Recent content by 181

Just over a year ago I was travelling from Stansted to Liverpool Street on one of the new (class 745?) units when it came to a halt somewhere in the Lee Valley. The driver announced that it was because someone had been smoking, and after a few minutes we continued on our way. What was...

They aren't the original lifts, but yes, I think the lifts that were in the same positions were intended for mail and parcels, and the idea was to keep mail trolleys apart from passengers, without needing a completely separate bridge like at Woking. Passengers with a good reason could use the...

Timetables for next weekend have appeared at https://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/coronavirus-timetable-updates. The Voyager routes seem more affected than during the week -- a quick look suggests that 4 Reading-Manchester trains are missing compared with the 'new normal' post-Covid timetable...

Interesting. It definitely looks as if the inter-city type routes are at about half the pre-Covid frequency (or even less between Reading and Southampton); presumably other routes have been more normal until now.

I've seen it commented on before that Thomas et al. are an exception in that steam locomotives elsewhere are often regarded as female, like boats; the most obvious explanation for the difference would seem to be that the original stories were written to entertain the author's son, not his daughters.

The other question which I don't think has yet been answered in detail is: This: touches on it, but it's hard to understand how Covid measures could make such a big difference (maybe at the height of lockdown and restrictions they could have, but less so now).

There are these and these. Although they didn't run on roads, the 'trains' of parcels trolleys that used to be seen driving around major railway stations were a bit like what you're asking about. (This is the best picture I could find in a quick search, but more modern ones were in use until...

The sites were merged a few weeks ago. It wouldn't surprise me if the two brands and/or operations* were merged, but if that was the plan I don't know why they'd bother changing the X39/X40 from one to the other. (Indeed I'm not sure why they're doing that anyway). *I don't know how separate...

Opinions may differ as to whether this is a good thing, but Go-Ahead do have tickets valid on Thames Travel only and not OBC, despite having owned both companies for quite some years. To some extent this is a geographic distinction, but it's not a perfect one.

The way I think of it is to divide 100 by the number on the sign to get the figure that is meaningful to me. I.e. 20% = 100/20 = 1 in 5, 12% = 100/12 = 1 in 8 and a third, etc. I hadn't yet started school in 1974, but you're right that the rest of the world didn't suddenly change, and school...

I've sometimes thought that would be useful.

Many YouTube videos these days have subtitles; some are automatically generated, but on that video I think it's a real transcript added by a human. If you hover the cursor over the picture you should see a rectangular symbol at the bottom, just to the left of the cogwheel symbol, and can click...

That's all very well if you just want to get from one side of the Irish Sea to the other, but many people will be travelling on from Holyhead by train and so using SailRail tickets, which can't be booked on the Stena website. This suggests that the solution is to book eastbound journeys by...

I'm not sure what the OP's intention was, but the wording doesn't say the stations have to be recent or still open. In decades gone by trains were probably more varied, but there might be some short-lived halts from the early years of d.m.u.s, or even the railmotor era, that fit the criteria...

Leaving aside the debate about whether we've reached the point where transport providers can reasonably tell anyone without a working smartphone to get lost, the wording on the Stena website is 'Tickets may be pre-purchased when making your booking online or also purchased at the Holyhead &...