The archive

Despite my near obsessive collecting of odd bits of track and covering the railway network in interesting ways, I've not done many of the tours offered by the Branch Line Society. I am of course, a proud member of this sometimes turbulent…

The first Monday of a new timetable is always a precarious time. Never more so that with First Great Western in charge. Their bizarre pact with the Department for Transport seems to involve maintaining and developing a service while the very…

It may be necessary for some to introduce the concept of Microgricing. In short, it's an extension to the urge to cover as much railway track as possible to include the tiniest significant parts of the network, or to do so in all possible…

I wasn't sure if could face the evening of railway programmes on BBC4 tonight. For starters I wasn't going to get home until late, and it would mean delving into the middle of Ian Hislop's documentary on Beeching. I struggle with this era a great deal.

I've resisted posting about the events of last Saturday so far. Partly, because I felt incompletely informed and didn't want to add to the spiralling conspiracy theories already being spun by some of the usual suspects.

The curse of First Great Western strikes me again. After the touch and go game of roulette with cancellations of Taunton-Great Malvern services on Friday, today it's the mainline which is causing grief.

Getting home was never going to be easy after the dramatic events of this weekend. Woke to fairly decent weather in York, but it was still raining down south. Amazingly, noted that departures to the south west appeared to be back on the National Rail website.

After a very comfortable night at the Alexandra, I felt fully prepared for the day's journey. However things almost got off to a bad start when the hotel staff refused to let me check out! The Night Porter had explained that their computers weren't…

One of the pleasures of doing a First Class rover is that the long moves to the opposite end of the country become much more comfortable. Having resisted the urge to head directly for Scotland earlier in the week, it was necessary today to…