A couple of G&Ts helps, or on the Caledonian Sleeper a whisky with ginger ale and ice.

 

The 15:15 Swindon to Westbury left Swindon 101.75 minutes late (at 16:57) and was 107 minutes late into Westbury ... by which time the next two trains to Dilton Marsh had left ...

Lots of learning this afternoon - to be written up over the next 48 hours.   Information and alternatives misleading and scant.

 
17:35 Swindon to Westbury due 18:19
17:35 Swindon to Westbury due 18:19 will be cancelled.
This is due to a fault with the signalling system.

 
BBC advising that Planning consent for Stonehenge tunnel has been formally revoked

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7959v897n9o

DfT documents which says signed by Heidi Alexander, apparently to save money (and with no obvious alternative improvement by rail or road to/from south west).

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proposed-revocation-of-the-a303-amesbury-to-berwick-down-development-consent-order-2023

 
Fast forward to March 18th and this from a Glasgow Times blog on the progress with demolition. The blog features photos of the demolition crew carefully approaching a now free-standing masonry element above the surviving facade. Then, this:

"The Glasgow Times understands that today will be the last day of demolition work on the building at the corner of Union Street and Gordon Street."

Perhaps given the costs of the ongoing disruption to the station and streets, it's now calculated to be more cost effective to quickly secure the facade, returning the station, streets and businesses to operation and the facade can then be worked on at less risk.

Mark

https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/25945759.live-updates-union-street-building-demolition-continues/

 
Maybe tfw should look at purchasing the ncp car park  by queen street station/Newport road in Cardiff and demolish it would make it easier to widen the. Newport road bridge to accommodate 4 tracks instead of 2

 
Via Prof Ian Walker on Bluesky: his words:

"This could ve big: DfT have a new tool showing how well-connected every 100x100m cell in England and Wales is to work, shops, leisure, health etc, broken down by mode."

Mark

https://connectivity-tool-lite.dft.gov.uk/

 

RT's are for the connoisseur. They are almost as good as KSW's... I went on the 'Farewell to the RT's' tour (and, for that matter, the 'Farewell to the KSW's').

I note that the last few Routemasters were recently auctioned off by TfL, and got silly money. https://www.wilsonsauctions.com/news-and-insights/news/legendary-1960s-london-routemaster-buses-go-under-the-hammer

 
ITV news last night was reporting that the car-on-track closed the line and inconvenienced thousands of commuters getting to work.    At first I thought the number was a bit over the top - but perhaps we are approaching 1000 journeys a day now on the trains that pass thought Melksham.   Say 250 journeys at Melksham, twice that number passing through, and a significant number making Swindon <-> Chippenham and Trowbridge <-> Westbury journeys.

With the "local plan" for Wiltshire thrown out, we are likely to see a building environment in which the NPPF and the Neighbourhood Plan provide the guidance framework for planning once the core plan expires, and it's predicted that this will bring a great deal more housing even than was outlined in the local plan.  Taken forward with a reliable, all day every day train services in conjunction with buses that connect with trains in addition to meeting other transport needs that don't involve a rail "leg", we may well be up to those thousands by the end of this decade, and then grow beyond.

 
18/03/2026  (It's been a while since this thread carried news.  Something of a record in terms of recent performance)

 

Good to see that stupidity is still widely available

 

Something good about the sound of "Holt Halt"  or "Holt Halte"

 
The date is on the page , it’s found by clicking on the add to calendar button,carefully hidden behind the  beware of the leopard signs!!

 
I'd need to answer: 'It depends'. I've not been on one since 2018, and that was by then the perennially-defective-at-the-edges angloscottish sleeper stock and the defects rather disrupted the mindset that's needed of 'Sleep wiith a few wakes that are nothing to worry about.'

On the west country sleeper this can be dreaming that one is actually standing upright on a bed that's now mounted vertically on the wall - but then one thinks "Oh yes, the Crofton bends, nothing to worry about".

Or, carriage detaching noises, locomotives, and wakening to think - 'Ah, Edinburgh. That's the Inverness portion, poor people who have to get up at silly o'clock to move their touring bikes from the other part of the train to the Fort William portion. I should wake up again in a bit to see a glimpse of the view from the back-after-50-years Airdrie to Bathgate line'.

Or, the Aberdeen sleeper, waking up repeatedly at the continuous, aggressive and frankly ominously dangerous sound from the loco and thinking 'Yes, Alycidon - an odd choice of loco for a sleeper train'.

Earlier still, the sleeper service between Liverpool and Euston - sleeping straight through, waking up at the terminus convinced that the journey hasn't happened at all and being thoroughly surprised at being in a completely different city to the one in which I went to bed.

Mark

 
I am not sure my vote carries much statistical weight!

Normally I find it difficult to sleep in any moving vehicle or plane.  The only time I have used sleeper trains was nearly 40 years ago in India, when I surprised myself by how well I slept on overnight journeys from Agra to Madras/Chennai, and Vasco da Gama (Goa) to Bombay/Mumbai.  Indian cities were undergoing their renaming at the time.

 
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/caledonian-sleeper-releases-soothing-train-36859967#Echobox=1773360970


I looked ASMR up ...

 

I couldn't see anything except the speaker's name, time (not date!) venue and cost on the page linked.  Good example of a page that has either not been thought through by its author, or is not intended to stand in isolation as a landing page.

It's by Bob Tinker and costs £2 for members and £4 for others, at 14:30 what I have worked out to be this afternoon.   Whether it is just seaside piers, or includes piers that support various bridges, and when it will be followed by part 2, I know not.

 

 
Not sure if it might be just about piers in W-S-M,or other locations around the U.K.

https://westonmuseum.org/event/friends-of-the-museum-talk-british-piers-part-1/

 
At Cardiff Bay Station today it seems that the works on the rather spacious new entrance is coming on so here's a photo I took. 
The old platform is yet to come back into use and it looks like completion is more months than weeks away going by the current rate of progress and off course, the tram platform has yet to be started at some point in the future.

 
Passing through Temple Meads, I noticed that the (very) gradual refurbishment of the former Bonaparte's cafe/bar has taken another modest step forward with new wooden herringbone flooring so I took this pic.
I also noticed that most of the "boxes" on the platforms from the roof refurb have now gone, save for a few at the far southern end of the station.

 

Anyone else out there hoping that the dreaded RingGo follow them soon?

 
Some have wondered how some multi-storey car-parks will cope with the extra weight of SUVs  (which may partly be the cause of so many pot-holes).

 

Before my time (just), but apparently it was only ever called Holt Junction. Seems like a missed opportunity nonetheless!

 
Out on the bike this morning passed 175002, immediately north of Starcross, exhibiting an impressive turn of speed. As above running to time on the 2C20 EXD > PNZ.

 
 

A whole series of these - excellent to get train services back on track rather than a car on the track. 

Good to see that that contingency was in place for later services, though proved to be un-needed;  one of the cases where cancellation notices that are revoked are a good approach.

 
NCP seem to have lots of multi-story car parks in city centres, that are of the 1950s and 1960s design, often with other businesses in the ground floors.    Many of these concrete car parks have very tight spaces by modern (fatter) car standards.

Last time I used one of these (in Nottingham) it seemed to be really unpopular and run down, and required careful manoeuvring to park, so I can see why many prefer other car parks that are more modern, better lit, with working lifts, and bigger ramps and spaces.

 

It is GWR territory. I think you mean 'halte'. 

 
The rot probably set in when all those German engineered parking areas in our inner cities started to get built on. I have memories of lots of NCP sites in London in my youth.