Good morning Monday

[TheOstrich]

I've been keeping an eye on the Waterloo situation myself, meriad, as our West of England line is also affected by the works. If I'm reading it right, a lot of outer suburban semi-fasts have been scrapped for the duration, and whilst our trains will still run hourly from Exeter, the presumed cancellation of the Salisbury stoppers meant a forecast that our already overcrowded services would be at bursting point. So I was interested to see that the overcrowding wasn't that bad on your line this morning ....

The travellers were a problem in Birmingham, Saundra; one year, they chose three sites including a nature reserve and a park near where we lived, and although they were "moved on" by the authorities after due process, the destruction and litter they left behind was phenomenal. They destroyed fences to get onto the land. These were travellers ("tarmac yer front drive for yer, mate?"), not Romanies. When they came back in 2015, if I recall correctly, I believe that some of the locals actually threatened them with violence ....

Our guy came early Sunday to mow the lawn, because of the threatened bad weather this week. This morning, around 9:30, for around 20 minutes or so, there was a bird "feeding frenzy" on our newly-cut back lawn and in our bushes - we spotted a pair of blue tits, a pair of chaffinches, more sparrows than you could shake a stick at, blackbirds - and four woodpeckers, two adult and two juveniles, all furiously "mining" for ants. I think we've probably got craters in the lawn now ....

Just been out for a walk with Mrs O and just got back in time as it's started spitting with rain yet again.

[meriad]

Ossie,I think what they're doing is using Basingstoke and Woking as a main change over. So instead of having a train all the way through and running part of the way empty(ish); they'll run a full service out of Waterloo to Woking and then people need to change there (or Basingstoke) for onwards trains (and same for the opposite direction); that would limit the trains heading to and from Waterloo but still provide a decent enough service to the rest of the South West.

It will be interesting though to see if they get the works done on time. It's all being carried out by Network Rail and has nothing to do with SWT; and SWT will be the ones to bear the brunt of the commuter anger if things overrun.

[TheOstrich]

It will be interesting though to see if they get the works done on time. It's all being carried out by Network Rail and has nothing to do with SWT; and SWT will be the ones to bear the brunt of the commuter anger if things overrun.

Well, Stagecoach won't be too bothered by that, because their franchise finishes this month!
It'll be the incomers, MTR and First Group who will get the flack ....

Interesting about the change over points. I thought our service was still going straight through to Waterloo; maybe it's only going as far as Basingstoke ....
I'll have to check. I was planning on going to Winchfield by train this month for a soccer match, meeting some old school friends there, but we decided to postpone in view of the rail-works ...

[Osc]

Evening all, it has been a very pleasant day here, sun, some cloud and a gentle breeze. Aggers and Di, it's a bank holiday here too. We went for a lovely walk this morning and came home via the harbour where coincidentally, a new icecream shop has just opened - had to have one, dontcha know, to make sure they are ok Just been pottering about ever since, had various odd jobs to do, some in relation to holidays and a couple of banking things. We've had lovely pizza for dinner - we buy frozen margarita pizzas and then add our own toppings, always very tasty.