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tentish klown posted:What about the Chelsea-Hackney line (aka the hipster express)? Is this predicted to not happen until after 2021, or not ever? It's dead, killed in favour (probably) of the Crossrail 2 regional route. Construction of that is projected to begin in the 20s, with opening in the 30s. Cerv posted:Needs a new colour to split the Overground into Orbital / Dangly Bits. Far too awkward to read in the top right. It's a total readability disaster all round, it needs to be completely redesigned. Interesting that they included Tramlink on that map, yet they claim that doing so on the regular tube map will cause 'clutter'. Despite the fact that north of the river is now far more cluttered than the south could ever be, even with the addition of the tram network.
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Dec 5, 2013 15:18
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Also, Blackfriars is getting an airport before 2021 it seems.
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Dec 5, 2013 15:20
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Metrication posted:Also, Blackfriars is getting an airport before 2021 it seems. Interchange for Thameslink to Luton and Gatwick e: actually gently caress knows because it's not at the other Thameslink stations or Liverpool St for the Stansted Express. lets go swimming fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Dec 6, 2013 |
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Dec 6, 2013 04:33
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Metrication posted:Interesting that they included Tramlink on that map, yet they claim that doing so on the regular tube map will cause 'clutter'. Despite the fact that north of the river is now far more cluttered than the south could ever be, even with the addition of the tram network. It's probably just that leaving it out would make south London look even more glaringly underserved and depressing.
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Dec 6, 2013 11:24
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Is anyone here aware of any good books about British rail/it's history? I'm vaguely aware of most of it/could probably brush up my knowledge, but I'm sure there's a few good books on it here and there and most of the thread regulars would probably have genuinely good recommendations.
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Dec 6, 2013 13:45
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Allan Assiduity posted:Is anyone here aware of any good books about British rail/it's history? I'm vaguely aware of most of it/could probably brush up my knowledge, but I'm sure there's a few good books on it here and there and most of the thread regulars would probably have genuinely good recommendations. I've only read this, but it tells you pretty much everything: http://tinyurl.com/nn2tjmu
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Dec 6, 2013 16:43
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Three times this week, I've got to Liverpool Street to find my train cancelled. Tonight, they were in "You plebs can wait" mode. So that's waiting an hour. At 10:15pm. On a Friday night. For a commuter service. gently caress you Greater Anglia. gently caress you very much. [fake edit] The reason tonight was 'Train staff unavailable'. So they're doing a poo poo job, basically.
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Dec 14, 2013 00:55
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Apparently John Denham (Labour MP for Southampton Itchen) has found the real disparity in regional service provision:Train passengers in south pay £1billion for rest of Britain posted:Rail passengers in southern England are subsidising those in the Midlands, North, Scotland and Wales by more than £1billion a year, figures show. Of course, the fact that the London and the South West are the two most invested in areas at the moment is not included at all.
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Dec 14, 2013 03:11
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As a regular user of Northern Rail I shudder to think what their routes would be like without London's alleged "subsidy".
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Dec 14, 2013 12:02
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Train Bros - I have a ticketing question: I live in Z4 and commute into Z1 (central line  ). If I put a yearly Z1-4 travelcard on my Oyster card, do I also get this Gold Card thing that applies a discount to off-peak national rail journeys? Or is that just for people coming in from outside of London on a season ticket? I'm finding it hard to confirm either way.
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Dec 15, 2013 13:13
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Manny posted:Train Bros - I have a ticketing question: From the TFL website: TFL posted:When you buy an adult rate annual Travelcard on an Oyster card you are automatically issued with a separate printed Gold Record Card
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Dec 15, 2013 14:05
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Brilliant, thank you  Edit: And this sweetens the deal even more: http://www.railcard.co.uk/network/partner-card/ Manny fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2013 14:55
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The various Network Railcard related deals do seem good if you're gonna do much leisure travelling. Unfortunately I can't afford an annual ticket up front so no gold card for me!
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Dec 15, 2013 22:56
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Quick question about ticket refunds: I've bought a return ticket in advance to be picked up from a ticket machine at paddington. Turns out in the meantime my travel plans for the return have changed - I cant get the train back in time for a flight out of the country. Can I get one half of this ticket (the return journey that wont be used) or am I poo poo out of luck?
