Both costing far too much and ridiculously delayed.

However............

Heathrow is a national and international flagship and can get you from West London to almost anywhere in the World.

HS2, for more than twice the price, at some indeterminate time in the future, will be able to get you from West London to..............Solihull.

Happy to talk value 

 
I remain puzzled as how any such figures are produced.

For example, how was such a precise 'figure' of £49,000,000,000 calculated?
Perhaps,
Planning permission applications, £8,000,000;
Civil engineering and construction costs, £10,000,000,000
Consultants fees, £38,992,000,000
Total = £49 billion.

Ah, now I see. 

 
An update, from the BBC:

 

More likely both are overpriced and aren't value for money.

 
From the BBC:


The BBC item contains much more detail - I have selected just some aspects to quote here.  Please do click on the BBC article to view more.

CfN. 

 
More than a small whiff of AI about that briefing!

 
From National Rail.

Route(s) affected
through London Paddington

Description
A fault with the signalling system at London Paddington means that Elizabeth line services must run at a reduced speed on some lines.

As a result, Elizabeth line services to / from this station may be cancelled, delayed or revised.

Disruption is expected until 10:00.

 
West Wiltshire Rail User Group / public meetings for 2027.   These are provisional dates from (last night's) Committee Meeting - to be confirmed with the hall. On past record, they are sufficiently probably for you to put them into your diaries

17th March 2027
19th May 2027
15th September 2027
24th November 2027

We are holding Saturday, 5th June for a 90th birthday party for Dilton Marsh Station.  Although a pensioner in human years, in some ways Dilton Marsh is our "child", being the most recent completely new station opened in Wiltshire.

For 2027, we are looking to booking the hall (*) half an hour earlier and starting the talk 30 minutes earlier too (hall open at 18:30 for a 19:00 meeting).  This better fits trains arriving from Swindon, Chippenham and Melksham, and the local trains from both Avoncliff and Dilton Marsh.  This means that the evening may end a few minutes earlier - noting the need for speakers and some departures to be on the train at a couple of minutes to 9.  Other trains remain in place just after 9:20 and I'm sure networking will extend for those catching them.

Committee meetings are held in the evening of the first Monday of the (usually) alternate month at 5 p.m. in the ASDA community room.  We have one committee member nominated to speak for each of the seven stations, and chair, treasurer and secretary who also may double up to speak for a particular station.  The Committee is elected at the AGM but the nomination / elections process is a friendly and not-really-competitive one, and we can co-opt along the way if we wish.  With the retirement of Rosemary this year, we have a bit of a gap and would welcome someone to update us and speak for and about Warminster.    We are also aware of "out of town" interest - whilst we are very much West Wiltshire in our geography, there are fuzzy edges; we have a committee rep for Frome, and also look outwards and welcome members from Chippenham and Bath Spa who would also be welcomed onto the committee with an interest in services into West Wilts from those places. 

(*) - Bethesda Church Hall, Gloucester Road, Trowbridge - about 100 yards from the station.  There is (sshhh!) free onsite parking for people attending meetings - you do need to check in on the machine in the hall.  There is also wheelchair access to the hall.

 
The link to YouTube which I posted above still works, and I have just watched it again, on this sad anniversary.

It is worth 37 minutes of your time, members and guests of the Coffee Shop forum, as a sombre reminder of what could have / did go wrong.

Chris from Nailsea.

 

That had me ROFL. 

 
This topic has been moved to The West - but NOT trains in the West.

https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1888.0

 
An update, from the BBC:

 
Just noticed from this video on You Tube that the Heathrow expansion will cost £49bn.  And people were complaining that HS2 is going to cost £100bn.  HS2 seems like better value for money than Heathrow expansion. 

 
Removing the spans, a briefing for the community.

https://www.moray.gov.uk/media/ovnnu0jj/file168028.pdf

 

Yes indeed.  I mentioned up thread that all it will do is give a bit more stopping tolerance for the drivers, who have to be accurate to not much more than a foot at the moment, and it will standardise the stopping position for 9 and 10-car trains which will eliminate the risk of the driver stopping at the wrong one by mistake.

No more doors in total will be platformed though.

 

Superb questions and massive challenge.   I could write you a book on the subject - studied it quite a bit (and still do).

With dynamic and altering data, it becomes important to have it easily updated from a single source, and to have it headline to the right people when it changes. 

At tiimes, yes, there is information overload.  There are one or two of my sources that push me so much data that much of it washes over without me always appreciate what's there.  And having headlines appear just when there is something of note on my daily social media feeds is really useful.   There are lessons / morals in my comments that should help inform those people who generate the data.

 
The trouble with this sort of question is that of opportunity cost.  Time and money dictate that I can't visit everywhere and how can I say that my life would be richer now if at any particular time I'd visited B instead of A?  Perhaps one or two other life choices may be more debatable however.   

 

Would be killed by EMP unless suitable precautions taken.

 
Spades actually in the ground on this now.  Piling in November for full installation 'Before Spring'

 

I looked at that picture and thought it looked similar to the approach to Guildford via Effingham Junction. I looked again and the train seems to have Guildford as its destination. It appears to be terminating on platform 1.

It may have yellow on the front but I would describe most SWR trains as being blue and grey, with yellow at the ends.

 

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.....