I had already planned in advance to stay this coming weekend in Glasgow: in fact, it's my cousin's 30th birthday party on Saturday. I decided to stay in Glasgow not just from Friday night onwards but also on Thursday night, so I booked a Travelodge in central Glasgow. I said goodbye to New Beckenham, where John and Ian put up with me for many more nights than I ought to have imposed on them. My thanks to both of them.
The aim of today is simple: the Settle and Carlisle line.
0928 New Beckenham to Charing Cross, arr 0952
Distance: 9.5 miles, walk-up price: £2.45
Northern Line (Charing Cross branch), Charing Cross to Euston
I got to Euston at 1003, in good time for the 1020 to Manchester, where I was planning on having a relaxed lunch before heading over the Pennines to Leeds and then to the Settle and Carlisle.
Unfortunately, a few seconds before I got to the ticket barriers to leave Euston Underground station, the mainline station was evacuated due to a fire alarm. The mainline station upstairs was evacuated by foot, but we were prevented from leaving the Underground station to get to ground level. Instead we were told to evacuate by train. I decided to head for King's Cross, since then I could head to Leeds direct if necessary, and it was a short walk back to Euston if it happened to reopen.
However, London Underground had other ideas. Because Euston station was now closed, the trains were not officially stopping, so the train we were waiting for on platform 6 (on the Northern Line towards King's Cross) didn't stop. We were instead directed back up the stairs (the escalator wasn't working) to platform 2, where the Northern Line train towards Charing Cross was stopped and some - not all - of the doors were manually opened.
Eventually we all made it on, and I disembarked at Warren Street, the next station, and was just about to head for the Victoria Line to double-back and go to King's Cross when I heard an announcement that Euston station had re-opened. So I went back to Euston on the Victoria line, and this time disembarked and got out of the Underground station successfully, half an hour late and having missed the 1020.
The whole thing was, frankly, a shambles. Granted I arrived in Euston station just moments after the mainline station upstairs had been closed, but we were explicitly directed back to platform level to evacuate by train. Only later were we told to make our way to platform 2, and it was only after the train at platform 6 didn't stop that it became clear that platform 2 was the only way out.
Surely if there had been a fire and we had to evacuate as quickly as possible, it would have been simpler to stop all the trains, make clear announcements that no-one should disembark, and get everyone on whatever train you can. Forcing us onto a particular train, and then making us wait for someone to run down the platform and manually open the doors cost vital minutes.
I'm just glad it wasn't a real emergency.
Anyway, I made it onto Euston concourse around 1035; I could have got the 1040 to Manchester, but I decided to wait for the 1100 and go via Stoke instead of Crewe.
1100 London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, arr 1307
Distance: 184.25 miles, walk-up price: £42.95
(Headcode 1H20, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390014)
Scenery: 4/10 - Another trip up the WCML. Big deal.
Punctuality: 7/10 - A few minutes late by Stoke, but on-time at Manchester thanks to padding.
Speed: 9/10 - Very nearly at full potential. I think a regular service that takes two hours (not two hours and seven minutes) is possible.
Comfort: 6/10 - There simply aren't enough table seats on Pendolinos; I ended up having to go backwards with not much visibility.
Staff: 3/10 - No ticket checks on the train at all, while the train manager and the shop assistant chatted away happily. Get it together, Virgin.
I had to get to the north of England somehow, and I'd done both the Midland and East Coast mainlines yesterday, I plumped for the West Coast today. I initially thought of going via Preston, but decided that meant getting up too early. So I headed for Manchester, which isn't really interesting in and of itself, but which permitted me to use the Transpennine Express service to get to Leeds. The train itself is, frankly, summed up in the ratings above and I see no need to say any more.
Manchester Piccadilly is apparently the most popular (large) station in the country, with a 92% customer satisfaction rating. It's not hard to see why: it's well laid-out, there's space but not too much, there's a good range of shops and places to eat, and it's very well-connected to pretty much every part of the country, as well as to Greater Manchester thanks to both suburban rail and the Manchester Metrolink.
