Sunday Variety

Hapless Happenings at Honiton

Honiton Tunnel : Eastern Portal

fbb arrived at Axminster station at 0950 yesterday to collect No 3 son off the 1003 arrival from Waterloo. Son was visiting for the holiday weekend and dear papa was surprised to see a train in platform 1. 

Trains in opposite directions pas each other at Axminster just after each hour. They do not normally park there!

What was slightly more discombobulating was that there was a train in platform 2 as well. Being  bit dozy, fbb did not spot tha platform 2 train as it was hidden behind the above.

Back in 2022, Notwork Rail instituted a huge amount of work on the eastern portal of Hointon tunnel.

This is because of unstable land in the embankment to the right of the tunnel mouth.

So on Tuesday last (20th Aug) there was a landslip at Honiton tunnel.

The slide was temporarily supported by very large sandbags ...

... and all was well until ...

Except it wasn't all well. South Western Railway's service of dark green class 800 bi-moses (sic!!) was disrupted again from Thursday of last week. Or so one on-line news feed thought!

It was this disruption that greeted fbb yesterday.

This time it was more of a sludgelip than landslip.

The Notwork Rail team opined that the problem was less with land coming down from above, and more with water seeping up from below. So the track had been excavated!

Either way, no trains could run  between Axminster and Honiton.

No 3 son was on the 1003 arrival from Waterloo and the very nice man at the station informed fbb that it had left Crewkerne, previous stop to Axminster.

But with trains on both platforms at Axminster there was a bit of a snag. And the line between Crewkerne and Axminster is single track!

So the 1003 arrival had to wait until the 1006 Departure had left from platform 2. Thus No 3 son was held at the end of the Crewkerne double track section until the departing 1006 could ease past.

Here comes No 3 son (and a few others) arriving wrong platform at 1025.

The dead train on platform 1 then sprang into life to form the 1106 to Waterloo.

Meanwhile, with a bevy of taxis ...

... and an anonymous grey minibus ...

... passengers were being conveyed westbound. 

fbb thinks there was a train every two hours from Honiton to Exeter St Davids, the one unit having been trapped at Exeter.

Who would run a railway, eh?

Beastliness at Burton

For many a long year there has been a nearly non stop bus service between Derby and Burton upon Trent. For many a long year it has been "joint" between Trentbarton and Arriva, the latter as successors to Derby corporation.

fbb thinks (unreliable brain cuts in and quickly cuts out again!) the "joint"ness was a response to early post-deregulation competition. Again, fbb thinks (with no time to check in his Great Britain Bus Timetable collection) that the service used to run every 15 minutes with operators alternating.

Currently the service is every 20 minutes with an unfathomable 50:50 split between operators as shown on Trent's web site.

Blog readers may be able to guess what the code "A" might mean. 

Trent's posh leaflets simply show an unallocated 20 min headway with no mention of the "other" operator.

The leaflets used to be very posh ...

... but recent editions have beem more mundane.

Here is a Trentbarton bus for the X38.

And Arriva?

By comparison, Arriva's leaflet is utterly stunning!

Yep, there isn't one!

Arriva's on-line timetable, as we might expect ...

... doesn't mention Trent journeys. Here we see old and newer Arriva livery.

And a response!

The boss of Trent has become almost apoplectic on line, because ...

... as from August 31st Arriva has registered a 20 minute service on the X38. Arriva has, arbitrarily and one-sidedly, broken the joint agreement.

Horrid Arriva!

In response, Trent has registered a 15 minute service on its X38, at the same time extending it from Derby city centre to the bus station. The new times are on the Trentbarton web site but with no mention of the bus station.

Has fbb got it wrong - again?

On Arriva's web site we can see the new timetable ...

... NOT. The only mention of Trent is in the blurb about tickets, which pre-dates the kerfuffle.

So from next weekend there will be five buses every hour running almost non-stop ...

... Between Derby and Burton upon Trent. And there simply will not be enough passengers to make either of the services commercially viable.

Who will crack first?

fbb suspects Arriva will have withdrawn completely by Christmas. Surely the new investment bank owners will not tolerate such wasteful activity?

Watch this space!

Hello Doctor Yellow But Goodbye

Dr Yellow is the nickname of certain trains on various bits of the Japanese high speed network. There have been many Doctors Yellow over the years ...

... the most recent looking like this.

These are standard very nigh speed trains carrying passengers, but they are fitted with a range of monitoring and recording technology to inspect the track and overhead catenary, but at the scheduled high line speed.

In practice, these trains are simply substituted for a standard passenger train; slipped almost at random into the timetable.

Because of this unpredictability, they are seen by the Japanese populace as being harbingers of good luck. If you see a Dt Yellow, good fortune will harbinger and fill your day.

fbb prefers the  reliability of God for His more sustainable "good fortune".

The latest units on these routes are N700S stock ...

... and they are very snazzy indeed.

2+2 seating in these wide bodies trains is for "first class" passengers ...

... with 2+3 for the "lower orders". In a 2+3 coach, two sets of single seats are removed to make way for wheelchairs.

