I wouldn't argue with any of the above, and would possibly add the apparent reduction in the relevance/effectiveness of the Trans Wilts Community Rail Partnership as a possible factor

 
 

 
The bridge in Warren Road, Woodley, will shut on Monday until spring 2028 so work can be done following incidents in 2020 and 2024, which disrupted rail services.

The bridge in Butts Hill Road will also close to vehicles from 9 November until mid-January 2027, but will remain open to pedestrians, unlike the Warren Road bridge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqp8gx48ydeko

 
Whilst the HSTs were a big leap forward, and funding restrictions meant there was never enough of them nationally, it is also other anniversaries

45 years ago, France introduced the TGV, initially restricted to 260km/h (162mph), later increased to 270km/h (168mph), with later generations rated at 300km/h (186mph) and latest at 320km/h (199mph)

The HST was good at over 2 miles a minute, but nowadays seems slow with trains doing 3.3 miles a minute

 

It appears no one at Paddington spotted they were putting someone on part of the train which would be off platform, and nothing was done by train manager at any intermediate stations either.

The Network Rail Western Region sectional appendix (Route 105) has Bath's platform 1 as 195m, even adding 6.5m extensions, it is still well short of a 260m 5+5 IET

How just about every platform on a route ended up a different length is a mystery to me (why would longest train vary between consecutive stations)
Chippenham both 239m
Bath Spa plat 1 195m, plat 2 279m
Oldfield Park both 129m
Keynsham both 209m

 
Valve radios certainly preferable as EMP resistant. Has the drawback of needing more power, and non standard batteries. Production of suitable batteries ceased years ago, alternatives are available but add significant cost and complexity.

I would use modern transistor radios, with one in use and two spares, stored in two layers of EMP protection.

 
Grumpy ageing person here. Are the public suffering from information overload and too many sources of information? Did it work better when anything really important was sent out in the post only to those really affected?

 
from https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/uk-destinations/article/guides



Now I'm not sure if they're looking for places you haven't yet visited ... or places that you didn't visit until your 40s when they would have been fun in your 20s.

I have been so ... lucky ... and was, earlier, to visit just about all UK destinations I might wish. For places I haven't visited - perhaps Lindisfarne ... Orkneys, Shetlands, Outer Hebrides.    Wish I had seen earlier?   Perhaps Bath and other places to the south west of there/here which I never really knew until I moved down this way in around 1982.

 
Surely, the wind-up versions. No batteries required.....

 
Also, valve radios preferred...

Mark

 

Yes, preferably at least two, with batteries for at least 100 hours operation. MW and FM would be preferable. AFAIK the emergency plan is to broadcast on the radio 4 frequency.

 

Looks like the perfect method

 

Personal opinion - effective attention from GWR to their customers in the area in which I live is a lot poorer than it was a even just a handful of years ago. But then perhaps I'm seeing things through rosy tinted spectacles, and getting older / more extreme / more critical?  Where are my thoughts? 

As discussion points, I find myself wondering from this array:
* Money Saving measures
* Staffing on revenue - lots on gatelines, fewer looking after other matters
* New marketing team / different layer and goals / masking the experts
* Company looking at short term goals, and staff at their future roles
* Less important line/service; prioritisation of freight
* Safety increase
* A heavier burden of rules and regulations
* Staff unable / not encouraged to take a look out of the box
* "Reliability", "simplification" and "being PC and modern" goals outweigh customer service
* talk at, not talk with approach from GWR to community
* I am retired and no longer of any consequence
* Our Wiltshire product is no longer the proud flagship "look how good we are" baby

 

Yes, appreciated, Bob ... we (all), perhaps, have the issue of too much information being available these days and having to compete and tune it to reach all the right people at the right time.

That was a topic - local example here in Melksham - with the SCOB (Shadow Campus Operation Board) 15 to 20 years ago ... our local community body planning to replace 6 separate old Wiltshire Council and linked facilities in the town with a single current setup.  We had many ways of getting the message out - we counted up to 12 avenues of publication including online, printed press, local radio, an in person leaflets and events and attendances.  And STILL people said "we didn't hear".  Not really a "fault" of ours, nor of theirs.

 
Unless this item has appeared in lists above, one also needs an analogue radio (presumably FM) plus plenty batteries.

 
UNCONFIRMED reports state that a second victim has died of plague in russia.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/plague-outbreak-will-lead-anarchy-37739456?int_source=nba

 
It was also in the August and October TransWilts newsletter. 

 

West of England Farmers / Grain Silo ... and became Countrywide.

Talk would be available for other groups - happy to travel a little, though it's much more local interest. I would not expect to book a "History of Bacup Station" to draw an audience in Melksham.

Example from my inbox:


That is NOT one I'll be following up.  I don't see the Wiltshire Somerset and Weymouth railway history being relevant to a Berlin audience attracted to learn about electric car and train vehicles next year, and I don't usually respond to the name "Claire" either.

