Proper trains, of the suburban type.

19 minutes late from Melksham ....

Over the years, I have met Mark Hopwood many times. I have the greatest respect for him as 'a manager'. Two examples from me:

1. When a GWR event was held at Barnstaple, on the return journey, Mark was on his mobile phone to Control, just making sure that our train, and the various connections at Taunton, weren't disrupted (he and I exchanged grins, while he was speaking to them [Image from here is not available to guests] ):

06:35 Salisbury to Worcester Foregate Street due 09:47 will be started from Westbury.

It will no longer call at Salisbury and Warminster.
It will be delayed at Westbury.
This is due to more trains than usual needing repairs at the same time.

I've found a 'workaround' - hopefully without annoying grahame. [Image from here is not available to guests]

Unclear from the website as t how to acquire tickets for the Newquay visit.  Any pointers please?

Plane crashes in Colombia, killing all 15 on board

A passenger plane has crashed in northern Colombia, killing all 15 people on board, the country's state-run airline Satena confirmed.

In a statement, it said its aircraft - a Beechcraft 1900 - "suffered a fatal accident", but gave no further details. The wreckage has now been located in a mountainous area.

The official passenger list includes lawmaker Diogenes Quintero Amaya and Carlos Salcedo, a candidate in upcoming congressional elections.

Satena earlier said contact with the plane was lost 11 minutes before it had been scheduled to land in the city of Ocaña, near the Venezuelan border, at 12:05 local time (17:05 GMT) on Wednesday.

According to the airline, Flight NSE 8849 took off from the city of Cúcuta, about 100km (62 miles) north-east from Ocaña, carrying 13 passengers and two crew members.

A search operation was immediately launched in the mountainous area, and a hotline was set up for the relatives of those who were on the plane.

Colombia's armed forces have been helping with the search effort in the area where the plane went missing, which has areas controlled by Colombia's ELN guerrilla group.

Before 1967, there was Worcestershire Constabulary.  That was merged with Shropshire and Herefordshire to form West Mercia Constabulary.  The new set up has seen nothing but reductions in police stations and police presence, year after year. 

I'm going to post this item here, even though it is both 'the wider picture' and 'railway related' - for which we have other boards on the Coffee Shop forum - but it is, I think, quite funny. I suspect the magistrates did, too, quietly behind the scenes.

From the BBC:

... it doesn't extend to sheds at all (now reported as a separate category).

Man who blamed dog for crash handed driving ban

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Jody Lovatt allowed the BBC to photograph his French bulldog, Reggie, shortly after the crash

A van driver who blamed his dog chewing through the handbrake for a crash at a railway station has been handed a six-month driving ban.

Jody Lovatt, 49, caused more than £22,000 of damage after his runaway van careered down a road and smashed through level crossing barriers before striking a building in Knaresborough on 10 July.

Lovatt, who had told a BBC reporter at the scene that his French bulldog, Reggie, had been at fault, pleaded guilty to careless driving and to endangering safety of persons conveyed by the railway earlier this month.

Earlier, he appeared at York Magistrates' Court for sentencing and told the bench: "I wish I'd stayed in bed that day."

Lovatt, of Kirkby Malzeard, was fined £253 and given three points on his licence, which brought his total to 12 and triggered an automatic disqualification.

The hearing was told Lovatt, who ran a business fitting aerials, had been on his way to a job when the accident happened at about 06:40 BST.

He had been in the process of trying to restart his broken-down vehicle but got distracted by his dog after it "did a bit of a runner".

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The van crashed into the level crossing at Knaresborough Station

As Lovatt tried to retrieve his dog, the van rolled down the road and crashed through a gate in the level crossing beside Knaresborough Station, before smashing into a Grade II-listed Victorian signal box which was attached to a terraced house, said prosecutor Kathryn Walters.

The force of the impact caused the gate to fly into the air and land on the tracks. The van suffered major front-end damage, including a smashed bonnet.

When police arrived, Lovatt claimed he had put the handbrake on before getting out of the vehicle. He at first blamed the accident on Reggie chewing through a cable in the handbrake, but later retracted this version of events.

As a result of the accident, Network Rail had to cancel nine services and partially cancel 14 trains between Harrogate and York during early-morning rush hour. A further 11 were delayed, with the overall disruption costing the rail operator £16,147. In addition, £6,313 of damage was caused to the level crossing.