There is still room for the trolley! 

These trains are as stunning as they look.

N gauge model company Kato has a set in its catalogue.

But the point of this excursion into the N700S trains is that a small extra fleet as been ordered, each unit to include an even more extensive collection of measuring and sensor stiff than on the Dr Yellow stock -  which will then be retired.

It is not made clear whether the N700S technology trains will be panted yellow. If not, there may be a shortage of good luck on offer for the superstitious Japanese rail watchers. No harbingeing!

And tomorrow ...

 Next Monorail blog : Monday 26th August 

Monday Variery

Always ready to give his readers a linguistic challenge, the above piece of Japanese orthography forms the core of our first Monday Variety item. It is, as you will all know, the name of a town in Japan. So here is the far less challenging headline in English text.

Unusual Utsunomiya Undertaking

And there it is, approx 100km north of Tokyo. Here is the main railway station in the town.

Greater Utsunomiya has a population of over 800,000 which is about the size of the greater Glasgow urban area. And it has just opened one of these ...

... yup, a tram route. After the left hander at the station stop it zooms off down the middle of one of the main streets.

And it is all new-build. It opened on 26th August by with due ceremony.

So why does fbb call it "unusual".

There are plenty of trams in Japan, but the Utsunomiya line claims to be the first new line constructed for 75 yeats! As they say so often in today's news bulletins, fbb cannot independently very this claim. 

But he  found a map ...

... which could easily be upside down. Fortunately most of the publicity for the line is in English!

As previously seen c/o Google Earth, it starts at the railway station east entrance ...

... but once outside the built up area, the track runs on viaduct, well clear of roadways.

It crosses the Kinugawa River on a magnificent bridge-cum-viaduct ...

... before pressing on to its terminus in the neighbouring community of Haga.

The line is a little over 14km in length. The Haga terminus is on the edge of a mega industrial estate.

The page that shows the route in English lettering also gives fares ...

150 Yen is about 85p!

A temporary frequency is currently in operation every 8/12 ...

... but an upgrade is planned.

Whether it really is the first new tram track for 75 years is, indeed, debatable.

We have trams, light rail, very light rail, tram-trains, metro and pre-metro (to name but a few) all of which can merge into one another in terms of technology, number of stops and service quality.

The Lightline is very much a street-running  tram in the inner city, and in the built-up bits of Haga. But in between it is more akin to a light railway.

Nevertheless it looks great.

Come on Glasgow! There's plenty of room down the Great Western Road to run from City to Dumbarton!

Roger Rattled By Reliability Ructions

For the last few Sundays, Uncle Rog has been reporting on his experiences with "Demand Responsive" services in many a far-fling corner of Blighty. He is a brave man, braver than fbb who wouldn't trust an App booking as far as he could throw his mobile phone; which isn't very far.

Seek out his "Bus and Train User" blog for the full horrific detail.

Thanks to the gross incompetence of the technology or the data management  or both, Rog was waiting here ...

... in drizzly weather and a not very sheltering shelter opposite the rather splendid Kidford Village Hall.

Sadly, for most of the 90 minutes that Rog had to wait and try to find his pre-booked bus, it was sitting quite happily here, opposite Fernhurst Village Hall.

It was eagerly anticipating young Mr French who would never appear.  The two are about 14 miles apart.

Both stops were called just "village hall" in the software! But then the software is American and designed by somebody who has probably never heard of a village hall. So what do you expect?

Fortunately no other potential passenger was inconvenienced by this utter shambles; there were none.

As usual Rog was the only passenger (thus far, i.e. by 1530) that day.

Two questions materialise in fbb's agile mind.

Why are we (taxpayers) being asked to pay for this rubbish? (Actually we are never asked.)

and

Why do local authorities put their trust in "foreign" software and data management?

Crackpot, yet again.

U L E Z - Unpopular Loony Emissions Zone

So far, according to Mr Khan, 171 ULEZ cameras and/or their associated equipment boxes have been vandalised.

This box was filled with the contents of a fire extinguisher ...

... it wasn't snowing at the time!

This post has been snapped (quite easily, it appears) by, obviously, a passionate supported of the Conservative Party or a passionate opponent of Mr Khan.

Or maybe by a member of the local "youff" having "fun" on the way home from a glass or two of lemonade.

Mr Khan says these attacks will not change anything. Actually Mr Mayor, they will. If enough of the poles just happen to break in two, you won't be able to charge people the £12.50 fee!

Incidentally, several "authorities" have calculated that, in the extended ULEZ zone, so many compliant vehicles exist that the policy will make little or no measurable difference to air quality!

Of course, this blog does not condone illegal activity; but it may be more effective that waiting for the next Greater London mayoral election?

It's called "Public Opinion".

Which Reminds fbb ...

Apparently over 500,000 people have replied to the "consultation". fbb has asked the originating office how many were in favour of the closures. No reply has yet been received.

What a surprise!

Fare payers' strike, anyone?

 Next blog (hopefully?) : fbb returns, tomorrow, to Heathrow