Put it this way: it's sufficiently well laid out for me to go to Sainsbury's and buy a few bits and pieces for lunch, go to the cash machine, queue for a few minutes for Upper Crust, order my baguette, wait for it to be heated, check the platform indicators and get on my train 15 minutes after I arrived. I can't think of any other station where you could do that without breaking a sweat - while dragging a medium-sized suitcase on a sunny July afternoon.
1327 Manchester Piccadilly to Leeds, arr 1422
Distance: 42.75 miles, walk-up price: £10.25
(Headcode 1P36, operated by First Transpennine Express using Desiro 185141)
Scenery: 6/10 - A nice run over the Pennines, but I did doze for half the journey.
Punctuality: 9/10 - A minute or two late here or there, but on time at Manchester and at Leeds.
Speed: 4/10 - For the main line between two cities just 43 miles apart to average 47mph is pretty poor really. Surely 45 minutes is achievable?
Comfort: 7/10 - Pretty reasonable seats, good visibility and space.
Staff: 8/10 - Thorough ticket checks (though he was slightly on automatic pilot and got thrown by my ticket), and a trolley.
The Transpennine services were once part of the AlphaLine branding of Regional Railways, but they started being branded separately as "Transpennine" in 1998, before being transferred to a separate franchise in 2004. Since then, First Transpennine Express has transformed the service, turning it from a regional service into what some would consider an InterCity service in all but name.
The core of the North Transpennine network is a four-trains-per-hour service between Manchester and Leeds via Huddersfield. One of these extends to Liverpool and two to Manchester Airport, while in the east one each continues on to Middlesbrough, Scarborough, Hull and Newcastle.
In 2006 they replaced the ubiquitous Class 158 Sprinters with more modern Class 185 Desiros, built by Siemens. I must admit they're quite spacious, moreso than Sprinters, with good visibility, but the seats are quite hard.
The scenery on the route is quite nice, though there are a number of long tunnels to avoid the hills. That said, I spent the first third of the journey eating, and most of the rest dozing so I didn't fall asleep on the next train.
And with good reason: the next line was the Settle and Carlisle.
1449 Leeds to Carlisle, arr 1728
Distance: 113 miles, walk-up price: £15.25
(Headcode 2H92, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158791)
Scenery: 9/10 - Superb English countryside, with some fantastic viaducts; nearly perfect, but not quite.
Punctuality: 8/10 - We drifted a few minutes late but arrived in Carlisle on time, again thanks to padding.
Speed: 7/10 - A remarkably consistent 60mph (with the stops we averaged 43mph) which given the freight using the line it isn't bad.
Comfort: 10/10 - A Sprinter with comfortable seats, tables at the right height, enough legroom, and good visibility. Why can't all trains be like Northern Rail Sprinters?
Staff: 7/10 - Attentive ticket checks, both before and after the crew change at Skipton, but no trolley service, which is disappointing on a three-hour journey.
As I said before, there are three main routes to Scotland, and two of them still have through trains between London and Scotland. First came the East Coast Main Line, from London to Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York and Newcastle (with branches serving Leeds and Hull). The ECML has the best route, being nice and flat all the way, but still managing to be spectacular on the Northumberland coastline.
Second came the West Coast Main Line, from London to Glasgow via Rugby, Crewe, Preston and Carlisle (with branches serving Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool). The WCML has two major summits, one at Shap in the Lake District (where it's parallel to the M6), and one at Beattock in the Southern Uplands of Scotland (where it's parallel to the M74).
The third was built by the Midland Railway, quite a few years after both the WCML and ECML were established. Instead of going round the Pennines on one side or the other, the Midland were forced to go over the Pennines. They already had a mainline to Yorkshire, the route from London to Sheffield via Leicester and Chesterfield. Having extended this to Leeds, they ploughed north-west through Skipton, before turning north to create the Settle and Carlisle.
The S&C (as it's known) runs through unspoilt countryside, with only the occasional small village en route. Going north from Settle it climbs for 16 miles at 1 in 100 to the top of Blea Moor. Now for a car that mightn't sound much, but for a train that's pretty steep. Put it this way: a freight train which is going at 60mph at the bottom of the hill will be doing just 23mph at the top. It's probably the longest sustained incline on the network.
