UK Rail and Trains

The other night, floods stopped all trains from Paddington, so my Devon train was late; hours late. We made up some time haring through the Somerset night but too late: the on-time stopping-train which was to become my Paignton branch connection further down at Newton Abbott junction, had already left Exeter ahead of us. Dammit. I asked the @GWRHelp TM if they might call ahead to perhaps hold it at NA. Two minutes later she returned looking pleased. “Oh! they already had a plan, we’ll be getting there first…” and walked off. Now, I had questions, because I (obv) had @RealtimeTrains running and that train had just left Dawlish Warren, the last passing place. But we zipped onwards up to 100mph and i worried that we were about to do what Father Dougal did to Bishop Brennan: ie kick it up the arse, but at 70mph and along the Dawlish Sea Wall. A text pinged in from a helpful GWR chum. “Look right…” and for the first time in my life I looked inland to the cliff along Dawlish. Lights! THWOOTH-TH-TH-TH-TH-TH-THWOOTH. Darkness. Newton Abbott soon appeared, two dozen of us alighted and were delighted when five minutes later in came our connection. But how? Well. Because those clever sods at Exeter Box saw our need, they activated the bidirectional running system. It means they can run two tracks both going west, by halting stuff coming east, using strategically placed crossovers and essentially use them as slow lanes to let other trains past. All because of the Dawlish Sea Wall resilience project, but it has uses at other times too. It’s becoming more widespread on the network - one GWR driver that weekend told me “normally in the cab you feel you’re a jet pilot. When we parallel run it feels like Top Gun.” Anyway here’s a big 🏆👍to the folk at @networkrailwest & @GWRHelp who chose to help out a lot of passengers trying to get somewhere late at night a long way from home, and 🏆👍 whoever signed off budget to give that route that resilience. It’s a timely reminder that in this big machine we call the railway, at its heart it’s still people fixing things and finding cunning ways round even the oddest of problems. And 👍👍👍👍 to whoever at @GWRHelp chose to put a rare Castle Class InterCity HST 125 on that diagram down the branch: it’s a slice of timeless design that, unlike everything else around it, never seems to age.