Since Thursday evening, I've been offline thanks to British Telecom. I'd decided to upgrade my internet connection to Demon's new Homeoffice 1000 1mbps offering. All seemed to go well, and Demon contacted me with new settings and suchlike. On Thursday, a restart due to needing to open the case meant reconnecting. But it wouldn't. It seems Demon had done their part in moving my account over, but BT had yet to do theirs. Talked to support for a while.

Talked to support again in the morning, and then used their live 'web support' function to chat with a Customer Services guy from my office PC. Very helpful, and would try to sort it - but as all British people know, BT sort of do what they want, when they want. Otherwise, Monday was likely to be the day. Decided to update DNS for the new IP in advance to save time.

Woke this morning to find things working fine, and the connection whizzing along. Very pleased with the service, and the short downtime really wasn't so bad - the hardest part was knowing just when it would be back, and knowing I was relying on BT to get me back online.

Celebrated by doing a few things I'd meant to do for ages, and that changing the power supply reminded me about - adding another 512Mb of memory, and also an additional fan in the case. I didn't realise until the sun began to set that the fan I hastily picked up from the shelf of the computer store gave off an unearthly green glow in the dark! Interesting.

It is comforting to be back on line, and having the machine work a little quicker is nice too.

Again, stayed local today - since we had some celebrity visitors due at Temple Meads. Engineering works almost everywhere prevented much else. I planned to get to Didcot before heading back to Bristol at lunchtime, but the timings of replacement bus services made getting back very unlikely. Brief trip into Swindon, with the sky overhead alternating between bright sunshine and thunderous clouds.

Back at Bristol, passed the time in my usual spot, taking the opportunity to try out more complicated settings on the new camera. Chatted to a few fellow enthusiasts and waited for the main event - a pair of Cotswold Rail 47s on the 'Cotswold-Severn Caper' railtour from Wolverhampton. One of the locomotives, 47828 was freshly painted and would be named 'Joe Strummer' at Bristol Temple Meads. Lee and David also arrived, back from spotting 59s and chasing BBC chartered Class 50's at Westbury.

Watched the pair of 47s arrive, double-headed into platform 4, then dashed over to watch the naming ceremony where Joe's wife unveiled the plates and gave a brief speech. A good crowd of railway enthusiasts and Joe's fans alike made for a rousing round of applause for Joe's widow Lucinda. A bit of an open day atmosphere on the platform, with a photocall and cab visits being offered.


Back over to get pictures of 47316 running around and a hellfire start as the tour headed off to Newport, and to spot Lee meeting a new young ladyfriend just in time for St. Valentines day - who ever said the railway hobby was unromantic? Quick exit on the next Taunton stopper to get back to Weston before the shops closed.

Six Nations Rugby means lots of special trains to Cardiff. This means another wet session at Newport. After joining Lee and co. on 158964, arrived pretty early and found lots of people already around. As the morning progressed, the end of the platform became very crowded - much to the amazement of those passing on increasingly sardine-tin like trains. There was actually quite a scrum to get a photo position when things began to happen!

A little less freight than usual, but lots going on. Arrived to find a convoy of five EWS class 66s about to leave. Noted several shuttle services in operation to clear the crowds, which were being carefully controlled by security, Arriva staff and the BTP. The specials started to arrive a little before lunchtime, with a parade of class 67s, including three on a single train, thanks to an earlier failure of 67012.

Soon after, the Class 47s began arriving with 47853 and 47843 hauling specials. Rather suddenly, 47839 appeared going like the clappers, light engine towards Cardiff to cover any failures. The promised pair of Fragonset 47s which passed Willesden on Thursday top and tailed the very unusual 'Queen of Scots' stock.


Shortly before kick off at Cardiff things began to quieten down. Wessex Trains response to the crowds then began to appear - a series of 'mega-units' consisting of combinations of 158, 153 and 150. Caught one of these all the way home, with a slight hitch at Temple Meads where they took 158822 off the back - just when I was getting comfortable. A dull and damp but entertaining day.

Woke yesterday to find there was no electrical humming noise in the room. Investigated and found the server completely unresponsive, with what seemed to be a blown power supply.

Unfortunately, I had only minutes to spare before heading off to London. Revised my plans for the day and decided to head to Tottenham Court Road - source of every possible gadget, component or piece of electrical equipment you could ever require. Found a reasonable cheap case including a power supply, and since I've been thinking about a new case with better cooling for some time, decided to go for it.

The display model was the last one, so the salesman offered a better model at the same price. Jumped at the offer and proceeded to lug the box around with me for the rest of the day. Rejected the idea of using 'Left Luggage' at Paddington due to cost. Got home late last night to find that the case was indeed a much better model, but that it didn't have a power supply included. At this point, after a long and frustrating day, went to bed.

Woken early by the postman, so headed out to the local computer store. Picked up power supply, and at last I think things are all back to normal. Now chugging through megabytes of stored mail!