Recent content by MarlowDonkey

In the 1960s for a route which today is M40, M25, North Orbital, we would go Beaconsfiield, Amersham, Chesham, Bovingdon Green, Hemel Hempstead, M10 and then North orbital, crossing London, to or from the west, either the A40 and North Circular, the A40 followed by Euston Road and connections...

Trains from High Wycombe would have gone to Paddington and those from Amersham were to be replaced by Metropolitan Line services to Baker Street. So I think the line from South Ruislip to Marylebone would have closed. From Marylebone to somewhere convenient for motorways, the idea was a...

Print or display something on the ticket to show that evidence of a railcard had been supplied. It assumes ticket sellers have access to a database of valid railcards. Although there are numerous ticket selling sites there are only a limited number of ticket engines that supply and price the...

The system would be more customer friendly if (a) there was a warning when attempting to purchase a discounted ticket without a railcard valid for the dates of travel (b) when the ticket had been purchased with a valid card, it was flagged so it was no longer necessary to produce the railcard...

I would have thought it just needs a mechanism of registering a contactless card or cards against the discount Railcard How easy that woud be to do in practice and whether it would run into legal complications is another matter. For leisure travellers, the absence of Railcard discounts is a...

There's also a question of convenience. Using a paper ticket on the branches and contactless on the main line is going to be influenced by how easy or difficult it will be to change from one ticket type to another by touching in or out when changing at Twyford, Maidenhead or Slough.

Isn't that trying to say or instruct computer software that when someone buys a ticket at Ealing to travel to Reading, it's neessary to take a direct train? In other words heading in the wrong direction to Paddington and going to Reading non-stop isn't allowed on the usual ticket.

Would they have to be terminals? Changing at Stratford may work for east of London National Rail destinations. It might be subjective, but the underground walk at Oxford Circus between the Central and Bakerloo seems as long as the walk from Lancaster Gate to Paddington and then there's the...

It got taken over by the Great Western early in its history, but I wonder whether the Wycombe Railway ever had plans to double its route. It ran from Maidenhead to Oxford and Aylesbury via High Wycombe and Princes Risborough. The stretch from High Wycombe to Risborough was eventually doubled as...

For those travelling from beyond West Drayton particularly off the Branches. doesn't it encourage the continued use of paper travelcards to enable a smoother and quicker change?

There was a design of GWR Autocoach attributed to Hawksworth constructed in the early 1950s almost parallel to the early DMUs. Apart from the many preserved on heritage lines, they didn't last that long before being replaced by 121 Bubble Cars. In its early days British Railways constructed...

If you follow a strategy of minimising the time spent in petrol stations then you fill the tank and run it down to the warning light. On average then, you are running with about a half full tank. £ 30 is aboyt half a tank's worth, so you refill when down to about half full. That way on average...

I was actually thinking of those services with Class 37s and Mk2s that used to pop up in parts of the country from time to time. The Welsh and Nova3 trains are additional examples.

How many trains are pulled (or pushed) by a diesel engine in 2021? I can think of the remaining HSTs, Chiltern loco hauled, DRS services if still running, the sleeper to Cornwall and some rail tours. That's if they are using the term "engine" to mean locomotive. If they are referring to...

So where did that story about new trains, meaning the GWR 80x trains, being more polluting than the Marylebone Road come from? If there's a problem with diesel exhaust fumes entering passenger accommodation, it's been with us over sixty years, ninety if you include the AEC railcars.