I have added the Fastnet race disaster to "On this day" for 14th August so we are reminded each year. I will NOT add a pointer to this thread; this thread is in "The Lighter Side" and the race disaster is about as far from that a light topic as you can get!

 

The main policy should be to drastically reduce fossil fuel use, not by trading, offsetting or purchasing indulgences, but actual physical reductions.

Tax road fuel to a greater extent than at present, and extend the same tax to aircraft fuel.
greatly increase wind and solar electricity production.

 

I wonder if that's to do with 175 availability. The GWR facilities book advertises the 175 as serving Falmouth. A 175 hasn't been to Newquay since August.

 

The Fastnet Disaster wason thew other evening.
I was on duty that Monday morning as it all really 'got going'.
The night shift we took over from just had a new yachts in trouble.
Never forgotten.

 

Coincidentally, a former girlfriend of mine and her parents on their yacht were also caught out by the storm and had a pretty grim time of it going by her account.  Fortunately, they all made it back safely.

 
......and bringing up the rear...................

 
Talking yesterday with someone who normally can be trusted who suggested that through trains were likely to be delayed until Dec 2027 possibly May 2028, has anyone heard similar or is the original May 2027 target still on course?

 
If no one has said it before - The Salamanca.

Co incidentally, I was on the Salamanca on Thursday evening this week, and travel back to Portsmouth on Friday week. I will keep a look out for those clouds.

 

My uncle was also caught up in that incident - he was very grateful to be rescued by being picked up from the sea and winched up into a helicopter.

 

Rarely a problem with extra trains between Westbury and Bradford Junction - the throttle point is, I believe, between Avoncliff and Bathampton with long signalling section(s).   There will probably be the regular Sunday service through Melksham, and a couple of steam excursions.   Hopefully people will have gone out to see them yesterday, and anyone on the platform today will stand well back behind the yellow line.

 
2U09 (07:59 Exeter St Davids to Cardiff Central due 10:24) has just passed Bradford Junction and has got to Avoncliff - logically enough.

 
09:31 Liskeard to Looe due 10:01
09:31 Liskeard to Looe due 10:01 will be cancelled.
This is due to a fault on this train.
Further Information


If you require further information please speak to our staff at the station or on the train, use the Customer Help Point, message us on X @GWRHelp or call National Rail Enquiries on 03457 484 950.

If you arrive at your destination 15 or more minutes late because your GWR train was delayed or cancelled, you can claim Delay Repay compensation. Please keep your ticket and visit GWR.com/DelayRepay
Last Updated:18/10/2026 09:08

The 0931/1034 and 1211 all cancelled so far

 

Oh dear. Shoes on the seat. Youngsters today eh?

 
Cancellations to services between Taunton and Bristol Temple Meads
Due to a fault with the signalling system between Taunton and Bristol Temple Meads all lines are blocked.
Train services running through these stations may be cancelled, delayed or diverted. Disruption is expected until 12:00 18/10.

Diverted via Melksham?
07:59 Exeter St Davids to Cardiff Central due 10:24
07:59 Exeter St Davids to Cardiff Central due 10:24 will be diverted between Taunton and Bristol Temple Meads.
It will no longer call at Bridgwater, Highbridge & Burnham, Weston-Super-Mare, Weston Milton, Worle, Yatton, Nailsea & Backwell, Parson Street and Bedminster.
It is being delayed at Exeter St Davids.
This is due to a fault with the signalling system.
(Currently approaching Frome)

Via Melksham?
07:54 Bristol Temple Meads to Plymouth due 10:25
07:54 Bristol Temple Meads to Plymouth due 10:25 will be diverted between Bristol Temple Meads and Taunton.
It will no longer call at Nailsea & Backwell, Yatton, Worle, Weston-Super-Mare, Highbridge & Burnham and Bridgwater.
It is being delayed at Bristol Temple Meads.
This is due to a fault with the signalling system.
(Lost?)

 
A colleague from my teaching days in Dorchester was caught up in the 1979 Fastnet Race tragedy which resulted in 21 deaths. He was competing on one of the 303 yachts which were caught up in the unexpectedly severe storm.

 
Passing Yarnbrook yesterday afternoon.

