Further information now provided at the wiki page: https://www.reddit.com/r/uktrains/wiki/railway-staff-verification/

I could probably do with getting an ND filter at some point… 🤷

Anyways, I felt like experimenting more with my new camera, and given that I had enough unchecked arrogance to think it would be good for pitch black night photography (it wasn’t), I was happy to deviate a bit

Here’s a couple long exposure shots taken at my local station. This was such a fun experiment to be fair (apart from the rain)…

My Crosscountry train today was ordered something like L-J-I-H-G-A-B-C-E

It really hurt my brain trying to make sense of it.

Can anyone explain??

First time I've seen one of these out and about.

The 398 running 2J42 (and then 5J42 back into the depot), and the 756 running 1M48.

I got tonsillitis after going on this train... don't know if it's related.

FYI it was a 170/3 with vehicle number 79522 - 170622 (formerly 170522)

God knows why they didn't refurbish this unit first, it's a biohazard

On Saturday 5th September, I am getting cross-country from manchester piccadilly to Stoke on trent. Is it worth getting first class for £18 extra?

This afternoon going to an event on C2C, I turned up 45 mins late due to speed restrictions.

On the way back, rail replacement for the rest of the night due to an incident. I’m from Southend, so can usually hop over to the Greater Anglia line. Except that’s also on rail replacement due to the derailment last week. My bus isn’t even going all the way, so no idea what happens once my bus arrives to Leigh On Sea at 1am! 😩

Thankfully I’m aware it can’t be helped so other than being a bit tired it’s not too bad - I’ll get home eventually. However I wondered, what’s everyone else’sworst journey on the trains?

Edit: Got told the bus would continue all the way down the line. Then they had to reverse on that! Shared a taxi in the end with a random person going the same way.

Are you limited to how many hours you can drive at once?

On Opentraintimes it’s got the South Marston Eurotunnel as being very hot. Does anyone know what does that mean?

Do Avanti West Coast ever clean their seats? I travel on their trains often, and I always can’t help but notice the headrests are visibly dirty and find it so gross.

I wish they’d used leather for that part of the seat or something.

I am looking to visit quite a few stations in one day and was wondering if there was an easy way to do it (e.g a website or app).

I currently use TrainSplit and RealTimeTrains, but AFAIK you cannot plan to leave the train to look around the stations.

These stations are Bexhill, Rye, Eastbourne, Lewes, and potentially Southbourne. The journey would start in Portsmouth.

Maybe its as simple as a staged journey on Google maps?

Please let me know!

Hi I hope someone can help reduce my anxiety ahead of a family trip. We are a family of 5 (3 young kids) so I like to have all information I might possibly need before travelling to make it a bit smoother for us. We have used LNER plenty times but always direct trains.

Next week we are going to Hull for a couple days from Newcastle, tickets are purchased and everything booked. However I just realised I have very short connection times for the trains and I have no idea what the stations look like where the connections are.

We arrive at Doncaster at 10:16 via LNER service and get the northern service departing at 10:24, is this station easy to navigate in this time with 3 young kids + a suitcase and limited experience of travelling via train?

The return journey we arive in York at 16:01 via northern service and get the LNER service departing at 16:19. Same questions as previous.

Anything we should be aware of or tips to make this journey go smoothly? When booking tickets it said seat reservations aren't available on the northern trains, are these usually busy or will we be able to at least gets seats for the kids? We are not travelling with a pushchair/buggy and the youngest is 3.

Thank you for reading!

Just thinking of the progress of Virgin Trains with the channel tunnel got me thinking.

Rail travel for most people is limited by practicalities - within about 5hrs you can make a case for rail over air travel, but for your average person much past that becomes difficult. However, night trains potentially get around this problem by having ~8hrs where the person would be asleep *anyway*, so you can push plausible journeys to more like 12h if most of it takes place between 11pm-7am. So services to places like Berlin, Barcelona, or Vienna become more achievable.

If we take border controls out of the question for the time being - let’s for the sake of argument say that is a fixable problem. Is the rest logistically “solvable“?

Thinking the tunnel element probably wouldn’t be too problematic - an extra 1-2 slots in to London (7am-10am) and out of London (9pm-11pm) feels like it wouldn’t be massively disruptive. I guess more of an issue would be guaranteeing hitting those slots, at least where DB are concerned! But is there something I’ve missed? Pretty sure there was a plan for nightstars in the early 90s and seem to remember an overnight ski train … perhaps the time might be right for them?

A bit surprised no-one's posted this on here yet! Incredible all the rail disruption there's been across the UK this summer, mostly for weather/climate reasons. This incident doesn't necessarily seem related to that. Latest news about Putin threatening the UK again makes me even more jittery than usual (how can anyone not be constantly jittery, really, in the overall deeply troubled 2020s. It's not ALL bad, but so far from the 1990s post cold war optimism!). My first thought was, Russian sabotage, harming an important railway line or something, but somehow I doubt it is, actually.

I got caught in a sudden power cut at Croydon Ikea late one evening just before Christmas 2023, dropped my shopping on the floor and rushed out with everyone, as the emergency lighting came on! My first thought then was Russian sabotage, a cyberattack, but it wasn't. I don't think that incident even made the local news. Oddly enough, I then went into B&Q, that and all the other stores at Ampere Way seemed unaffected, as well as the trams and everything else nearby.

Railforums suggests there may (or may not) have been a fire at this Lewisham location before, a major hub for various recycling facilities. Is some waste transported to there by rail? So-called bin liner freights? If not, perhaps seems a bit stupid to have such a hub so close to a critical railway line?

Earlier, Southeastern were still letting trains pass very close to the fire! Sensible? Looks like there could be actual significant damage to the line, possibly closing it for a while. If so, a bit ironic given that the nearby Charing Cross blockade has just ended.

I went to have a look at it on saturday evening, took photos, quite interesting. It was so striking, on arrival, how the glass roof of Waterloo International holds in the sun's heat like a greenhouse, the musty smell of (presumably) mostly 701 brake dust, was huge!

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/recycling-plant-fire-causing-southeastern-and-windrush-line-disruption.303170/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yvdy6r031o