Mark Townend

@probablyonabus @EngFocus Not unreasonable to tap in & out at gatelines walking between different parts of a big interchange via bridges & passageways. Bidston is a single island however. Pax must seek out a reader on the platform & won't be forced to walk past one. There'll be many mistakes guaranteed.

@EngFocus People all over the world do that between various networks, not hard to comprehend

I do like to use contactless tap in/out, but it does highlight an issue with the ticketing system that isn't going to be solved by overnight GBR, that is how complex the system is. 1/5

@matthewhodg @Zaphod2042 @dave987a HS2 made a decision early on, well before major cuts, that the Phase 1 initial fleet order would be all classic-compatible, as only Birmingham would be able to handle UIC-gauge stock, & that route would only need a handful of trains. Later phases would introduce the captives.

@Zaphod2042 @dave987a That was the plan, as soon as Phase 2B to Leeds was cut it was dubious you’d have a captive HS2 only fleet, when 2B to Manc went it died completely.

Them: "What radicalised you..." Me:

@chrisgolds Existing Picc trains have areas for luggage by door lobbies. Don't know why EL trains don't have these. Perhaps TfL found people don't use them on the Picc, preferring to keep even large luggage near their seats for security. Not all air travellers have large or multiple items.

My favourite thing about the Elizabeth Line is that they didn’t consider for a moment that people might take luggage on a railway line that transports you directly to the world’s busiest airport.

@ChimeWhistle @christiancalgie The Cheltenham end would be difficult too now with established use for active travel & road levels at reconstructed bridges etc, tho there are no buildings on the formation. GWR once proposed a new mainline connection to the north to avoid the difficult section through the centre

@christiancalgie Closed as a through route between Stratford and Cheltenham in 1976, after a freight derailed and BR didn't want to pay the repair costs. Some of the route has been redeveloped at the Stratford end, making it very difficult and expensive to reinstate.

Every single thing in this photo has been painstakingly rebuilt by community volunteers since 2011, after our idiotic countrymen tore it all down in the 60s (Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do)

@pacer142 @bhaumikgowande Buses can work well, have high-quality vehicles & be electrified (trolley wires/batteries), but capacity is an issue, and the cost of so many drivers is a barrier in expensive western cities. Another issue is energy use. Rolling resistance is significantly higher for rubber tyres

@bhaumikgowande Buses are a cheap, nasty and low capacity approach. Unless the country has very low labour rates they are also expensive to operate compared to numbers carried. They are for connecting to rail from smaller neighbourhoods, and only to be the core offering in smaller towns.

Smart design moves cities, not just steel and tunnels 🚌 Instead of waiting for heavy-rail, cities meanwhile can move same scale of passenger at 1/10th of the cost with dedicated busways, accessible median stations, high-capacity articulated buses 📷 of TransMilenio, Bogotá by Felipe Romero Beltrán

@rhydy @colinwalker79 @Telegraph Readers' assumptions from headlines will no doubt reinforce the barrage of similar misinfo they receive on socials, where no standards of truth apply & algorithms tune in to people's prejudices. People should look wider, but they're being heavily misled in most common channels.

@colinwalker79 @Telegraph The sad apart about this, isn't the behaviour of the dodgy hacks at the Telegraph, it's how lazy and ignorant the average reader is. The writers know that they merely need to ask a leading question, and can assume no further reading or thinking will take place

Crafty bit of EV misinfo from the @Telegraph here Headline 'asks' 'do EVs cause potholes?' Expert basically says 'no, not really' This is a classic example of 'Betteridge's Law' - which states that any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with "no" 1/6

@RichardBratby I'm so tired of this modernism is marxism trope. Yes socialist countries adopted simple unadorned forms widely for swift reconstruction, but so did firmly capitalist corporations & banks. Were they also closet communists at this time, or was it simply a popular style of the era?

@mark_townend Exactly. Mistakes were made but the station had to be rebuilt and I've always been baffled by the mentality that attacks the (IMHO very fine) new station in response, instead of learning the obvious lessons about how historic architecture goes in and out of fashion.

Here's a slightly more honest Euston "now & then" shot. The Arch was not on Euston Rd; it was roughly where Burger King is now. Few people seem to realise just how tiny the Victorian station was, though they readily complain that the (much bigger) new concourse is overcrowded.

@thomasjralph @AndyRoden1 @SimonCalder Day returns are less likely to be bought before the day of travel & are valid only on that day. Maybe they shouldn't be refundable at all. The problem for customers is longer distance more valuable tickets which are specifically dated outward with return within a month.

@mark_townend @AndyRoden1 @SimonCalder Most of the tickets affected by this fraud are day returns so your proposal won’t accomplish anything

Rail ticket fraud. At last, a gaping loophole in the system will close, from Wednesday 1 April. Currently unscrupulous passengers buy an Anytime or Off-peak ticket, make the journey, and if the ticket isn't clipped or scanned they claim a refund, less £5. independent.co.uk/travel/news-an…

@AndyRoden1 @SimonCalder Best advice for these tickets is don't buy in advance if there's any risk of not travelling. There's no price or availability benefit buying them in advance. The only downside is no early seat reservation, so perhaps no seat. Buy online on the day, or call at the booking office.