 
The Bay of Biscay

On a rather more sombre note, from many years ago:

A retired couple, who were family friends of my wife to be, sailed their yacht out of Salcombe towards Gibraltar.  They didn't make it: I seem to remember that one body was found, but no wreckage, in the Bay of Biscay.

Never underestimate the power of the sea. 

 
Thank you for that long, but engaging, post, Grahame. It reminds me that I would have been regarded as eccentric for much of my time in private industry as I visited customers by public transport; anywhere between Perth and Portland.  I gained a lot of pleasure from the journeys at that time, but there was also some logic in that I was working long days and not having to drive when tired was a safer option.

Your post also illustrates that there is a lot more to modal choice than the transport modellers' favourite variables: cost and journey time. The transport planning profession is more alert to these things nowadays,  but it is hard to model qualitative dimensions (things you can't put a number on) and the information to calibrate a model may simply not exist.

Beware!
Things that are easy to measure but relatively unimportant tend to assert excessive influence;
Things that are important but hard to define and measure are overlooked in policy and objective setting.

So often, we approach planning with a preconceived "solution" and then find enough reasons to justify it. That's not how it's supposed to work but the relevant guidance is usually ignored.

Strange, isn't it, that, outside London, the UK is notably poor at making its public transport work as a system (not just bus and rail: even the railway itself struggles to think of itself as a system). It is conceivable that Devizes Gateway could be made to work for the benefit of the town economy. To do so, I think, probably needs revolutionary change over the whole country.

 
Marine traffic link to Grahames ferry. It’s a fairly new ferry, lacking character versus previous Brittany Ferries vessels

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:6732128

 
I just knew Coffee Shop forum member stuving would know that precise location. 

Going back to grahame's original post,



I happen to recognise those waves , as they were also there in the Bay of Biscay when I traversed it, on board the QE2 with my wife to be, some more than 30 years ago.

She was a Merchant Navy officer on the QE2 at that time, which gave me some rather privileged access to parts of the ship which were not available to other passengers - the engine rooms, and bridge, for example.

I was enjoying a conducted tour of the bridge of the QE2, in company with just a few similarly privileged passengers, when our guide suddenly broke off from his talk, leapt across a desk and grabbed a radio handset.  Fair play to him: while delivering his speech, he had also picked up a radio message on the loudspeaker on the bridge.  It was made from an RAF Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft, asking for permission from 'the Cunard ship in the Bay of Biscay' (like there was anyone else ) for permission to do a fly-past, for training purposes.

Our guide, Steve or Simon (and I also can't remember his surname, but he was First Officer, Navigation) promptly invited them to fly past - then went on the PA system to announce to all passengers that 'there will be an RAF aircraft flying past on the starboard side'. We could almost feel the QE2 leaning over to the right as passengers rushed to that side for a view 

My only regret is that I didn't have my camera / telephoto lens with me on the bridge at that time: I merely got a couple of snaps from my mobile phone with the Nimrod appearing as just a speck in the distance.

CfN.

 
I made a claim on 20th September, yesterday, 20th working day bounced back to me as incomplete, please update.
Entered claim, changed nothing, resubmitted.
Approved this morning.
The sceptic in me thinks the 20day bounce back is somewhat strange as they have a 20 day target, fudging stats for not meeting the 20 day timescale?

 
Some excellent points from Noggin, Trowres and others.

I came on here ... intending to quote points from both of you, and wider, and my own expertience heart, head and feet having lived within a mile of that stretch of railway for 15 years. 

Heart - the emotional desire for it to happen
Head - real thoughts as to what it might do and where the issued would be
Feet - actual travel experience living less than a mile from the line in question and what we did with no station

I got rather carried away - make of this what you will.  Spoiler - if done right it should work (and lots of very terse comments below hide a whole lot of experience and pointers) but if not done right / the bits don't join up ...

Experience widened to make comment / perhaps draw more recent lessons from Melksham ...

---

As a former resident in Easterton, we lived just a mile from the main line railway. We could walk across the footpaths and watch the express trains headed for London and the West Country - but they were useless to us for travel purposes. Central London was reached by car to Andover of Basingstoke and train into Waterloo; Pewsey occasionally.  I travelled a very great deal for work - drove 30,000 miles a year, never took the bus and hardly even the train.  Much of the milage was for work and with heavy equipment that meant my vehicle had to be a people carrier - were there a requirement to travel with that weight and bulk these days, it would still be via a big car.  Even in Central London.

