vandyke4ad

vandyke4ad, 4 months ago

@Litzz11 @dangillmor By and large, far fewer nice people become billionaires.
Possibly because they’re less inclined to screw over their employees and/or customers.

vandyke4ad, 5 months ago

@jon There was talk sometime ago, about a new line in Greece to Igoumenitsa.
Given that the Greek Government has failed to reopen* the almost completed (in 2009) Corinth to Kalamata line, this is probably not going to happen.

• on Streetview, the infrastructure of the line in Tripoli looks pretty much the same now, as it did in 2009, when we passed through on an unexpected bus journey from Kyparissia to Athens, rather than train via Patras.

vandyke4ad, 5 months ago

@jon Perhaps some things have changed, but at the time of our journey, the railway(OSE) seemed to go out of its way to way to make travel difficult:
Hiding the timetable behind a premium rate phone line, instead of putting it on their website.
Athens’ ticket office for booking Thessaloniki- Istanbul sleeper didn’t open until half an hour after the last possible train (to catch sleeper) to Thessaloniki had departed.
(The latter, AFAIK, ceased a while ago)

vandyke4ad, 6 months ago

@DrALJONES From my grandfather’s WWI diaries, the British army was in Palestine/Syria fighting Turkish and German soldiers.
This fighting turned many of the people into refugees, who according to the diaries, feared the return of German soldiers the most.
He describes a young couple bidding an emotional farewell to an old man, too frail to flee; and other refugees walking without shoes.
Much as now.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@exchgr @ianbetteridge Working from home is not that much removed from, say, a branch of a retail company that only has a couple of employees on site at the same time.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@msquebanh Try looking at posts from @chrischirp
Posts include links to likely useful data.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@cthulku @msquebanh For one of the MRI scans of my prostate, I made a iTunes playlist of songs c.3 minutes in length, ordered alphabetically by artists. This made it easy to know how much time had passed.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@jon Isn’t an extension of CIV ticketing a possibility?
You can (or could) buy that protection here by asking for a ticket to “London International”, though the price tended to be higher.
On our Sept trip to Mallorca, all the journeys went OK. Except Corsica Lines cancelled the return sailing to Toulon, 30 days before the date.
We could have changed return tickets (prob with fees), but hotel in Paris on a Friday night more difficult. So 2 nights in Toulon.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@jon Railways don’t seem to understand people wanting to do complex journeys.
In 2015, National Rail search wouldn’t give a result if the journey involved more than 3 trains. E.g. Newhaven to March on a Sunday - there were roughly hourly (with 2 changes) from Brighton, to which trains from Newhaven ran half hourly. Couldn’t be done, NR said.
Or Cherbourg to SW of France must be done via Paris, rather than, say, via Limoges.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@jon Passengers are expected to be clairvoyant!
One of our sons wrote (“the hard part” of) the original iPhone app for buying train tickets used by ATOC.
It had to access three databases to work, and part of the system didn’t “understand” the concept of displaying a ticket on a phone, rather than emailing it.
Not that many operators’ guards had the equipment to read a QR code then.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@SpaceLifeForm @simon_brooke Ad blocking can sometimes break sites that have been too clever for their own good. Attaching javascript to a [Submit] button, that’s dependent on a separate js file which gets blocked, for instance.
Gloucestershire County Council website was one. Particularly annoying if you’ve filled in a form, and the [Submit] button does nothing.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@maxleibman “Would you like the receipt emailed to you?”
“No thanks, the paper one you’ve just given me will do.”
And thus the chance of a lifelong relationship fails to get off the ground.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@jon Trial journey on All Aboard produced 07:03 departure from Paris to San Sebastian - or night train at 21 hrs something.
Whereas Paris to Hendaye gave a number of more social hours’ daytime trains, which presumably allow onwards Euskotren to San Sebastian, which seem to run every 30 mins until 21:33.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@jon We drove over (through) the bridge in 2012. It’s a quite odd experience.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@jon Fortunately, it wasn’t very busy - around 8pm. Our day trip into Portugal from Ribeira was shortened (distance) by the car needing a repair.
Hope to do train to Lisbon via Paris/Hendaye/San Sebastian:/Vigo and Porto next year.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@thomasfuchs CrapGPT

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@partim @Henrysbridge @jon We travelled on the coastal service from Îles-Rousse to Calvi on Corsica last year. The trailer coach had no seats: just a big empty space. Fortunately, it was so full, falling over would have been difficult. (40 minute journey)
Similar to this train, being used on the mainline service from Ajaccio in 2002 - though both coaches had seats then.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@jon In 2009, due to the sleeper train from Istanbul to Sofia arriving an hour or so late, we missed the train to Belgrade.
Two buses (coaches) to get there instead. Needed to change in Nîs, where they wanted extra for luggage going in the hold.
Fortunately, 1 Euro coins were acceptable, as we didn’t have any Serbian currency - we had a prepaid overnight hotel stay before the train next day to Budapest.

vandyke4ad, 7 months ago

@MarSolRivas @davidwilkins This one was somewhat larger. Took about a day to put up, using a second crane.
The Grange wind farm, near Sutton Bridge, Lincs., in 2013. Behind our then house in Tydd Gote.

vandyke4ad, 10 months ago

@bullivant The Tory tactic was/is likely trying to convince a proportion of the 92% that the ULEZ expansion is going to affect them, even if it isn’t.