@SimonCalder Imagine the scene. You're not intimately familiar with the fares system. Your book said ticket in advance including seat reservation. You/your child/a relative falls ill on the morning and you can't travel. Refund reused. If it's costly tickets, you ain't using rail again.

@London_W4 @ChimeWhistle Perhaps cafes & other food businesses should be forced to print these horrible pictures on the side of all their disposable packaging with advisory notes in large heavy type like tobacco packs. "Dispose of properly into a bin or take me home. Remember littering is a CRIME".

Friday morning and my walk to breakfast. This is all rubbish. Bags, plastic bottles, wrappers, cans and everything else. It’s sat floating in huge patches all across Paddington Basin, London. It can also be seen across the whole of the 2000 mile canal network. Every year at around this time, the water warms slightly and all of this stuff that was on the bottom of the canal rises to the surface. What CRT who manage the canals could do, is drive their specially designed boats up and down the canal and skim all of this rubbish off and dispose of it properly. Of course, what they actually do is nothing. But I’m not blaming them for throwing the rubbish into the canal in the first place. That’s down to thousands of selfish individuals. People who don’t care. People who shout save the planet and then carefully place their plastic coffee cup on a window ledge when they’re finished, because they can’t be bothered to walk to a bin. It then blows from that ledge into the canal. Others just chuck it directly into the canal. Very sad that those people exist. Sadly, the mess they create also exists. Anyway, have a super Friday folks.

@TomDearlove1 @ClankyOldIron Staff can sleep in it too when the loco's away from home overnight doing excursion work or visiting heritage lines. That's why they prefer the combined passenger compartment/brake van type of vehicle with long bench seating and a big former parcel area for workshop & spares.

@ClankyOldIron Heading for Tyseley in Birmingham ready for a railtour on Saturday 🫡. Needs a support coach for the staff and tools should owt go wrong 😁

I just left the National Railway Museum in York and just saw Tornado at the platform. Anyone know what it was doing here? I know it runs railtours, but one coach seems a bit light.

@DpcGem @BicycleAdagio Including kids, presumably?

@BicycleAdagio Good. Hopefully rolled out to all bikes and implemented in UK

New legislation in Queensland means riders of legal pedal-assist e-bikes will be required to hold a state learner licence, despite these vehicles being no more dangerous than regular bikes. How this works for visitors or tourists to the state is anyone’s guess. Ridiculous.

@BareLeft For a given fleet size, higher speed means more round trips can be completed in a day & thus more people can be carried in total, per train & per crew member.

But faster trains mean you can run more of them per day, ergo increasing capacity.

@WilliamBarter1 @rwjc22 @AndyBTravels @RishiSunak Also, sometime soon, with increasing pax numbers, the case for the station remaining non-compliant with modern fire regs will become indefensible, forcing TfL to consider at least another emergency exit at the east end. Opportunities there to upgrade to a full public entrance.

@rwjc22 @AndyBTravels Planned to be part of the HS2 development at Euston but gleefully cancelled by @RishiSunak

Why is there no Eastern Entrance / Exit at Euston Sq for Euston Station?

Also, sometime soon, with increasing pax numbers, the case for the station remaining non-compliant with modern fire regs will become indefensible, forcing TfL to consider at least another emergency exit at the east end. Opportunities there to upgrade to a full public entrance.

@owenoo @sc_wadsy ETR1000, the HS2 design's basis, is a 400km/h unit. They'll need a new slim bodyshell to fit old British bridges & platforms, but under the skin they'll be the same train. Short of downgrading to a different model, perhaps they'll set the red line on the speedo a bit lower.

@sc_wadsy you're correct in your 360 / 330 running speed assumptions. No idea if 320 is line speed or operating speed. If 320 was both line speed and operating speed that would be terrible, since reliability always comes top in every passenger survey...

I thought HS2 trains would normally run at 330 km/hr with the ability to run at 360km/hr to make up time. So is the reduced 320 km/hr the upper limit or the normal speed? msn.com/en-gb/news/ukn…

@paultrowntree @ianvisits Also new signalling should be easier to change, with processor interlockings & recent accurate drawings etc. I don't agree with doomsayers claiming CARS or similar is now impossible for another 30 years. Perhaps not as efficiently, but a long term plan might be achieved in stages

@mark_townend @ianvisits Unfortunately the art of incremental improvement that BR delivered so well and cheaply has been forgotten and everything has to be a Grandes Project with the result that the Treasury says "Non". 2/2

Universal Studios Bedford plans could depend on Croydon rail upgrade ianvisits.co.uk/articles/unive… Universal’s proposed Bedford resort could depend on untangling one of the UK’s worst rail bottlenecks — in Croydon — where delays ripple all … ianvisits.co.uk/articles/unive…

@paultrowntree @ianvisits OK, so impending track & signalling renewals that must go ahead could be planned to build towards the desirable final outcome, with new turnouts positioned accordingly. There's likely to be at least some reconfiguration possible within the track & signalling unit renewal budgets.