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Dec 15, 2013 23:06
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I'm not certain, but: You should be able to get a not-quite-complete refund if you haven't used any of the ticket. If you have used part of a return, you may be stuck with it - I'm not sure. Check the website of the operator or of the place you bought them for any information they may have. I believe if you haven't collected your tickets from a machine yet, it's easier. I believe you *can* get refunds for unused tickets even after the date of travel - something like 28 days after, perhaps. For Greater Anglia, there's a £10 admin fee for refunds, and if you haven't collected your ticket you can do it entirely online. If you have already collected your tickets you generally have to post them back, unused, with a refund form. Check your seller/operator for any variations on that. EDIT: You may also be able to get your ticket changed, depending on ticket type. Check that as well before you go for the refund - you might find it easier to get the time/date of travel for the return trip changed. EDIT THE SECOND: Actually, at least for GA (again) a change is exactly the same as a refund + new ticket, including the admin fee, with the advantage of doing it in one phone call and the disadvantage of having to use a phone call rather than doing it online. So might not be worth it. Brovine fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2013 23:19
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Manny posted:Brilliant, thank you Also, if you take the train to any major terminal at all get a bite card. https://www.bitecard.co.uk/ 20% off a bunch of food and drink at train stations for free is difficult to argue with. (Also I think its valid some of the pubs too so that's a plus!) EDIT - Brovine: You can also get a Network Railcard independant of a season ticket for about £26 (I think) which with the UK's current rail pricing will pay for itself with one journey! Venmoch fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2013 23:35
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Ooh, didn't know about this one - and it works in the Pasty Shop at Liverpool Street! Excellent, I'll grab one of those I think. Venmoch posted:EDIT - Brovine: You can also get a Network Railcard independant of a season ticket for about £26 (I think) which with the UK's current rail pricing will pay for itself with one journey! Unfortunately, my main journeys outside of commuting are to Carlisle - which isn't quite covered by the Network Railcard area!
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Dec 15, 2013 23:39
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Zero Gravitas posted:Quick question about ticket refunds: If you contact whoever you bought the ticket from you will be able to do this, assuming its a normal open return ticket type. You can even partially refund a return for just the return leg, this may be subject to a fee. A fee shouldn't be charged for a full refund, the £10 fee comes in when you try to change an Advance. There may actually be a fairly painless way of initiating the refund within the website interface (check your purchase history section), especially when you have not even collected the tickets.
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Dec 16, 2013 01:46
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I bought Advance tickets - according to FGW they cant be refunded through the website at all, never mind just refunding the yet-to-be-unused return tickets. :/
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Dec 16, 2013 15:06
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On Advance tickets you are screwed. You can change them to another date/time, subject to a £10 fee + the difference to the new fare (if any). This could either be to a different Advance ticket, or to a 'normal' flexible ticket. Unfortunately a refund is impossible. I guess all you can do is take this as a lesson really: never buy an Advance ticket unless you are sure you will take that train. The FGW site will state the following when you book an Advance ticket "Valid on chosen train only. Non-refundable. Changeable for a fee before booked departure time.", this is the price you pay when you want the cheapness of Advance tickets. Its unfortunate that in this country Advance tickets are often the only way that train travel has a reasonable cost. The other thing I'd always do is check the difference between an Advance ticket you want to buy and the Off-Peak/Anytime ticket that you would have to purchase otherwise. Advances start off very cheap, but after a while they will closely match (or even exceed!) the price of a normal ticket. If you are only saving a few pounds with an Advance it often isn't worth the inflexibility. The amount of different fares between two different station can be bewildering, I use https://www.brfares.com when I want to see the full range of possible tickets on offer (including every single possible price for an Advance), it also shows Off-Peak restrictions which are even more complex (no it isn't just "after 0930") As a last note when you buy Advance tickets they are sold as singles only, theres no such thing as a Advance return.
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Dec 16, 2013 18:59
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Gat posted:The other thing I'd always do is check the difference between an Advance ticket you want to buy and the Off-Peak/Anytime ticket that you would have to purchase otherwise. Advances start off very cheap, but after a while they will closely match (or even exceed!) the price of a normal ticket. If you are only saving a few pounds with an Advance it often isn't worth the inflexibility. As an added note on ticket price ridiculousness: A year ago I was travelling up to Carlisle. It turned out to be cheaper to get a First ticket than a standard class one for that particular trip, somehow - I think all the Standard Advance tickets were gone. So it's always worth double checking for that one! Brovine fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Dec 16, 2013 |
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Dec 16, 2013 19:17
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Well at the time I was pretty sure on the train times but then the company I was going to fly out to  with decided to go bankrupt so I had to get new flights - and theres no way I can get from Plymouth to Heathrow for 9AM by train. Still, something to bear in mind in the future I guess.
