Yep, franchising was already a zombie system before COVID killed it off.

East coast they promised to pay the government more money than they actually managed to earn from running trains and ran out of money.

The Metra heritage loco we need....

Yeah over here services have gradually increased since the 1980s, & if BR hadn't already regularised it then there was a push to do that post privatisation.

From their POV biggest cost is crew, 2nd biggest is train, if you're paying for those then as long as extra runs cover the fuel it's worth it.

Such a cool layout

Just here to darkly appreciate "the railway museum is accessible by car" line in that...

Mmmm unconvinced they would take a HSL past Exeter, definately not beyond Plymouth.

Running beyond the network is normal, and plenty of French cities aren't directly connected to the HSL.

(Nantes might be a good example that's bigger than Plymouth...)

Yeah possibly, though going the other way only about 3 a day would go all the way to Penzance, and two of those would run half an hour apart for some bizarre reason, plus an extra once per year on St Pirans day. 🙃

For context, i'm down in Exeter and Barnstaple and Okehampton are both hourly, Exmouth half hourly, suspect if I was in France they would have bustituted Barnstaple and never reopened Oke...

Though conversely Exeter would probably have at least a couple of tram lines so there's that! 🙃

Yep, hard agree that reliability is a long way from perfect at the mo

If you're comparing France and England, then (very generally) most of England has at least an hourly train, in some bits of France you're talking there being just a handful of trains a day assuming services haven't just been replaced by a bus yet....

(Given the fairly simple wayside station built locally in recent years had to have a second means of escape put in from each platform, I doubt you can build that today even if you wanted!)

Hmmmm, did think Dovey Jcn, but looking that has a footpath access also.

So my guess would be, no.

Depends what you mean, there's at least couple in Scotland with no public road access, but you can still enter and exit the station, does that count?

I'm choosing to imagine that version of the State Belt was built deliberately to a slightly different gauge, and the pit is for loading standard gauge cars onto flatcars for delivery 🙃

I do - though it's been a while (as you can probably tell from the content!) Vantage point is the footbridge over the WCML that connects the park to Conway Gardens

If you want to get actual over and under you'll need a telephoto but it should work.

I'm not suggesting it's a *good* choice... 😉

My guess is they have held off to see what the competition looks like...