False alarm?  Pretty well on time all the way and no delay off Swindon.

 

And

 

06:35 Salisbury to Worcester Foregate Street due 09:47
06:35 Salisbury to Worcester Foregate Street due 09:47 has been cancelled.
This is due to a fault on this train.

 
And a similarly offbeat "where was I" yesterday, 18th June 2025

 

 
I walked across late in the afternoon / early evening yesterday and passed by the tobacconists close by the bridge on the Polish side.   It's a mixture of recent modern build, sites perhaps dating back to WWII and some older buildings in need to TLC.  And, yes, I brought back a few breakfast supplies purchased in Zloty and purchased an ice cream at an astonishingly good price for a tourist spot.  But I didn't find such a huge contrast - Goerlitz  has a number of decrepit older buildings too as well as magnificently looked after ones.

 

Repeating myself (and others) here - delighted for those places, residents and visitors on the Welsh side of the Severn.  How about sorting out the South Gloucestershire side too where there's a moribund station with latent potential especially if a little work is done over and above just fixing the station, and where there's a major employment area that's a road congestion nightmare that the railway passes and ignores.

 

 

With my very belated thanks for your suggestion (which I missed at the time), Trowres, I have now done that.

CfN.

 
Go ahead been given for these new stations and tfw already pushing to.run an hourly service to Bristol TM in addition to the  current 2tph GWR service.

Local rumours suggest  that as part of the procurement being done by tfw for extra new rolling stock another batch of class 756s will be getting ordered although geared for 90mph top.speed.

Seems the batteries on tfws  756s are performing far better that suggested by stadler

 
From the BBC:

 

It's cross-TOC acceptance - the same message was on the XC journeycheck about using SWT

 




Do XC have their own private tracks 

 
All the billions of pounds that have been poured into this massive white elephant that could have been spent elsewhere on the rail network. One project in particular that comes to mind is the bottleneck at Welwyn that would have increased capacity on the ECML.

 
Main line steam in the form of a commuter train from Wolsztyn to Lesno (Monday to Friday) and to Poznan (Saturdays) was said to be operating and there are some notes I have seen about the locomotive concerned / being fixed quire recently.


Do members have any up to date information - not normally my thing but I just might take a look ...

 
Earlier article updated following Commons statements......

BBC News - HS2 line to be delayed again with no new date given - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0wr7nw7wxo

 
More midweek mayhem for the OWW 18 June 2025

 
Cancellations to services between Oxford and Didcot Parkway

Due to a fault with the signalling system at Oxford fewer trains are able to run on some lines. Disruption is expected until 18:00 18/06.

Train services between Oxford and Didcot Parkway may be cancelled, delayed or revised.

 
The problems at Oxford have finally made it onto JourneyCheck

 
Links to some HS2 summer newsletters

Aylesbury area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/NC2A-North-Newsletter-Summer-2025-v2.pdf

North Chilterns area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/NCA-Summer-Newsletter-2025-to-publish-2.pdf

Calvert area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/HS2-Calvert-Area-Summer-Newsletter-2025.pdf

Twyford-Greatworth (Brackley) area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/T2G-HS2-Newsletter-Summer-2025.pdf

Greatwoth-Southam area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Greatworth-to-Southam-HS2-Newsletter-Summer-2025.pdf

Lots of updates, photos, and expected work in next few months.

 
Enjoy Gorlitz. I went on a Sunday in April 2018 when the temperature was 35C !! ....from Berlin HBF changing at Cottbus on a 44 euro weekender ticket. Trains were clean, comfortable and on time.
The walk down from the station was lovely, downhill to the pedestrian bridge outside the Cathedral that takes you across into Poland to the Zgorzelec side of the city. It was split between Germany and Poland after 1945 as part of German reparations after WW2.

