Recent content by Parallel

When I last travelled on LNER from Inverness, the reservations were switched off due to a fault but the train manager was advising passengers to sit in their reserved seats. It makes for a very uncomfortable journey if you don’t hold a seat reservation because you don’t know when the seats are...

I went for Paddington, Waterloo and St Pancras, mainly for the architecture.

Must’ve been a blip for some reason. I use Hereford semi-regularly and have never heard Welsh there. Welsh is played on board the trains though.

Had a very bizarre situation today on two different Inverness Class 158s where my phone was connected and showing charge, but it was remaining on its current battery percentage. The ScotRail HST I’m on now is charging it as usual though.

There was a booked daily working from Birmingham International that was 175 worked - I think it continued to Llandudno and then worked other routes. Still rare though!

I was going to say, looks like the stock is used for the Pembroke Dock extensions in high summer, which I’d guess was probably a commitment.

I was on a GWR IET on Saturday where the rear portion was running to Carmarthen, and the front portion was terminating at Swansea Maliphant Depot. It was being advertised on the train’s internal and external PIS displays.

That seems a bit silly - no doubt some depots will work both in the same day, are they expected to take a change of trousers with them?

The only thing creepy experience I’ve had on board a train was on a late evening XC Voyager running between Bristol and Birmingham about 10 years ago, specifically somewhere between Bristol Parkway and Cheltenham Spa. I was in carriage B alone and the door to the vestibule started fully opening...

Last time I took XC it was a 4 car set from Aberdeen. Full and standing between Dundee and Sheffield (not with all the same passengers mind, but still).

I don’t understand why Northern need to change their scripts so often. Some other TOCs have used the same scripts for years, and the even the TOCs that do change their scripts semi-regularly such as GWR still manage to use the same voice over artist(s). I don’t see why they couldn’t continue...

I’ve been on a full and standing XC Voyager with the rear unit locked out of use. The train manager was telling people to either board the front half and stand, or don’t travel at all. To be fair, it was when there were problems with the Severn Tunnel so passengers were being routed to...

It was around convenience and cost-saving I think - apparently the current operation takes a few weeks to update, whereas the text-to-speech system can do it a lot more efficiently. I think I read somewhere it also allows conductors to make updates and put out custom live announcements too.

Does anyone know the extent of the anti-social behaviour occurring on trains and at stations between Taunton and Bristol? A friend of mine said a group of teenagers got on a CrossCountry at Taunton recently and were trying to steal people’s luggage/threatening staff and passengers and trying to...

It's possible to make a text-to-speech voice from any human voice using software (I've tried this using my own voice) and the results are surprisingly good, so it's a shame that they've ended up with a really synthetic sounding voice. It would've been good if a deal could've been struck up with...