 

I CAN understand their conundrums.   Early publication of changed timetables means that people turn up for a service that's not yet running ... and/or there's a long period of negative publicity around a relatively short period of disruption.

In the past, MRDG / MRUG / MTUG has put together an calendar for perhaps half a year which highlights dates on which disruption to the normal timetable is planned; it has been a moving and pretty thankless task though.  And there's also the four-week-ahead posters these days at stations; they are *something* but lack a practicality of usefulness in my view:
* They don't always look 4 weeks ahead when you see them - they may look back 2.5 weeks and forward 1
* They can include a single late night train change which masks the whole-week-no-trains content
* They are fine print with lots of stuff which is way out of area for the station they are displayed at
* Key numbers on the map need to be searched for in the list of changes - no necessarily numeric order

 
If anyone travelling to/from Melksham had the foresight to check engineering works on another line 2 months ago they would have known about the bus service.  But of course why would they have looked up works elsewhere

Lots more info on these works now in the public info, and with the afterthought of highlighting the rubbish service on Melksham route to a select few in Melksham area

But telling users well in advance, seems to be non-concept with GWR, my local station, Bradford on Avon has nothing about the weekday closures to Bristol later in October.

 
Apologies - hadn't read that thread properly, and I wasn't aware of any changes affecting Melksham until my wife happened to mention it last night. Didn't join the dots.

 

Perhaps misplaced, we have a thread running on that on the board that covers the line through Pewsey.
https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=32260.0

We have known this has been coming up for quite a while ...

The line through Melksham is NOT closed.

Over the Saturday and Sunday - 10th and 11th October - the normal complement of trains will run, though many of them are varied somewhat in timing to allow for long distance expresses to pass though without serving the intermediate stations - and that's fair enough

From Monday 12th to Friday 16th October - there are six passenger trains each way but from reading public plans, only one of these will call at Trowbridge, Melksham and Chippenham - the other five are long distance expresses.  There probably also be (I have identified 8 reserved paths each way in the timetable from Westbury to Reading via Swindon) a whole lot of extra freight trains passing through on top of the normal compliment.  And there will be rail replacement buses running from Westbury as far as Chippenham - change there for onward trains to Swindon.   

The Monday to Friday buses will take twice the time the trains take - up from just over 25 minutes to 50 minutes from Westbury to Chippenham.   And because they take longer, of course they can't call at all the stations at the time they normally would - they'll be significantly earlier or later, and Swindon passengers need to allow for the time to change and await their connection at Chippenham.  There's no increase in frequency of buses over trains to help smooth out journeys that customer need to start or end at a certain time.

GWR wrote to key people (and we have a couple locally in Melksham) last Friday afternoon (2nd October) telling people what is the mostly-bad news for the town and the line through it, and inviting questions.  We accept the need for engineering works and some adjustment, but I emailed them back by return asking why the long distance passenger trains running through can't call at the intermediate three stations to maintain a train service -n after all, money has been spent after previous requests on enabling the newer IET trains to make the calls "even" at Melksham. And here I am, 5 days later, still awaiting a reply.

Above are "facts" ... my personal opinion ... to follow

 
Heading off on a 'Streetview' explore, the line there is now four tracks but trains on what's now the East Coast Main Line have deserted it. Felling station, a metro stop. It's possible to find a trace of the earlier railway though - inspecting the arch of this low bridge a little over 100 yards from Felling station is a starting point - sandwiched between later extensions is, perhaps, the North Eastern railway's structure.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/dUtS4DnFZVb1v8BP6

 

Delays now pushed out to 0830 - it's been pretty chaotic, especially on the Elizabeth Line - I got as far as Acton, then we stopped, and eventually reversed to Ealing Broadway 

 
Limited service through Melksham this coming Saturday-Friday:
https://www.gwr.com/travel-information/travel-updates/planned-engineering
(Pewsey area)

 

Do you remember ‘Survivors’, that 1975 BBC post-apocolypse (and presumably post-watersed) show where they drove around in Jerry Leadbetter’s yellow Volvo estate - until it ran out of petrol and they had to use a full-sized steam loco instead?

 
Cancellations to services between London Paddington and Reading

Due to engineering works not being finished on time between London Paddington and Reading fewer trains are able to run on some lines.

Train services running to and from these stations will be cancelled or delayed. Disruption is expected until 07:00 07/10.
Customer Advice
-
What has happened?
-
Network Rail have been carrying out planned engineering work between London Paddington to Reading area. They have informed us that this will not be finished on time. Bad weather, machinery failure or unexpected complications cause these works to overrun.

 

I believe one of.the northbound journeys goes to holyhead too

 
OK, so add a large supply of face-masks to Broadgage's list of essential items, unless you are Donald Trump (or presumably Robert F Kennedy junior) in which case substitute a few bottles of bleach.

 
I have updated the definition of 'OCR' in our Coffee Shop forum's Abbreviations & Acronyms page.

CfN.