Blea Moor summit hits 1155ft, but a little further on you reach the true summit, which is Ais Gill at 1169ft. This is the highest mainline in England, and Dent station (at 1156ft) is the highest station in England. The scenery is superb: the highlight is Ribblehead viaduct, a 24-arch viaduct made of brick over the River Ribble to get you up the hill at gentle enough gradients for express trains.
This is as close as I've got to the perfect all-round train; I think if there'd been a trolley service it would have been perfect. The scenery was great. The seats were comfortable. The visibility was excellent. The train wasn't so fast that you couldn't take pictures, but wasn't so slow as to annoy you. The staff were friendly and courteous. The train was (very nearly) on time.
Granted, there were lines with better scenery, better punctuality, better speed, better comfort, and better staff; but I think this ought to win overall; it is, somehow, the least flawed.
There's something I never expected to say about a Sprinter.
Anyway, I got off at Carlisle and found myself with half an hour to waste, which is difficult in Carlisle station; Carlisle, in spite of being on the main line to London, is a pretty small city. Fortunately my patience held out.
1807 Carlisle to Glasgow, arr 1919
Distance: 102.25 miles, walk-up price: £12.20
(Headcode 1S77, operated by Virgin Trains using SuperVoyager 221103)
Scenery: 7/10 - A nice run over Beattock summit, the highest point on the WCML.
Punctuality: 9/10 - A minute late at Glasgow, seemingly due to a late outbound service from Glasgow blocking our platform; quite understandable for the evening.
Speed: 9/10 - Averaging 85mph when twisting through such scenery is very impressive.
Comfort: 8/10 - A welcome surprise, with decent seats and visibility, as well as more luggage space than I was expecting.
Staff: 6/10 - One ticket check, not particularly thorough, but the shop stayed open until pretty close to Glasgow, which was appreciated.
The CrossCountry network consists of the "X" of routes through Birmingham, with the four points of the X roughly at Manchester, York, Bristol and Reading, with extensions to Scotland and the south coast.
One of its virtues is that it provides a small number of through trains between lots of destinations; as part of the overall pattern of services, there is currently one train a day in each direction between Penzance and Aberdeen, via Plymouth, Bristol, Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield, Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Virgin Trains used to operate the CrossCountry franchise until 2007, and they replaced the entire fleet with Voyagers (class 220) and SuperVoyagers (class 221); the difference is that the SuperVoyagers can tilt and the Voyagers can't (and also most SuperVoyagers are five cars, while all Voyagers are four cars). The SuperVoyagers were to be used on all services using the West Coast Main Line, which needs tilting trains to get the top speed out of it.
When the CrossCountry franchise was handed from Virgin to Arriva in 2007, major changes in the CrossCountry network followed. In particular, services on the arm between Birmingham and Scotland via Preston were excised from the CrossCountry network, to be operated as a standalone service by Virgin Trains as part of the West Coast franchise.
Now, in the days of through services between Plymouth and Glasgow via Birmingham and Preston, using diesel trains made a certain amount of sense because there were no wires south of Birmingham and trying to use electric trains would have necessitated complicated locomotive changes at Birmingham New Street.
However, when Virgin West Coast took over the Birmingham-Preston-Scotland services from CrossCountry, they continued to use the same SuperVoyager trains. So we now have the utter madness of long-distance services between Birmingham and Scotland being run by diesel trains in spite of the entire line they run on being electrified.
Now, I complained bitterly about the CrossCountry Voyagers yesterday. However, the tilting SuperVoyagers used by Virgin Trains on this Birmingham-Glasgow service surprised me: they are noticeably better. This is mainly because since the fleet has been split in two, both have been refurbished, but in slightly different ways.
For one, unlike the Voyagers which have entire carriages of airline seats with just two tables in the centre of the carriage, in the SuperVoyagers I was amazed to find an entire carriage of seats which are all at tables (except four at one end). Much better for using a laptop.
What's more, the seats all line up with windows, and in order to ensure this happens space has been left between seat backs in order to allow for luggage space. Which was a good thing, as my case has seemingly grown (probably due to being loaned a couple of books) so much that it didn't fit in the overhead racks.