The contrast between the 2 sides was staggering. The German side had been beautifully restored rather like the restoration of Wernigerode in the Harz East Germany. The Polish side was deserted except for one family in their Sunday best, and it had a real frontier border feel to it and  we all watched the tumbleweed blowing about.

I was there for the organ recital in the cathedral that follows morning mass every Sunday. It is dubbed the Sonnenorgel or Sunshine organ as the case has many suns carved into it and gilded in such way that they shimmered in the midday sun. It's a large but not typical German cathedral organ as it has several imitation or toy stops. There were 2 tiny pipes in a  water filled bowl that sounded like a nightingale!

I was told that the the large economic differential between Poland and Germany meant that the Poles came into Gorlitz in the morning to work....to take advantage of the higher wages paid in euros.....while the Germans crossed over into Poland throughout the day for shops and restaurants because the prices in  zloty were  so much cheaper than the euro!

It was a unforgettable day trip. I would have loved to have taken a trip to Leipzig station but ran out of time !

 

Yes "wellho.net" is on an old / (not and probably won't be https) server. I am now using "wellho.info" for images and as I hit the images in my old threads I am updating the links.

 
It’s a bit of a surprise all those houses in Wolvercote haven’t collapsed yet.

 
The rescheduling and re specifying things has not only pushed up costs by billions, it has made complete mockery of timescale.

There are you tube videos showing some sections have finished the earthworks and structures and are being landscaped.   Only one TBM is now working (at Bromford), all the others have finished.  But they have disbanded the crews rather than start the 2 Euston TBMs which are ready to go.  Politicians don't understand basic continuity to save money.

There are set of newsletters, and these suggest in next few months many more new bridges will be in use, and the earthworks completed where there are currently old roads and deviations blocking the way.

Of course, big question is what has been gained by having some sections built (ready for fit out ) by mid 2026 if other parts have been deliberately/carelessly delayed upto 5 years

 

I've been getting frequent bleats (last one on Sunday) from Bitdefender saying:

I assumed that was a link somewhere in a forum page. But those are quite common from all sorts of sites, sometimes just a one-off until a minder gets a reminder, or sometimes persistently.

 
An additional £25bn is being thrown into this money pit. Quietly slipped into the Spending Review. Rachel Reeves decided not to mention this massive contribution to infrastructure spending when she gave her speech to the house. I wonder why?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/13/labour-hs2-money-rachel-reeves-spending-review

The Chancellor should've cancelled the entire project rather than throw more money at it. The assessment was probably that it's too far gone, not physically but politically, to cancel.

What's the scientific name for HS2?

album elephanto pretiosa

 
Wednesday June 18

1W11 05:53 Paddington to Great Malvern was started from Reading "due to an issue with the train crew (TH)" [RTT]


12:06 : Short-working of 12:52 has been removed from JourneyCheck.

13:20 : 1W01 0952 London Paddington to Hereford was delayed in the Oxford area. It was +23 by Malvern Link and was cancelled after Great Malvern.


16:20 :

RTT is showing this as having terminated at Reading.

 
A couple of days a week I drive up the M42 and back for work.  Sometimes also travel around the Hams Hall area, on the A446.

This area is where the HS2 line will have junctions to take trains into Birmingham Curzon Street and out again, on towards Lichfield, where there will be a junction onto the WCML

I've watched progress for months and months, building (so far) one overbridge, and mile upon mile of piers for what will be viaducts.  I can't help thinking that the job has been specified to include all the "nice to haves", and not kept to the basics.  I'm not a civil engineer, but I suspect that viaducts are multiple times more costly than embankments

I just wonder who (if anyone) is in charge of what and how much is being spent on what

The whole thing smacks of politicos not wanting to get themselves a bad reputation on spending or specification grounds, so they've handed it over to an arms length contracting system, without proper oversight.  There is no one to carry the can for when things go wrong.  everyone concerned can point at everyone else.  The story of modern government in the UK

 

Yes, it is based entirely on the scheduled arrival time against the actual arrival time