Recent content by Johnny Lewis

The only properly limited stop named trains will be, summer weekdays only, The Royal Duchy, 12.03 London Paddington to Penzance, which will be first stop Exeter St David's (pick up only), Plymouth, then most stops in Cornwall. The 16.18 Paddington to Carmarthen will be "The Red Dragon" and...

When the Leeds north west lines were electrified (late 1980s, early 1990s? - but a long while ago now!) one of the reasons cited for doing so was to increase the number of direct InterCity services between London and Bradford FS to 6 a day. GNER at their height had 4 trains in one direction and...

Let's hope there is some budget in the £4million to provide something more than the totally inadequate bus shelter on the platform, unlike neighbouring Atherton, Walkden and Swinton which retain their overall roof!

One minor thing for June 2024 - GWR will be reinstating "Named trains" in its online public timetables. So these are the traditional names like "The Cornish Riviera", "The Golden Hind" etc., rather than the IET namings, which are named after significant figures from the West of England and South...

Yesterday, I was travelling home from London to York in First Class. Admittedly the train wasn't busy, but when asked if I wanted a hot drink (which I did), the staff told me that they didn't have hot water in the galley, but they would go to the buffet car and bring me a cup of tea. I thought...

07.55 Sunday Westbury to Warminster, which is frequently cancelled in most weeks, with no replacement bus provided. So exists purely to get a unit to Warminster to work the first train from there to Swindon via Melksham.

As Network Rail happily handed over production of the National Rail timetable lock, stock and barrel to Fabrik, I think it's fair to say that there's unlikely to be anyone left at Milton Keynes who actually knows how to produce a coherent timetable. There's a bit more to it than pressing a...

Norwich to Peterborough Always busy, clapped out rolling stock, no First Class, no catering, poor luggage space, need I go on?

The branch from Maidenhead is to/from Marlow, not Henley-on-Thames. Off-peak, the service between Maidenhead and Marlow is hourly, and has just a 3 minute turnaround at Marlow. So holding a connection at Maidenhead for even just 1 minute immediately has the potential to inject delay into the...

I understood that Avanti's plan was for the second train per hour to stop at Liverpool South Parkway, so it would have to run via Runcorn. I think it's unlikely that they'd run via Runcorn but not stop there, but not impossible - who knows what Avanti might come up with these days?!

There's significant engineering work taking place between Stafford and Rugby via the Trent Valley. So these trains won't be running on that date. They haven't been removed permanently.

I genuinely thought Manchester Victoria and Huddersfield would be long enough. The regularly used platforms at Leeds (15 & 16) are definitely long enough. York and all stations north thereof are served frequently enough by 10 car Azuma formations. Perhaps not quite such a "non-starter".

According to Real Time Trains, just FOUR out of the scheduled 16 trains from Newcastle to Liverpool Lime Street actually ran today. All others were cancelled. This included the first five morning departures, and SIX consecutive services in the afternoon. Whatever the rights/wrongs or general...

You probably already know by now, but all strike action for that day (and other strike days in September) has been called off due to recent tumultuous events.

1S17 12.30 and 1S18 13.00 London KX to Edinburgh both on the move and are in the Doncaster area.