The visibility was appreciated, since the line over Beattock summit at the northern end of the West Coast Main Line is a nice ride; the view when you look down the valley, towering over the boxes-on-wheels on the M74 below, is especially pleasing.
Eventually, however, we hit the never-ending suburbs of Glasgow, and after a brief delay we arrived at Glasgow Central, where I headed for my hotel (well, Travelodge) and then to find some dinner.
Today's overall statistics, then:
Total time on trains: 7 hours, 17 minutes.
Distance travelled: 451.75 miles.
Walk-up price: £83.10.
That takes me to 4983.75 miles for the eleven days so far; I've spent a sum total of three days, 21 hours and 53 minutes on trains; and the total walk-up fares would have cost £1033. For a £429 ticket, I think I've had pretty good value.
But it's not finished yet. There are two plans for tomorrow, when I shall be returning to Glasgow (though not to the same hotel). If the weather in the west of Scotland is vaguely decent - by which I mean it isn't a complete washout - then the West Highland Line, from Glasgow to Fort William and Mallaig, will be my ten-hour there-and-back journey for tomorrow.
On the other hand, the forecast is for a complete washout. So plan B is to do a circuit of northern England, including Shap summit, the Cumbrian coast line, the Tyne Valley, and back through Berwick again. Either way, it should be a fun day!
Thursday 30 July 2009
All-Line Rover, Day 10
I had planned at some point in the All-Line Rover to spend a few days in the Scottish Highlands. But the experience of Edinburgh-Aberdeen in driving rain on Day 2 was, frankly, quite depressing. Undoubtedly the north of Scotland has some of the finest scenery in the world, but in poor weather it's just not worth it.
The weather forecast, in case you hadn't noticed, is pretty terrible for the rest of this week, at least for the north of Scotland. In fact, Wednesday was forecast as a washout across pretty much the whole country. So I looked for some inspiration.
The current Secretary of State for Transport, Andrew Adonis, bought an All-Line Rover in April and spent a week touring the country to see the network. He was neither as thorough nor as insane as I was (though he did seem to cope with early morning starts), but he saw fit to spend an afternoon in York visiting the National Railway Museum. Ian reminded me of its existence last night and it seemed like the perfect way to spend a dreary grey afternoon.
So, after watching the forecast this morning and deciding that the day was, indeed, a washout, I proceeded to King's Cross.
1025 New Beckenham to London Bridge, arr 1046
Distance 7.75 miles, walk-up return: £4.10, operated by Southeastern
1045 London Bridge to St Pancras (Thameslink), arr 1103
Distance 3 miles, walk-up price: £1.30, operated by First Capital Connect
I was intending to get the Northern Line, but I saw that we overtook a Thameslink train coming in to London Bridge and decided to use it as an alternative. This meant that I made a connection in which I should have departed a minute before I arrived. But hey, this is suburban rail: four minutes delay isn't bad. And, in fact, we made it up and were on time at St Pancras, which is just a short walk to King's Cross station. (At 18 minutes, however, I suspect the tube would have been faster.)
I got to King's Cross to discover the concourse crammed with passengers - an unusual situation at 11am on a Wednesday. It transpired that a person had been hit by a train down the line at Stevenage. I don't know the circumstances of the impact, but I happened to see the train involved in the crash; the nose was visibly damaged. Needless to say this caused a fair amount of disruption, with most incoming trains subject to delays of an hour or so, and some outgoing trains being cancelled. Fortunately for me, mine wasn't cancelled.
1127 London King's Cross to York, arr 1319
Distance: 188.5 miles, walk-up price £22.45
(Headcode 1N26, operated by Grand Central using HST 43065+43084)
Scenery: 4/10 - Nothing special, seen it all before...
Punctuality: 6/10 - Thirteen minutes late into York, but given the circumstances not too bad.
Speed: 9/10 - Had we been on time we would have averaged 101mph, which would have been the fastest train I'd been on. Impressive.
Comfort: 10/10 - Proper trains, proper seats, great visibility, good buffet car.
Staff: 10/10 - Attentive staff, who remembered me between asking them on the platform if my ticket was valid and checking my ticket on the train a while later.
