuned and reset rather more often than has been the case. Tightening gates may trip you up, and short outages / abnormal responses are more possible. As ever, if you have issues I remain reachable as the "webmaster" level via the forum or my personal email.

 
Sad to see that we have lost one of the resolute advocates of better ways of thinking about transport; Mayer Hillman:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/oct/20/mayer-hillman-obituary