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Dec 17, 2013 12:29
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Trainchat crosspost: It appears that the EU have taken the view that Network Rail's debt is (despite some creative accounting) UK public debt. Add another £30bn to the pile Gideon... quote:http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2013/12/network-rail-debts-to-be-added-to-public-books/ *edit - with link to some website so I don't have to C&P the post on our intranet Bozza fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Dec 17, 2013 |
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Dec 17, 2013 15:52
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Zero Gravitas posted:I bought Advance tickets - according to FGW they cant be refunded through the website at all, never mind just refunding the yet-to-be-unused return tickets. :/ If it's at all a popular route, and you've got time before the date, stick them on gumtree / craigslist. Flouting the national conditions of carriage, but noone actually cares.
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Dec 17, 2013 15:59
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Overhead power lines problems on the Liverpool Street - Cambridge line this evening. So, cancellations and delays, which is understandable. Also, lots of effort to make sure pissed-up Hammers fans could get to White Hart Lane; which is again understandable. I'm not entirely sure why, though, when Greater Anglia were cancelling some services to unaffected parts of the network, they still had a couple of 379s sitting at platforms, apparently unassigned. It's not like they'll be going anywhere near Cambridge or Stansted Airport this evening. 
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Dec 18, 2013 23:43
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kingturnip posted:Overhead power lines problems on the Liverpool Street - Cambridge line this evening. So, cancellations and delays, which is understandable. Also, lots of effort to make sure pissed-up Hammers fans could get to White Hart Lane; which is again understandable. As I understand it, "overhead power line problems" in this case means "a large tree fell on them and took them out completely in the Harlow area". A limited service was running to Broxbourne, and whatever replacement buses they had managed to scare up were running from there to various points up to Stortford. I believe trains were running northwards from there. There were also earlier problems with a level crossing at Roydon - where "problems" means "some moron drove into the barriers, AGAIN" - and the knock on disruption getting all of those trains out the way from both incidents probably caused some of the unrelated cancellations. As to the unused trains - that's pretty much where they would be spending the night anyway, I think. It at least keeps them available for when the service does resume! Took me four hours to get from London City to Bishops Stortford this evening. I am kinda cold and drenched. Plenty of respect to the Greater Anglia people actually out in the rain with us, marshalling buses. Brovine fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 00:13
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Bozza posted:Trainchat crosspost: Not that he'll care. Various UK governments have been improperly keeping PFI debt of the books books for years. Periodically you have one group/watchdog/international organisation/whatever call them out on it but ultimately the most that happens is that some stuff gets relabeled. It's a bit like the stuff Greece got up to with their state supported enterprises but of course what Gideon (and dear old Gordon back in the day) is doing is totally different... HTJ posted:It's amazing that regular loop users haven't yet realised that FCC will always prioritise the mainline over the loop when things are going to poo poo (e.g. lack of drivers in bad weather) and that they would benefit from having dedicated trains. All FCC services were cancelled after the recent storm, but there wasn't a single obstruction on the loop - all of the trains were stuck north of London. I'd been wondering why the First Capital Connect service was out essentially all day whilst the Jubilee line etc was only out briefly (even after a tree fell onto the tracks).
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Dec 19, 2013 11:35
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Munin posted:I'd been wondering why the First Capital Connect service was out essentially all day whilst the Jubilee line etc was only out briefly (even after a tree fell onto the tracks). Something that might affect it: the Underground tracks are not maintained by Network Rail. Network Rail had a hell of a lot of work to do in many different places, whilst most of the Underground is, y'know, underground - and therefore free of trees. I suspect that there were probably more available track workers for each problem on the Underground than there were on the mainline rail network.
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Dec 19, 2013 22:24
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Here's something I'm wondering off the back of that; how does maintenance work in places like the run out of Euston towards Watford where you've got the West Coast main line next to the Bakerloo/DC Line tracks. Is it balkanised with everyone looking after their own bit as they see fit, or do they try to arrange work collectively? (Also, who was maintaining the DC Line track before TfL took it over? Part of it is shared track with the Bakerloo line, but not all, and the trains were run by Silverlink...)
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Dec 19, 2013 23:07
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Trin Tragula posted:Here's something I'm wondering off the back of that; how does maintenance work in places like the run out of Euston towards Watford where you've got the West Coast main line next to the Bakerloo/DC Line tracks. Is it balkanised with everyone looking after their own bit as they see fit, or do they try to arrange work collectively? Balkanised, you need totally different track competencies to go on LU infrastructure compared to NR. Quirk of the system.
