First train this morning

 
I see amber heat alerts have been issued from 0900 Tuesday-0900 Friday, warning of likely travel issues, which may be "upgraded" to red in some areas.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/red-weather-warnings-possible-met-office-says-as-36c-heatwave-approaches/ar-AA29IBjn?ocid=socialshare

Does this mean refunds/alterations will be allowed by GWR for the affected periods, for those who wish to change their plans taking the warnings into account?

 
Here are five mugs that Lisa or I commonly drink out of.



Why do we choose these from all those we have to hand?  Which of us chooses which of those pictured?

 

That graph is misleading, or at least its annotation is. The physical light level (in lux) varies almost linearly over most of the eclipse, with no sharp dip. It's the subjective brightness that we notice that gives the rather logarithmic shape in that graph. A cube-root-law model fits the eye better, but the shape on a graph looks very similar to logarithmic.

From what I recall, if you don't know there's going to be a partial solar eclipse, even a near miss, you probably won't notice it at all. Even if you are outdoors in bright sunlight, you won't be looking at the face of the sun so as to observe its shape change. The dimming is very slow and subjectively it doesn't darken much. That's why a total eclipse can sneak up on you, until at the last minute the world suddenly goes all dark. That goes for birds too.

 

 
2E06 0743 Penzance to Exeter St Davids
 This service is cancelled.
This service was cancelled due to a late arrival of the service from Europe (TN).

Blame it on the Europeans - that's a new one!
Left Penzance 42 down, and arrived Exeter 55 Down.
Departed Exeter 24 down, enroute back to Penzance.

 
Are you thinking of King Solomon's Mines perhaps?

 
Nobody is mentioning the original War of the Worlds story 

 
Intriguing.

So if this data is to be believed, a Friday afternoon train leaving Paddington headed for the Westcountry for one of the busiest event weekends of the year, with the previous train having been cancelled, has "many" seats available throughout with the exception of First class which is full (at those prices there must have been some very rich people on board, or perhaps the GWR management surfing team travelling on staff passes?)

I'd say either the data has a whiff of fertiliser about it - a case of "more sensors than usual requiring repair at the same time?", or perhaps if accurate and the train was as lightly loaded as the data indicates suggests that people have given up on relying on the train and have gone by road instead - or perhaps surfed all the way? 

 

What a day for you... Wednesday will provide almost the same depth of eclipse though at a different time of day, perhaps tell the rooks as 1999 will be a bit of a folk memory for them.

It's odd, the amount of light provided by a mostly obscured sun's disk. After the 1999 event, someone kindly provided me with a set of figures from a data logger that they'd set up at Carn Brea (the hill near Land's End rather than the one above Redruth). Despite, subjectively, the light levels dropping during a partial eclipse - while also gaining peculiar qualities - that plunge in light levels during the total phase then comes as more than a bit of a shock - and then, if partly cloudy, the abruptly dynamic appearance of the sky as the shadow tracks across...

Mark

 
A train to Plymouth organised by Pathfinder Tours that we picked up at Bristol. For the actual minute or so of totality, the clouds in the direction of the sun disgraced themselves - two minutes later they parted once more. However, obscured sun aside, the utterly unsettling appearance of everything else - and the behaviour of the wildlife - the eclipsed sun is only a smaller part of the experience and with a complex sky the lighting effects are overwhelming. After which we headed up to Gunnislake and back as that's pretty special too.

From the travel point of view the railway was... busy. A Network Rail helicopter on standby at Exeter, but the only disruption to the Pathfinders train was on the return as someone in the environs of Wellington saw fit to vandalise something (on another train) but management were on standby to sort issues so not much delay from that.

Mark

 

Yes indeed it is.
And when I bought my house from a bank, a date was agreed for the signing. I booked the ferry and time off work. Then the bank said that their guy could not get down from Paris but would come two days later. 'No problem' said the Notaire. The documents of title now show that I bought the property from Caisse d'Epargne on April 22nd 1992 and that Caisse d'Epargne sold the property on April 24th 1992. Fortunately there were no insurance or other complications during the dual period.

