Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

During the recent Rugby World Cup the state of the Welsh railway network came under scrutiny again. After each game at the Millennium Stadium, thousands of people descending on Cardiff Central Station found themselves in the predicament we've all become sadly familiar with after a home fixture: delayed trains, cancellations, and massive overcrowding on the services which did operate. The trials and tribulations of rail passengers during special events in Wales are nothing new, it seems. I've just found an irate letter to the Swansea-based Cambrian newspaper, published on 24 March 1882. THE TREATMENT OF EXCURSIONISTS—WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? SIR,—Permit me, through the medium of your columns, to record my vehement protest, on behalf of a large number of excursionists, against the treatment we received at the hands of the railway officials who had charge of the excursion train from Swansea to Pembroke Dock on Saturday last, on the occasion of the launch of the ironclad "Edinburg...

I still haven't finished working on the second half of my analysis of bus services within the Cynon Valley. I know it's taking ages, but every time I start making progress the companies change their timetables again. The most recent changes I heard about only a couple of weeks ago. It appears that services after the evening 'rush hour' (or what passes for rush hour in the Valleys, anyway) have been drastically curtailed. I'm reliably informed that after 6 p.m. you'll be unable to catch a bus to Llwydcoed, Cwmbach or Cwmdare. That puts these outlying districts on a par with Penderyn, Rhigos, Abernant, Perthcelyn and Cefnpennar, with no services at all on Sundays either. It's always baffled me why there's such a rapid drop in services after 6 p.m and at weekends. Logic would suggest that there'd be more demand for public transport, not less. After you get home from work, it's nice to go out for a couple of pints in the evening. Young people, too, ...

The Wales Online website today has a feature called 7 Ways the Beeching Cuts stitched up the Welsh rail system . It highlights some of the absurd and time-consuming journeys faced by passengers travelling between our country's large towns, since the branch lines connecting them were torn up five decades ago (see Nice Work If You Can Get There .) One of the seven journeys they singled out was this: Unfortunately, as is the wont of local papers (and their websites), the gremlins got involved along the way. In true Private Eye tradition, the pictures have been transposed. The short journey, across the heads of the valleys via Merthyr and Aberdare, hasn't been possible in my lifetime. Instead, passengers have to travel via Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend and Neath in order to reach their destination. With this in mind, I've just sent the following email to the editor: I liked today's online feature about the way Dr Beeching ruined the railways in Wales. It was interesting to se...

I could be wrong, but I think this is my last-ever letter to the Cynon Valley Leader on the subject of public transport. It was printed in the issue dated April 7, 2007. At the time, Network Rail and Arriva Trains Wales were building a crossing loop to allow bidirectional working on the Merthyr Tydfil line. Abercynon station was completely rebuilt to accommodate the increased traffic. The Leader 's unpaid stringer for the village, Stuart Gregory, put a paragraph in the paper to announce that the work had been completed. Needless to say, after a decade and a half of commuting to Cardiff, I was less than optimistic when the plans were announced… I was intrigued to read Stuart Gregory's Abercynon column a few weeks ago. It seems that the redevelopment of Abercynon railway station will allow passengers to 'throw away the timetable.' May I assure Mr Gregory that those of us who battle with Arriva Trains Wales in order to get to and from work did just that a couple of years ...

I found this on an old 3½" disk at home a couple of days ago. I'm reproducing it here as a preamble to the next entry  Nice Work If You Can Get There – and as an indication of just how little the situation has changed in nearly twelve years. PM BBC News Centre London January 7, 2001 Dear Sir/Madam, For the past five days the news has been dominated by in-depth reports into the state of Britain's rail network. We have heard sad tales of commuters struggling into London on ageing rolling stock running on a decaying infrastructure, faced with increasing delays and yet another round of fare increases. We are told that the industry needs billions of pounds worth of investment. We have heard reports that the network is 'six engineering resignations' from total meltdown. We have even been told that Transport has overtaken Health and Education at the top of the Government's list of priorities. It's funny how the issue of transport only makes the headlines when Lon...

This one was written in April 2002, and sent to the South Wales Echo , who declined to print it. It's a follow-up to the earlier (published) A Letter to the Editor 1 . . On September 27 last year, you printed a letter from me in which I suggested that Shamrock Coaches had developed a Stealth Bus, invisible to all forms of detection. I am pleased to report that I have just returned from a Public Enquiry into Shamrock Coaches at Rhondda Magistrates' Court, held over three days under the chairmanship of Traffic Commissioner David Dixon. The experience has been, to say the least, enlightening. During the enquiry, Mr Clayton Jones wove a tangled web of conspiracy theories involving various arms of the Vehicle Inspectorate, Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council, the police, head teachers of schools throughout south Wales, the Traffic Area Office, and a powerful supercomputer, which is apparently situated somewhere in Pontypridd and has the ability to alter time and space. I suspe...

This one appeared in the South Wales Echo in August 2002. At the time, our train service was a lot more limited than it is now, and I took the opportunity to have a bit of fun. I sent it in – but somewhere between my typewriter and the finished page, the Echo typesetters struck. A few weeks later I bumped into my old Maths teacher in the takeaway. He took me to task for using Roman capitals for the irrational numbers – but I'd typed them in italics to begin with. (Incidentally, I seem to be one of the few people who've noticed that Platform 5 has disappeared altogether from Cardiff Central Station. It's all a bit Harry Potter…) Following the news that Cardiff Central Station now has a Platform Zero, I wonder whether Wales and West Trains have any plans to add further platforms in the spirit of mathematical adventure. For instance, the 'circular' City Line between Radyr and Coryton would be ideally suited to run from Platform π , which represents the ratio between ...

I used to be a prolific letter-writer to the local press. This one was published in the South Wales Echo . It appeared on my day off, so I didn't know it had gone into print until the following day. Apparently the lads in Mulligan's (our lunchtime local, in Cardiff) laughed so loudly when they read it that Jeff and Laurie (my work colleagues) were surprised I didn't hear them from my house, some twenty miles away. Your little jibe (Editorial, September 21) about buses running on time made me wonder about the parallels between UFO sightings and bus non-sightings. Both UFOs and missing buses are frequently reported by a wide cross-section of the public, regardless of their age, gender or religious background. Both phenomena used to excite a great deal of interest by local newspapers and TV stations, but are now largely disregarded. Reliable witness testimony is usually met with disbelief, if not outright scorn, by the bodies concerned with their official investigation. UFO ab...