Anger over Worcestershire Parkway parking charge increase

Oh early - that's good 

But rather more serious, the winter lull in leisure holiday passenger numbers will give GWR the opportunity to get more of these into service and I don't suppose shortforms rather that MULTIPLE units on these trains will lead to too much overcrowding in January and February.  A window of opportunity.

The easy ones are taken, and the rest nearly had me stumped but the 40-minute branch interval caught my eye.

8: Southend Victoria (truncated) with Southminster branch

Stratford 7 mins from LST, occasional Romford stop. 3tph main route with every other train connecting with a branch train. It's a long time since I've been to Eastern Region and I've never turned off at Shenfield but that pattern is quite distinctive and long-standing.

From GWR.com

The first of Great Western Railway’s recommissioned Class 175 trains has entered into passenger service ahead of their phased rollout next year.

Yesterday’s 1340 Plymouth-Penzance service was operated by 175001. It then operated the 1552 return service.

GWR leased 26 Class 175 trains earlier this year as part of plans to rejuvenate its regional and suburban services.

The full fleet will be introduced throughout 2026, operating predominantly between Exeter St Davids and Penzance, as well as to Barnstaple and Okehampton.

In the early stages of the rollout, services operated by the 175s will vary to support wider training and maintenance needs.

It follows the retirement of GWR’s four remaining Castle Class sets on Saturday. The Class 43 locomotives and Mark 3 coaches, which operated on the Great Western network for almost 50 years, are due to be returned to their leasing companies in the new year.

There's currently 31 a day almost all on the Cardiff<>Nottingham axis.  That looks set to almost double to 56 trains a day with the Cardiff<>Nottingham's supplemented by a mostly hourly call on the longer distance XC services.

I will nit pick slightly in that the morning commuter service remains little changed, just one extra train from Plymouth to Edinburgh that gets into New Street just before 9am, and nothing heading south for Cheltenham/Gloucester other than the current 07:58 as the first Bristol southbound service doesn't get there until gone 10am.

5: Between Yeovil Junction and Pen Mill Monday to Friday.

I notice that if you journey between Pen Mill and the Junction on a Saturday, you have to overnight there before you can get the next service back on a Sunday morning. Maybe it would be quicker to walk!

Note that (some or all?) of the NR versions are valid to 12 December 2025! Table 133 for example. NR needs to catch up!

[snip]

 It would have been a very serious act of vandalism to use the standard massive wiring gantries on a prominent route through a World Heritage City.

[snip]

Asking questions that perhaps I should not:

* Is there some logic in having a more "cyclic" timetable which allows trains to be longer in summer and shorter in winter, allowing for more units to be under heavier maintenance when traffic levels are lower?  I appreciate that there are Newquay and Pembroke Dock difference already - though are those more vestiges of history?

* A modest thinning out of tourist services during the winter would allow for staff training to catch up and (ducks!) for staff to take their holidays away from the peak  .

* An adding of a few minutes here and there into schedules to avoid working trains to the extreme, though noting that the cycle length increase would tend to add the need for another train in the cycle, or reduce the frequency considering how short most turn rounds are already

I expect howls of "yes, but" ... but questions asked so "why not" can be explained.

Operation Brock sees lorries heading to Dover queue on one side of the M20

The government is considering introducing a scaled-back version of a traffic-holding measure for vehicles queueing to cross the English Channel.

Operation Brock, a contraflow system on the M20 coast-bound in Kent, currently runs between junction eight, near Leeds Castle, and junction nine, near Ashford.

But the Department of Transport (DfT) is looking at starting it further down the motorway to try to stop lorries cutting through nearby villages. "We recognise the impact Operation Brock has on residents, which is why we continue to work closely with the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum to improve safety, reduce local disruption, and develop longer-term traffic management solutions," a DfT spokesperson said.

Operation Brock can currently be used to park 2,000 lorries, but Brock 2 or Mini Brock, as it is being called, could see that decrease to about 1,700. The last time Operation Brock was completely full was in the summer of 2022.

Helen Whately, MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, said Operation Brock was "beyond infuriating" and that she backed the push for a scaled-back version. "Brock jams up our roads when traffic grinds to a halt, lorries cut through villages, and families face delays getting to work," she said. "It was meant to be only for emergencies, now it's a regular headache."

Operation Brock is funded by the DfT, with decisions on its use made by the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum. On average, the operation costs about £250,000 each time it is deployed, a Freedom of Information request revealed.

The scheme was put in place overnight on Monday and was expected to be removed overnight on 22 December, with the motorway reopening as normal on 23 December.

The Kent and Medway Resilience Forum said if traffic started to build, drivers should check their route before setting off, allow extra time for their journey and pack their car with essentials, including food, water and medication.

In July, Kent County Council said it was looking for alternatives to Operation Brock, including an off-road lorry facility to try to ease congestion.

This would make sense - I'm right in thinking that the 802s are GWRs own trains that they specced at the higher power rating for the GUs?, while the 800s are those that Hitachi own & specced to the DfT requirement & are lower rated?

So putting the 800s under less long-distance working off the wires? Ties in with the amended timetable starting on January 5th....

Travelled past Sydney Gardens last Saturday on a diverted London-bound IET. If the good burghers of Bath really cared about the local environment as much as they claim how come they haven't forced their council to immediately remove the graffiti that I observed?