tehmina.org

The Campaign Against New Beeching Report is headed by a fellow rail campaigner Lee Fletcher. He has been and continues to be one of the more active campaigners whose inspired project to propose an alternative plan for a railway in south west England, Gateway to the Future, I commented upon recently. This campaign, which is closely linked to Save the Train, More Train Less Strain and other campaigns (not just based in the south west) are potent symbols of the sea-change in attitude we will see towards public transport, particularly the railways. (more…)

Last week and today, First Great Western organised some 60 extra services on its network to ferry festival-goers to and from Castle Cary for Glastonbury 2007.

The question is: did other regular services suffer?

This Guardian article about the ‘here-to-stay’ above-inflation rail fare increases raises some important issues about how the Government intend to tackle the capacity problems on the rail network in Britain. Statements about the way forward for the railways will come in the High Level Output Statement (HLOS). The two major projects for consideration are a revamp for Birmingham New Street and an updating of the ThamesLink route through London. It is also likely to include the plan for CrossRail. (more…)

On 12 June, I received the following response from Judith Shepherd of the DfT to my letter concerning the lack of services on the TransWilts (Salisbury - Westbury - Chippenham - Swindon) line. I was reliably informed that a large amount of the text of the letter was copied from DfT responses sent to concerned rail users last year before the actual cuts had been announced in the December 2006 timetable! It therefore, in large part, ignored the essence of my letter (for the desperate need for much better public transport links across Wiltshire), and did not even manage to respond with the most up-to-date standard statements on the issue. Graham Ellis of the Save the Train campaign has responded in detail to Ms Shepherd pointing out where the errors lie (take either sense of the word). We await a response. (more…)

Some wonderful people from the Save the Train campaign have come up with a feasible, achievable and brilliant solution to the current train transport problems in Wiltshire and the Greater Bristol Area. They call it Gateway to the Future and it speaks for itself.

Wiltshire County Council and Swindon Borough Council are currently in the middle of moving various heritage services from around the county (mainly Trowbridge) topurpose-built facilities in Chippenham which will open some time after October 2007 as Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. These services include the record office (archives), archaeology, museums service conservation (moved from Salisbury) and local studies library.

It is claimed that the new facilities will increase access to heritage collections and services for members of the public. However, have the planners thought about transport issues? To try and reach Chippenham from most of Wiltshire is a trial. There are few adequate bus services and a woeful, mistimed rail service on the TransWilts line which means that you have to add almost an hour to your journey to travel, say, from Salisbury to Chippenham (change at Bath) on the train (previously it was direct to Trowbridge). This is the letter I wrote to Salisbury Journal in response to the story of the new History Centre: (more…)

In Mumbai, India, young Parsi boys attend the Dadar Athornan Madressa, a school where they receive secular education in addition to instruction in the arts of being a priest. In this gallery of images of contemporary Parsis, there is one of three of the boys in front of the school by a blackboard with a verse from the medieval Persian poet Firdawsi - the thought for the day as they enter the school:

Look at the Heavens,
How they roll on;
And look at man,
How soon he is gone.
A breath of wind and then no more;
A world like this, should man deplore?