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Thankyou for your excellent advice.

That's so unfair for Eurostar to change the refund policy midway through the booking period for the biggest event that Paris has hosted since the direct rail link from London to Paris was opened. This is the one event in Paris where surely Eurostar will not have the capacity to cope particularly...

Glad to hear that the South Gosforth - St James section is still open as Newcastle have a home match against West Ham on Easter Saturday, or there abouts if TV scheduling alters the time/day.

ScotRail should not give in to pressure from the likes of Premier Inn. I don’t know about them but where their rival TravelLodge has such situations, they offer a quieter upgrade room for a 10/20% premium on their website. That is for their central city nightlife hotels eg Southend, applies to...

The new HMRC 5-10 storey new and refurbished office blocks in Pilgrim Street, central Newcastle have their frames complete, so looks on course for opening in 2027. When all complete they will accommodate 9,000 staff. Of course if there is hot desking, these days the number of desks will be...

An excellent idea. Why is it not already done?

Yes I travelled on that opening section in 1980. The OLE must need replacing after nearly 45 years use.

A fascinating thread with considerable accuracy on the list of countries that had no railway. I can add that a new book ‘Lost Railways of the World’ by Nigel Welbourn is an excellent armchair read. In it under Rwanda “Three separate 2ft narrow-gauge industrial networks once existed but were...

Yes its pretty grim. Also has an extensive length of unmodernised Victorian platform buildings. They are quite dominant. Much effort has been made to clean up & use them at many other stations. So unlike the great efforts in Scotland to update their propert.

The travelling public deserve to have announced the REAL reason why their train has been cancelled. The DfT should instruct Mr Golton never to use “due to short notice change to the timetable”. Today I was at Newcastle where this announcement has infected Northern services including 13.40 to...

Just been able (if I wanted to!) to buy a ticket on 05.49 from Metro Centre (near me) to Carlisle, staying on the train. Only £3 on Northern site!! So I assume the Tyne Valley line fully reopens tomorrow?? However they have not announced this on their 'disruptions' section of web site.

Cleaners are one of the most underpaid jobs. With Covid we saw how they should be much more they should be valued. Spent 10 mins talking to a wonderful cleaner at Stevenage Stn recently. He got good RMT support.

Pay in the rail industry: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/61840077

Sadly the railways have not gradually modernised their terms & conditions over the last 50 years. For example then Sunday was a 'rest day', fewer people worked or travelled on it. Now it must be in the top 3 for passenger numbers. Passengers deserve the same level of Sunday service from 10am...

From my view as a passenger Driver Only Operation is safe except in a very few rural platform layouts. What we want is always a 2nd member of staff on board who checks tickets, talks to passengers & relays info clearly to us & makes us feel safer.

The most fairest way to average out a large group which might have 2,000 on 25K, 100,000 on 35K & 5,000 on 1M. Just an extreme example

So that is close to the average university qualified public service worker (nurses, Social workers, teachers etc) who are also offered around 3%. A fair offer in this economic climate. Bear in mind that they only qualify after 3 years & are also paying off student loans of 35-50K which our...

Sadly we all have to bear the load for government for government incompentance. It hits those earning the least (20K) the most.

The terms & conditions relate to improving staff flexibility of a kind that I had throughout 48 years of very varied working in both public & private sector Eg Lloyds Bank redeployed to another branch at a few days notice. Expecting to work every other Sunday in nursing.

Posted by BBC in summer & reposted revision today, backs up the pay rates I quoted https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/61840077