The ten year anniversary of the line, and electrification is now heading its way, which begs an obvious question.

Mark

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25443880.342million-investment-announced-fife-borders-railway-upgrades/

 
Similar water problems on the Basingstoke Canal
https://www.hants.gov.uk/thingstodo/basingstokecanal/onthewater/locks
It is a canal without a reliable source. It didn't look unusually dry a few weeks ago (reported elsewhere on the forum). I do remember a few years ago when the section near Woking was that dry that a heron was methodically picking the fish out of the remaining puddles.

 

Indeed - and as a more recent example, from Coffee Aid:



And I don't know anyone who was around before 1583 and is still around today - without cofeee they have all perished.

I note that the Grand Cafe has been open rather longer than our Coffee Shop - we will never catch them up.  However, they are no a wine bar and whilst we may do a bit of whining here too, I hope we always have a dominant positive vibe!

 
I continue to thank grahame for providing all of us with the Coffee Shop forum. 


As an aside, do you know how important coffee is?  Coffee is vital for survival.  Dinosaurs didn't have coffee, and look how that turned out.

CfN 

 

I rode the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway just this past weekend.
https://youtube.com/shorts/37TVv6TS8tg

Details of its operation and safety features can be read here:
https://bridgnorthcliffrailway.co.uk/technical/

 
With thanks for your post, oxviem, I have added OCC to our abbreviations page.

 
Ah: the National Library of Scotland carries 1:500 mapping for Barnstaple, an 1885 survey.

Mark

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.6&lat=51.07543&lon=-4.06276&layers=117746211&b=GoogleSat&o=100

 

The Coffee Shop and other ran on spare capacity on the servers I used to use as "Well House Consultants" - my IT company that ran from 1996 until a few years ago, and those servers still host legacy sites though they become less relevant.  I love(d) doing the IT stuff and the transport stuff, so asnwe closed down the businesses I have taken on the server costs - for all the sites combined- as a hobby thing.     You can see all the various sites via https://www.sheepbingo.co.uk/error/errorpage.php and if things go almost totally belly-up, it's where you are taken.

My background / career was working with stuff like this, and in addition we have a fabulous voluntary team of moderators and admins, with a membership who are naturally helpful - so there is rarely need to buy extras in beyond coffee beans, and using open source software tends to employ more of my volunteer time than commercial software would,  but saves an awful lot of costs that would-be associated with a commercial and supported setup, and reduces our dependencies on others.

 
Three British nationals are among those who died, Portuguese police have said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62lmed42p1o

 
My first Barnstaple - Exeter train journey (and back again later) was on a 3-car Swindon Cross-Country DMU en-route to see England play West Germany at Wembley in 1966 or early 1967

The line to Taunton had just closed, so a good chunk of time was added to the journey

It wasn't *the* 1966 fixture that always comes to mind.  It was a schoolboy international, and Mr Seddon at Bideford County Secondary School decided that "his" boys should be given the chance to go.  I cannot imagine how I managed to tattle the coin out of my broke parents to pay for this.  But it happened.  Online references to this match appear not to exist

My most vivid memory is alighting from the main line special train at Southall, for buses to The Empire Stadium.  We had to wait for a platform, and once we were on the platform, a further waiting train could be seen waiting, to the rear.  Interesting stuff for an 11 year old train enthusiast.  This country boy was amazed by the gasworks!

First class on the way back between Exeter and Barnstaple.  The train was rammed

 

That was explained in the BBC news item I quoted, above.

 
It's good that it was retained but a friend's experiences of the route by the mid-70s was that it was circling the edge of being in the living dead category - her views possibly coloured by the regular experience of making a connection out of the cross country services at that time. The consequences of the connection missing the last train to Barnstaple before 6pm being a near three hour wait for the last train at around a quarter to nine, followed by a walk across the medaeval bridge accompanied by the sight of the out-of-use steel spans of the rail bridge alongside.

There was a silver lining, mind, the line was being marketed. Also, a travel centre at Barnstaple.

