Congratulations to ...
... for their very useful map which shows how rail travel has increased over the years; very interesting.
A combination of a click on a daot and a slide of the slider show statistics year by year.
That white dot in the middle of nowhere is of some interest.
According to the statistics this station has seen significant growth.
Now there is a snag with this technology. The white dot is Launceston where the station closed completely in 1966!
Launceston railway station was situated in Launceston, Cornwall, United Kingdom. It was served by both the Great Western Railway (GWR) and London and South Western Railway (LSWR).
There were actually two stations adjacent to each other, the northern station serving the line to Plymouth, which was built by the Launceston and South Devon Railway (later GWR), and the southern station being on the North Cornwall Railway (for the LSWR) which was operated by the London and South Western Railway.
The two stations unusually shared a "back to back" signal box from 1916, despite being operated by different railway companies. A connection between the two railways was provided in 1943. The GWR station closed to passengers in 1952, all trains then using the LSWR station. Trains were withdrawn from the former LSWR line on 3 October 1966.
Hunts Cross, with its 358% passenger growth ...
... is part of the Merseyrail network.
It is quite some distance from Launceston.
Technology reigns supreme!
Less So to ...
It rained a bit on 27th. Brockenhurst Station, for example, was flooded to a depth of an inch or so.
As a result, all trains west of Southampton were cancelled and replacement buses were organised.
Or were they. This was the crowd at Parkway ...
... queueing for the for the replacement buses.
One blog correspondent was travelling westwards on a SouthWest Train and was advised by announcement to change at Southampton Central to the replacement bus service. When he got there there were no buses and he was told he should have changed at Parkway.
According to another correspondent it was "complete and utter chaos with nobody in change and nobody seemingly knowing what was happening. Amazing! Such a thing has never happened before, surely.
Meanwhile CrossCountry (diesel) trains were trundling through quite normally, at least for most of the day. But they were rather full!
On their two site, SouthWest Trains published this apology. fbb adds a comment or two.
Following heavy rainfall in the Brockenhurst area yesterday, services were significantly disrupted. The subsequent flooding affected the signalling equipment between Brockenhurst and Bournemouth.
Have you ever though of having your little grey boxes waterproof, or setting them above the floods. Is there not a system of signalling trains manually? And how come this signalling did not affect CrossCountry Trains. Do they obey different signals?
At around 07:56 yesterday morning we were advised that due to flood water levels rising on the tracks at Sway, Hinton Admiral and Brockenhurst, trains services had to run at reduced speeds of 5mph. There were engineers on site monitoring the situation and carrying out regular safety checks as water levels fluctuated throughout the day.
So it wasn't flooded all the time?
Weather reports forecasted heavy rainfall in the region for the rest of the day; we immediately sourced rail replacement transportation and held them on standby at Bournemouth and Southampton stations from 08:50.
But which Southampton station (see above)?
At 14:50 we were advised that lines were now blocked, as the water levels had risen above the railway track preventing trains from running safely between Bournemouth and Brockenhurst. Standby road replacement transportation was immediately used to convey passengers.
But safely for CrossCountry or did they stop as well?
We also made arrangements to source additional road vehicles, but at 15:41 Hampshire Police advised us that the majority of the roads were also flooded. As a result we were unable to run any replacement road transport between Brockenhurst and Bournemouth for customers at intermediate stations.
Rather than take the advice of the Police, who, as we all know, are experts on running buses along flooded roads, did you go out and have a look?
Arrangements for extra staff at stations were made to help customers with travel advice and onward replacement buses. We also arranged for South West Trains tickets to be accepted by CrossCountry diesel train services whilst the lines were open.
As a result of the flooding, I am very sorry for the disruption you may have experienced yesterday and this morning.
Perhaps a better apology would be to say that "due to over-caution, reliance on outsourced advice and an overall level of gross incompetence, we must apologise. With a heartfelt promise to ensure that we will do very little to ensure that the same thing does not happen again."
It is true that there were a number of unfortunate incidents with buses and flood in the recent Scottish and Northern downpours, but fbb's local contacts suggest that much of this sorry tale was due to over reaction. Even if there really was a need to stop all electric trains (750 volts DC is nasty stuff and does not mix well with water!) there really should have been a better effort to minimise the consequent disruption.
Of course, in the days of steam ...
And thanks to ...
Alan, our Northampton correspondent who writes:-
Some fifty years ago I spent a week volunteering on the Festiniog Railway. In those days there was still a boat service between Llandudno and the Isle of Man. In the middle of the week there was a works outing from Boston Lodge to Douglas. There was just enough time for a train ride from Douglas to Balasalla and back before catching the return boat to Wales.
Picture enclosed of Douglas station with canopies. The loco is G.H. Wood. The picture comes from before the time that Herr Agfa put the date on slide mounts.
Alan also comments of th possible demise of the horse tram:-
The horse tram runs along the road, delaying impatient motorists behind. The safety elf also probably objects to passengers boarding and alighting in the middle of the road. There was a proposal to move the line on to the parallel promenade allowing the trams, like Blackpool's, to run over unsuspecting pedestrians. This probably upset the safety elf as well and possibly they have now thought about the cost of replacing the whole line between Derby Castle and the ferry terminal and two years of disruption while the whole promenade round Douglas Bay is dug up.
So is it future coats that worry the Island's politicians?
Next bus branding blog : Saturday 30th January
