Rail Travel Along The South Coast
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve travelled along most of the South Coast by train in two trips; one to Bexhill and the other to Littlehampton and Yeovil.
Effectively the South Coast is covered by two main rail routes; the East Coastway line from Brighton to Hastings and the West Coastway line from Brighton to Southampton.
The fastest trains from Hastings to Southampton take five minutes over three hours with a change of train at Brighton. But there are twenty-three stops.
So it could be a journey that only a masochist would take, but at least you’d probably be in a comfortable Class 377 with a trolley service.
Even if you go via Clapham Junction, it will still take nearly three and a half hours.
So it is definitely a journey where most people would drive. But a lot of the roads are dreadful.
So could anything be done to make this journey faster and better?
The Class 377 trains are 100 mph units, but some of the route has a lower speed limit, but as I found on the route, the slow speed is probably more due to the number of stops than the speed of the trains.
The only improvement being talked about is to improve the Marshlink line from Hastings to Ashford, so that high speed services could run between St. Pancras and Eastbourne.
Judging by the troubles that the current Hastings line is suffering from, it would seem that this scheme might be cheaper than sorting out the Jerry-built Hastings line.
If you search the Internet for South Coast Main Line, you find this document from the East Sussex Rail Alliance.
I think we can file that under In Your Dreams.
The Great Eastern Main line has a similar problem of slow speed which is hopefully being solved with the Norwich in Ninety project.
Perhaps a similar approach could be used along the South Coast.
The Station Is Rising At Custom House Station
Some of the supports for the Crossrail station at Custom House have now been erected.
I met two Laing O’Rourke engineers, who were working on the project on the bridge and they said that in three months, a lot of the station will have been assembled.
They also said that the finish of the concrete was much better having been built in a factory than if it had been made on site.
Badgers Are More Important To MPs Than Stephen Lawrence
Ann Treneman in her parliamentary sketch in The Times was discussing badger day at Westminster.
She said that the Chamber was full of wildlife of another sort: at least three times more MPs showed up yesterday than for last week’s statement on Stephen Lawrence.
Do You Tip In Coffee Shops?
This article on the BBC web site talks about tipping in coffee shops and especially digital tipping in Starbucks in the US. Here’s the first paragraph.
Starbucks has modified its mobile phone app so that US customers can add tips for baristas to their bill. Is it normal to tip in coffee shops in the US – and could it catch on in the UK, asks Tom Geoghegan?
I usually tip if staff are pleasant and quick, often if it’s just a coffee, by throwing a twenty pence coin in the pot deliberately. I’ve only done this since I had the stroke and moved to London, so I wonder if it is my brain, saying here’s a little hand-eye co-ordination test that’s good for you! Although, I only do the action with my right hand and not my gammy left one!
In cafes, where I sit down and have a meal, I always pay by cash and leave the appropriate tip in change. I’ve found that in places I use regularly, this means that at busy times, the staff jump me up the queue and I get better tables.
Swastikas Everywhere
There is this article about the traditional use of swastikas on the BBC web site. Here’s the first paragraph.
Swastika. The word is a potent one. For more than one billion Hindus it means “wellbeing” and good fortune. For others, the cross with arms bent at right angles will forever symbolise Nazism. Yet England is seemingly awash with swastikas. Why?
I first came across their use in perhaps 1963. Several of us at Minchenden Grammar School were looking at old school magazines from the 1920s and 1930s. We were surprised to see swastikas used to separate paragraphs in some of the articles, in just the same way that you might use asterisks today.
I remember asking my father, who was a letterpress printer about this and he said it was common to use swastikas for this purpose before the symbol’s adoption by the Nazis. But he also said, nobody used it now, so he’d sent all his swastikas to be melted down, as they weren’t needed any more.
The Anonymous Widower 