Times changed, and the need for heavy equipment reduced.  Running IT courses, we moved from a Sun or Silicon Graphics workstation shared between two delegates, to a workstation for each delegate.  They shrank into laptops, which became in time a fleet of A4 sized machines that could pack for travel into a paper box, alternating for passing between the training note sets that our delegates worked to. And towards the end of my training career, we had moved to a position where most delegates preferred to use their own laptops, and I carried only a limited number of our company machines which became "just in case" adjuncts and were rarely used. 

Towards the end of my training career, I was "training" much more.  After 15 years living in Easterton, we moved to Melksham; we purchased a listed building in uninhabitable condition on 11th August 1999, standing outside our new home as we watched the total eclipse, the rooks calling concerned at the unexpected nighttime, and we were both excited and wondering what we had done.  And we moved in on 24th December - "must be in for Christmas", with the only room practical as our bedroom (safe floor) was on the third floor (fourth for any USA readers), and the only loo and leccy were on the ground floor, with a string of multiways.  I digress.

From Melksham, standard station run was "Kiss and Ride" via Chippenham, second choice Westbury, third choice Trowbridge.  And as there came to be less need for carrying beyond the capacity of what I could manage without a car, it became the preferred way to travel. Yes, I enjoyed open road driving but fighting jams all the way to Cambridge was not "Open Road" and it was tiring.  As course tutor, the teacher had to be there for 08:30 or 09:30 depending on what time we started, and that was of critical importance.  With Chippenham to London fares at peak times being high, and with our fixed expenses quotations, it was logical to travel up on a Sunday afternoon / evening, stay the night (easy to find somewhere cheap and cheerless near Paddington, even for London) and then be fresh to teach.   In those early days in Melksham, never the station there.  Too few trains, not at the right time, and nothing to fall back on if they failed.    The 22:16 bus from Chippenham Station was an excellent way home at the end of the course - saving Lisa the drive out late at night, though on many trips it left before the 22:11 train arrived.

 I used Melksham Station - err - when I could; from 2001 to 2006 there was a very thin service but it did work for inbound customers. Where just one person needed a course, they came to us and we would pick them up on the evening before and drop them off at their B&B.  Courses finished in time for them to catch the 17:00 homewards. Come 2007, the 17:00 gone and a service at either 19:50 (or 07:20 the next morning) and it became pickups from Chippenham and lifts back there. Our customer base - even 20 years ago - tended to be [environmentally aware / green] and a surprising number - around a half - arrived and left by public transport.

By 2014 when our service stepped back up from useless to useable though still thin, we reverted to offering pickups / dropoffs almost-only at Melksham Station and it worked well, though by that time I was spending far more time on site training and far less time in our Melksham base.  That was because we were ahead of the curve; our initially-niche topics like Perl, PHP MySQL and Python which no-one saw a training market for when we set up had become much more mainstream, and rather than our delegates being the one odd-bod at large organisations, the technology was being so useful that it was adopted by larger teams.

And so - having stepped the service back up - my own business use grew dramatically (bolstered by the need to carry less explained earlier) and the use by our trainee customers faded a little.   In 2006, we had taken over a former B&B for delegates and our public courses had become largely residential; it worked for the delegates and it worked for us, but it gave us a resource that needed to pay its way or at least break even, and rooms that were only used be delegates for perhaps have the time weren't cost effective.  And we were being asked "can we stay - we work at a business locally" and "My son and daughter-in-law live in Melksham and we're coming to visit them - but they have been breeding and don't have any spare rooms now".  And so we were moved to accept more general hotel bookings.  These customers were - if I characterise - less "public transport aware".  It was rare for them to arrive in anything but a private car, or to go out anywhere other that in their own car or a taxi (and ah, there in another tangent I will avoid.