 
I remember occasional family trips to London where one of the treats for me and my sister was to go to Trafalgar Square and buy little bags of bird food for giving to the pigeons.

 

Absolutely. It's perverse. A safety net for poor performance.

Linking senior TOC pay to customer satisfaction ratings...........now there's an incentive that would have got results! 

 

Until the rail operations are also the taxpayer's responsibility, doesn't this remove [a/the] financial incentive from the operating company to run trains on time, and to make connections? 

 

A number of shortforms elsehwhere 

 
9 coaches and 5 coaches scheduled shortly to Newquay

 

It comes entirely from the taxpayer.

 
I took the family down to Penzance on Eclipse day 1999. We travelled down on the 06:25 from Exeter - normally a three car unit, but on that day, it was 11 Mark I coaches hauled by a Class 66. As history will tell you, it was cloudy and raining at Penzance, but it still went dark. Had we gone to St Ives or Newquay, the skies were clear!

 
On August 11th 1999, we completed the purchase of our first home in Melksham - No. 404, The Spa - an old semidetached 4 story Bath House from 1814 that was listed (grade 2) and we bought as a wreck.  We stood outside as it went dark in the middle of the day and listened and saw the rooks from the rookery in the neighbouring property start calling and with some concern as it became night-like for the m.

 
I recall seeing the 1999 eclipse from the cliffs very nearly at the southern most point in Devon.  I'm planning to view Wednesday's from somewhere near there too. 
Not being quite a total one, there's not the same level of hype and media lead doom mongering about the inability of the region to cope with the expected influx of visitors which ultimately didn't materialize (probably in part as a consequence of said media overkill). 
It'll be interesting to see how busy it gets where I am.

 
Verging slightly overseas, I have some anecdotal view of property transactions in France.

My sister lives in France. She sold her converted farmhouse near Bordeaux and moved to Normandy.  She recounted how the legal process for the financial transaction on the day was suspended, while the legal people left the room, and some fine-tuning was negotiated between the seller (my sister) and the purchasers (a family from England).

Apparently, that's how it's done in France.

 

Skyscanner offers various explanations for airline pricing including this:

 

That's natural pricing - or just pricing - isn't it? If you rock up to a little local market in much of the world, looking like a rich foreign tourist, you'll pay the rich-looking tourist price - much more that the locals pay. It's been like that since early antiquity! One of the first uses of writing was for laws and market regulations and records.

We've got used to open pricing - what it says on the label is what you (and everyone else) pay. That needs to be backed up by laws to enforce it. And there are exceptions, e.g. sales by private contract. The biggest example would be housing, where you can never be sure if you'd paid too much or if someone else did a special deal.

Incidentally, if we were logical the buyer would have professional advice on prices, as they need to make a judgement on every house. The seller, who usually has one, has a simple job (pick the best offer) unless they don't sell (in which case they need advice on the value to other buyers). But of course we're not logical in that sense.

 
Except for your bus ticket which may be bought by card at Warminster station ticket box.

Once on site, there's no wi-fi possible & don't expect much mobile coverage either

 
Only 33% off with 16-25 though - so not really an overlap

 
If I may also offer a timely reminder here, the whole event will be 'cash only', with no card transactions possible, due to the very seasonal nature of this event.

CfN. 

 
I decided to try out a month's RTT+ subscription - probably useful in months where I'm travelling a lot! There were a lot of delays on Southern but by catching earlier late-running trains I could reach the Solent area on time. So it could easily be argued the main bulk of delay was still down to GWR. But it's hard to say which delay was the 'seed' for Delay Repay purposes. Exactly the thing they shuold be working out between themselves. I think sometimes where it's uncertain the system looks at the first leg's TOC without considering the overall working.

Not sure if Delay Repay money comes entirely from the TOC that accepts the claim or comes down to the original ORCATS split.