Lovatt represented himself in court and told magistrates: "From my point of view I was trying to do something right, but it's gone wrong, accidentally. If I could have done anything to stop it happening, I would have."

He said he had felt pressured on the morning in question by the "bad" traffic on the day of the Great Yorkshire Show, which delayed him getting to work. He said this was heightened by "the dog trying to jump out of the van" and the fact that he was going through an "awkward divorce" at the time.

He said he had been left with a "big claim on my insurance" and had had to mothball his business. He said he was now reliant on state benefits. He said the incident had caused him great "mental stress" and that he was on a waiting list for mental health treatment.

Lovatt made a bid to keep his driving licence, telling magistrates he had suffered "exceptional hardship" and lived in a small village with poor public transport. He said he was also a carer for a female friend.

Magistrates acknowledged Lovatt was remorseful and that no-one was injured in the accident, but found others would not suffer due to him losing his licence.

Don't forget you need French agreement before building that. [Image from here is not available to guests]

Panic on crowded Ukraine train - passenger describes moment of Russian drone strike

A Ukrainian soldier has described the moment a passenger train was targeted by Russian drones, killing five people.

When a carriage on the train was hit in northeastern Ukraine, passengers threw themselves on the floor in panic and the military officer told them to get out immediately. Without his instruction, issued moments before the carriage burst into flames, many more passengers could have died.

The officer, whose army call-sign is Omar, is part of Ukraine's 93rd brigade. He was among the passengers travelling on a route from Chop, on the border with Slovakia, to Barvinkove, the last stop before the front line in eastern Ukraine.

The first of three Russian drones landed near the train, forcing it to come to a halt. "Then we heard the rumble of another drone, and then an explosion," Omar tells the BBC. "The blast was so strong that parts of the carriage shattered into splinters."

As the commander of a drone unit, he quickly realised he and the other passengers had to get out as the train could get hit again. In all, 291 people were on the train at the time, officials say.

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Five people were killed in the attack, which President Zelensky said was "terrorism"

"After the second hit, I understood that the drone operator was observing what kind of target it was hitting," Omar says, and a stationary train was an easy target. The carriage that suffered a direct hit quickly became engulfed in flames. "I am in the military and I am prepared for such attacks," says Omar. "But for others it was a shock to be so close to death."

Many passengers evacuated the train in a state of deep distress, and videos from the scene show people screaming and crying as they move away from the smouldering wreck. It was too dangerous for such a large number of people to stay near the burning carriages, so he urged them to start moving towards a nearby motorway.

He then went back to the train with some of the other passengers to check if anyone had been left behind. Inspecting the carriages, he saw a body and continued to look for survivors. Five people lost their lives in the attack.

In the final carriage, Omar found a young woman with a baby. "She was very scared and had no idea what to do but thank God she was alive," he says. She barely had time to put on warm clothes, and screamed she needed to go back to the carriage to retrieve her suitcase and documents, the officer says.

"I came here to bring my son," she told Omar as she was getting off the train. Later, Omar understood she had been travelling to the front line so that her soldier husband could see their child.

The attack on the passenger train in Kharkiv region was condemned by President Volodymyr Zelensky as terrorism.

It hit the heart of the railway system - a symbol of resilience in a country where the airspace has been closed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Millions of Ukrainians rely on the 21,000km-long (13,000-mile) railway network to travel around the country and to cross the border into neighbouring countries, from which they can then catch flights.

Although the railways have been targeted in the past, by and large Ukraine's Ukrzaliznytsia rail company has been able to keep people moving on its vast network - although escalating attacks on infrastructure and severe weather have led to increasingly long delays.

Trains to the frontline city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region were eventually suspended last autumn, once the area became too dangerous due to sustained aerial Russian attacks.

On Wednesday, flags flew at half-mast in railway stations across Ukraine. The daily minute of silence observed across the country was dedicated to the victims of the drone strike on the train.

Hours after the attack had taken place, services were running again on the Barvinkove-Chop line.

I didn't know that.  And neither did the local police, it would appear.  A neighbour had £10,000 fishing gear lifted from his garden shed a few months back.  Our shed was broken into at the same time, but nothing taken.  Zero interest from the police for either of of the break-ins, apart from a crime number, and the arrival a couple of weeks later of a PCSO to drink tea and supply a crime prevention leaflet

Edit: Just spotted TG's earlier message.