Timetable booklets from that time to be found on the following site, which also carry details of 1970s ticketing options:
https://railcar.co.uk/operations/western-region/barnstaple-exeter

Mark

 
Who pays those fees - is it out of your own pocket Graham? I haven't see any adverts to fund the site.

 
It needs to be so good a meeting that one *wants* to be present & is happy to take annual leave days to do so.

It is to me. I've always taken leave.

 
A narrow escape.  I'm not sure if the Bristol Divisional management had taken over from Plymouth on these routes at this time.  But the Bristol managers sure had a zeal for shutting stuff and taking out infrastructure.  Notably, the Minehead branch closure, and the singling of the Wilton to Pinhoe and Wolvercote Jcn to Norton Jcn main lines

An encounter with several who were out on a manager's jolly and called in at Witham one afternoon, and were boasting about how little would be left there, once the 'box was gone and control moved to the yet-to-be-built Westbury panel was a huge driver in my decision to part company with the big railway.  I felt they were vultures

So if the bridge replacement at Cowley Bridge would have cost "£6.5 million in today's money", how much would it actually have cost with today's consultancies, architects and engineers at the help?  £65 million wouldn't be a bad guess!

 
From Devon Live

 
Whilst I am sure that all cable balance operators will be looking at Lisbon with a view to learning any lessons, I simply don't know how similar of otherwise the systems might be.

Aside from the accident (and are we assuming unintentional and not deliberate act? - I have not seen that confirmed) it strikes me that there are multiple safety issues to consider. First the linkage between the cars to balance them - kept continuous, and kept in the right pathway - so consideration for it becoming discontinuous, and for it taking a shorter route.  Second, if the linkage does fail, the emergency ability of vehicles on the system if they are moving to be brought to a controlled halt, and if they are not moving to ensure that they don't start!

 

One of the bodies got counted twice apparently

 

I'm not sure whether the system used on the Great Orme is similar, but the cables appear to be quite flimsy when out in the open - but covered when on roads. The apparent driver is 'just a brakeman' with the cable controlled at the Halfway station.

 

Could this explain 3 x 165 on a Bristol (Temple Meads) to Reading train recently?

 
The Intercity Express Train (IET) fleet is currently experiencing a reduction in available units due to an increase in GU (Generator Unit) faults, which are under investigation by Hitachi. As a result, there will be a rise in short-formed and cancelled services while Hitachi develops an engineering solution. In the event of an incident this will impact service recovery due to the need to keep traction on certain diagrams.

 
Not quite being sure where to put it but the OCC Rail plan consulation may be of interest

https://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=30686.msg365194#new

 

To give you a comparison - this running traffic level in 10 times the maximum I would expect in any month. 

As a side issue with our (new, moved) hosting space provider,  I asked about adding resource to the virtual server as that would be something of a fix.    That would mean a move off the legacy contract which is in place and a rebuild - possible but prices quoted look like somewhere over (and perhaps well over) a doubling of monthly fees as well which is not an attractive solution, especially at it just raises the lid - potentially - until next time the pan overflows.   So just resizing is neither a long term nor a financial solution.

Edit to add - I will be following up with thoughts within members areas

 
Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) have opened a consultation on their OxRAIL 2040 plan.

The plan is available here: https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/44224/widgets/132601/documents/90730

and the consultation to respond is here: https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/oxrail-2040

It's open until Oct 1st.

Thought this would be of interest here.

 
Friday September 5

It's still broken:

 
"This is 29 Acacia Road. And this is Eric - the schoolboy who leads an exciting double life. For when Eric eats a banana, an amazing transformation occurs!

Eric...is..."

 

 
If you look at those at Lynton, Saltburn and Bridgnorth, they seem to have multiple cables and a number of different braking systems
Lynton Cliff Railway
Saltburn

 
For us armchair viewers you get a sense of the problem and how it is escalating when you see there have been 2497 "users" on line today - and the record since the forum started is 2526 and that was only a fortnight ago.