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Somewhere around 1980 I was at Birmingham New St when an announcement came over the p.a apologising to passengers on platform 11 for the late departure of the 17.32 to Walsall. About ten seconds later a different voice, clearly annoyed and in a thick Brummie accent came on:"This is a staff...

That is what happened in what was probably one of the worst accidents of this nature in this country. In the summer of 1981 (or it might have been 82) a double-decker was assigned to a day trip from Pontypool & Cwmbran to the seaside at Porthcawl. Trouble was, the pick-up route followed that of...

About 15 years ago engineering work on the Filton Bank meant that long distance trains to the north between Bristol Temple Meads and Parkway were rerouted through Avonmouth for a couple of weeks and all Severn Beach line local services were cancelled and bustituted. Whilst unpopular with the...

Pontypool (& New Inn) up from 77,000 to 111,000, up 44% in a year and doubled in the past six. Also, a service of 35 trains a day on a weekday is the sort of service level not seen since the 1960s and the days when it was Pontypool Road. I see on Google View that there is now a bus stop outside...

Does anybody know what happened to the Ribble Valley Rail historical site? They had an excellent selection of old timetables and I had their site bookmarked but when I tried to get in a couple of weeks ago it came up as "server not found". I left it for a while in case it was down for...

Apologies if there's an obvious answer but as a layman is there any reason why a dmu-type train couldn't run from Chepstow to Bristol by simply reversing at STJ?

A couple of weeks ago I took a trip up to Worcestershire. On the way up the train went via Shrub Hill but on the way back Foregate St. Given how close they are and how run down the railways were in the 1960s, I couldn't help wondering how they both survived and why one of them wasn't closed...

About five years ago I was on a train to Severn Beach and when we reached Redland the confused looking women seated opposite asked if the train went to Severn Tunnel Junction.

In the late 80s for a couple of years there was an early morning Cwmbran - Paddington HST which ran via Hereford. The evening return ran on to Newport (and strangely it called at Pontypool both ways as well as Abergavenny!). Off-peak tickets were valid, making it was the earliest possible...

The Portishead line is still largely in situ despite having been closed to freight since the early 80s.

There's an early Bristol Parkway to Penzance which comes in at a few minutes under five hours with no catering. At the low point of BR in the mid to late 70s there was no catering on the Cardiff to Portsmouth/Crewe/Manchester trains and in the early 80s I remember catching a Liverpool-Norwich...

I was at Birmingham New Street some 35 years ago when an announcement came over the tannoy apologising to passengers on platform 11 for the late departure of the 17.28 to Walsall....followed a few seconds later by a second announcement in a thick Brummie accent "This is a staff...

It's an issue around Bristol on the Severn Beach Line in the evenings - all the stations are unmanned, there are no ticket machines or barriers (except at Temple Meads of course) and on-train staff are often conspicuous by their absence. Passengers frequently travel free but to be fair to...

I also seem to remember that when the trains running over the Maindee Curve were axed the rail authorities had to go through the formal line closure process as it was technically the withdrawal of all passenger services on the line (all what must have been about 200 yards of it at most!).

There are some excellent apple trees on the right hand side travelling towards Severn Beach immediately after the branch splits from the main line beyond Stapleton Road. Terrible waste - in the days before Sunday services to SB I often wondered if any enterprising locals would try and bring in...

The other Saturday morning there was a knock at my door, and it was a smartly dressed man and woman who wanted to tell me about Jesus Christ and the benefits of breast feeding ...... .....they were the Jehovah's Wet Nurses!! (and for my next cracker joke!.....)

To get back to the original question of whether you would report a fare dodger, I once did. I'm going back 30 odd years but I was in the ticket queue at Newport one Friday evening when the guy in front of me asked for a single to Abergavenny. Upon being told it was £1.80 he exclaimed "HOW...

Bristol has a similar issue to Gunnislake with Severn Beach. The local rail improvement plan provides for restoring passenger services between Avonmouth and Bristol Parkway via a freight only line known as the "Henbury Loop". However, the Severn Beach line was singled many moons ago and the lack...

Some years back a woman phoned up the firm where I was working to inform us that her husband had died, and this was duly noted on their file. A couple of months later, the very angry widow was on the phone, having received a letter from us that began "Dear Dead"!!

Avonmouth to Severn Beach