Business journeys WERE able to start from Melksham again, and did so.  I reckon my travel miles didn't change much but my car driving miles slashed from 30,000 to 3,000 a year to far less than that now.  And 27,000 miles at an average of 45 m.p.h. is 600 hours a year. Roads around Easterton, Devizes, Melksham are not renowned for high speed. I got to be very much part of The Archers' community, listening on my way home - and indeed had done so from perhaps 1980 when we moved to Chippenham to cover a sales territory described as the South West (Shrivenham to Penzance!). At current prices - £9 per gallon, and 30 miles per gallon - a thousand gallons a year, £9,000 on fuel alone.  And that's before registration, insurance, serving including oils, tyres and parts, and depreciation.  Tutor needs to turn up in a decent vehicle, so an old banger won't do; we did try a retired London Taxi as a "character" vehicle we could get away with, but it turned out to have been retired because it was knackered.  Some wonderful stories to tell, but I got to know the AA man in Dublin very well, and it was exhausting to drive over long distances.

So since 2014, my use of Melksham Station has been much more personal business and much less by persons using my business - which in any case we retired just pre-covid.  My very first outbound - at the end of the day the trial service of 8 trains each way per day started - was to Thun, via Harwich, Hoek van Holland and an Interrail pass - to teach Lua, would you believe? And other notable destinations have include not only those near stations (and a wide range, from Bow Brickhill to Farnborough Main, Kirkhill and Waterbeach) but on occasions by onward bus - no other way, these days, to Ashby-de-la-Zouch or St Asaph.

I started writing - oops - several hours ago - in giving follow up examples for the post about Devizes Gateway, potential traffic there, how it might be abstractive, whether it would be used, how it might effect the buses.  I fear my example and experiences quoted, though we once live in what would be it's catchment, is a bit of an unusual one and whilst it may be taken as a learning and study case, it cannot be multiplied up to give a valid lesson.

That post does mention buses. I have, so far, only done so tangentially in these ramblings.  Would a Devizes Gateway station impact on bus use in the Devizes area?  Now THERE is an interesting question!

Trains are typically medium distance and upwards uses. Buses are much more local?  When we had a training centre and indeed a hotel I cannot recall any guests or delegates checking in after a bus journey to reach us. I can recall many hotel leisure guests asking us about Park and Ride for Bath which they wanted to visit while in the area, and the way they often needed to be convinced to leave their car on our drive and take the bus from outside - "no point in you driving to catch a bus when one goes direct from here!".

I contend that buses and trains are much more complementary than competitive - born out by evidence of where people go using each of the transport types.  However, there is very much a need to link up and connect. There are 100 places you can board a bus in the Melksham area, and there is just one station platform.  For public transport to work well as an attractive total journey for people, connections need to work between the two modes physically (bus stops and railway platforms close by each other), time wise (routinely providing good and reliable connections throughout appropriately frequent service) and organised passenger friendly (combined information and ticketing offered, without each having their own complex and daunting rule set, and a get-you-there guarantee and not a leave-you-stranded scenario if something goes wrong).   Provide those criteria are met then, yes, there's every best chance of Devizes Gateway, and a new township around it, being a roaring success.

 

 

but it would be an occasional, very short notice, menu change.

 

Indeed - passing la Pointe du Raz.

 

A trip along the Radstock-Mells route is instructive as to what can happen with unmaintained track and earthworks as the line hasn't been lifted, which is not to say that in various places it has not moved. For starters, it appears that track laid on a curve has a tendency to work its way to the inside of said curve, especially if it's helped by movement in the face of the embankment on the inside of the curve. Perhaps the one encourages the other.

 
I remember travelling on a VT class 158 from Swindon to Cheltenham Spa during that short-lived service.  It was oh so comfortable compared to the Sprinters that were normally used - it was so smooth and quiet.
To be fair to the Sprinters, they got you there, and the Golden Valley line through Stroud is scenic rather than fast.
As for the Pacers that were used on the route at one time, hmm, well, they were OK on plain welded line, but otherwise I had to brace myself and hope the thing didn't bounce itself off the track. 

 

Yes, we are ... on the 22:00 last night (Friday) off Portsmouth, the "Salamanca" bound for Santander where we are scheduled to arrive at 08:00 tomorrow (Sunday).  Three buses, an overcrowded three carriage train, and now the ferry. Boarded on deck three; only telling you that because I'm looking for a three pattern through this post.  Long queue for the lifts to our deck; usual "survival of the fittest mode" which means that everyone else got up before we did, and after a pleasant chat with the ferry staff we had a lift to ourselves.

I can share a picture - taken within the last hour - that will give you a much closer triangulation onto us



I can show you some of the great features here and on open supply



And I can tell you the official view of transpotting in these parts