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Dec 19, 2013 23:38
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I think network rail still own the Watford DC lines so they maintain it.
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Dec 20, 2013 14:11
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Gat posted:I think network rail still own the Watford DC lines so they maintain it. I thought NR maintained everything above Queen's Park, still.
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Dec 20, 2013 23:37
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Unless I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say, the Watford DC line refers to the whole thing.
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Dec 21, 2013 00:14
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I woke up early and checked the trains - none running. Fine, TfL gives me a route to work that takes longer, but Greater Anglia have an update at 7am. Check after 7 and now there are some trains running - some are cancelled but again, I can still get to work. So now I don't need to get the bus, I can browse Bandcamp for a bit. Wrong, they've now re-cancelled the train. Literally, in the last 30 minutes, they've cancelled it for 'Poor Weather Conditions'. It's not even raining. Just tell me one way or the other, you useless loving shits. £5 says they don't have enough staff and they're using the storm as an excuse.
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Dec 24, 2013 08:46
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kingturnip posted:I woke up early and checked the trains - none running. Fine, TfL gives me a route to work that takes longer, but Greater Anglia have an update at 7am. No idea if this is the case here but often that sort of situation is caused by them discovering landslides or other track/equipment damage once the sun starts to come up that wasn't evident when they did the original check.
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Dec 24, 2013 08:53
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"Poor weather conditions" can ultimately cover anything from wheel flats, acceleration/adhesion problems, slower running therefore disruption, previously unidentified damage to pretty much anything, delayed staff, etc. Also, "not having enough staff" could in many cases be entirely a result of the weather. They have to get to work, same as the rest of us.
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Dec 24, 2013 10:59
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Brovine posted:"Poor weather conditions" can ultimately cover anything from wheel flats, acceleration/adhesion problems, slower running therefore disruption, previously unidentified damage to pretty much anything, delayed staff, etc. Or this:  
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Dec 24, 2013 15:38
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http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/S73184/2013/12/24/advanced Nice little
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Dec 26, 2013 08:09
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Thoughts on Mary Creagh's latest statement?Labour minister Mary Creagh attacks Thomas the Tank Engine over lack of female characters posted:Thomas the Tank Engine is sending out the wrong message to children and needs more female engines to encourage girls to become train drivers, Labour’s shadow transport secretary has said. When I saw the headline, I thought she was scraping the bottom of the barrel (both from a transport and a feminist perspective), but giving it more thought, I'm agreeing with it.
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Dec 29, 2013 23:56
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It's strange, the area I work in has few female Traincrew members but then the company tends to aim for older women with established families when taking on since the amount of times their generous maternity schemes have burned them is unreal. If a member of Traincrew becomes pregnant for my company they are to be taken off their duties immediately (since a member of staff once alleged she lost her baby due to falling on a train that jerked suddenly). She is to be placed in a role like booking office if possible but if not possible she just has to sit in the mess room doing nothing because not all depots are run by the same company. They also have to provide the pregnant employee with a bed in a private area. They then get a year full paid maternity and all their holidays taken upon resuming to work. I worked with a female conductor who was on the railway 5 years and still hadn't got out of her 6 month probation period because she had never managed to do 6 months work in a row without being off on the sick or pregnant. Another bone of contention is that by nature Traincrew work unsociable hours. I'm in a 0524 tomorrow morning but I can't sleep so here I am. Women with babies/young children can be accommodated by the company to help their childminding needs, which essentially means they revert to all the good jobs between 9am-5pm and you get hammered with their 'last train home drunken express' on a ten hour Saturday night shift. Even one of our newest colleagues who was a declared lesbian living with her partner managed to become mysteriously pregnant about three weeks after finishing her training. Since train planning is reliant on x amount of conductors and x amount of drivers in at each depot on anyone day, it's easy to see how one or two people on long term sick/maternity can cause chaos when other things start going wrong. There is one female driver at my depot. She's a grandmother. Aside from the aforementioned lesbian who is in her twenties we also have two other female conductors who are 40+ with teenage children. The next nearest depot we have slightly more women but they are all late 30's onwards. Don't get me wrong I've seen meme play the childcare card aswell but I think from the employer's perspective it's too risky taking on women of childbearing age, especially if they don't already have children.
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Dec 30, 2013 00:43
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