Grand Central, like Wrexham and Shropshire, are an open-access operator. They perceived there was a lack of direct trains between London and Sunderland, so they petitioned to run three services each way per day. After a long and protracted battle between them and GNER watched over by the Office of Rail Regulation, they were awarded the rights to run the services in 2006. After many false starts, mainly due to delays in getting the rolling stock delivered, they finally started running trains on December 19th, 2007.
I boarded the 1127 service to Sunderland. Unlike many of the NXEC trains, it doesn't call at Peterborough, and in fact runs fast to York. We left, surprisingly, bang on time, but we were following trains that were delayed and we thus arrived in York 13 minutes late; given the circumstances that could be a lot worse.
Like many other trips, the point of this trip wasn't the journey or the scenery, it was the train itself. Grand Central, like Wrexham and Shropshire, they are using Mark 3 stock. Unlike Wrexham and Shropshire, they have already refurbished their carriages. And unlike everyone else who's refurbished their HSTs, the refurbishment has preserved the essence of the Mark 3 stock: the seats are low-backed and comfortable and the visibility is superb.
But they've managed to go one better than Wrexham and Shropshire: they already have power points for laptops and, better still, free wireless internet access. I know that Wrexham and Shropshire will have their refurbished carriages in service in just a few weeks, but Grand Central are ahead of them in that respect.
Grand Central's fares are also very reasonable: £35 single to York (without a railcard) is considerably better than NXEC, and perhaps a third of the passengers on the half-full service got off at York. It's not much more to Sunderland, too.
Like Wrexham and Shropshire, Grand Central also have a proper restaurant car. They offered hot bacon sandwiches, but unlike W&S who made them fresh, they were pre-made and heated in a microwave. Still good, though. All in all, not much to choose between Grand Central and Wrexham and Shropshire.
I arrived in York, which is a grand station with a long double-arched curved roof over the main platforms, complete with original LNER paintwork. I walked the short distance to the:
National Railway Museum, York
The National Railway Museum is the largest museum of its kind anywhere in the world; it boasts an impressive array of locomotives and coaching stock, a library of books and magazines about railways, as well as works where locomotives are restored to their former glory.
Taking pride of place in the Great Hall is the London and North Eastern Railway Class A4 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive, number 4468, otherwise known as Mallard:
Mallard still holds the world speed record for a steam train, at 126mph, set in 1938 going down Stoke Bank on the ECML. It's quite something to be able to touch a living piece of railway history.
The two halls have on exhibition a wide variety of carriages and locomotives, and I had a good time looking round them all. I was probably most enthusiastic about the "Search Engine", otherwise known as the Library. It seemed to contain every book about railways that had ever been written, as well as archives of many magazines, some dating back to before I was born.
All in all I spent a good two hours looking round the exhibits, before having a snack in the museum cafe and heading back to York station and on to London.
1625 York to Sheffield, arrive 1718
Distance: 51.5 miles, walk-up price: £10.15
(Headcode 1V92, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 220005)
Scenery: 4/10 - Nothing remarkable.
Punctuality: 7/10 - Early at both Doncaster and Sheffield, but there's clearly too much padding time.
Speed: 6/10 - Not great for an InterCity line, on this stretch we only averaged 56mph.
Comfort: 3/10 - Hard seats, terrible visibility, and a trolley service instead of a buffet car.
Staff: 2/10 - I saw the trolley go down once, but no ticket inspections at all.
I swore that I'd avoid using CrossCountry on this rover. Even though I used them yesterday between Leicester and Stansted, that didn't count because it was a Turbostar. This, however, was a Voyager.
Virgin revolutionised CrossCountry, but not all in a good way. They took the tired fleet of hodgepodge vehicles and engines and replaced it all with a brand-new fleet of four- and five-car diesel trains. The trains they replaced were invariably seven or eight cars long, but they justified the shorter trains on the grounds of higher service frequencies.
What they didn't bank on was that when they doubled the service frequencies, suddenly lots more people were attracted, and in ten years passenger numbers doubled. Meaning that the four- and five-car Voyagers simply cannot cope.
I am all too familiar with the Voyagers, being the only train used on the route connecting Leamington Spa with Birmingham International, for Birmingham airport. I usually have a case that's nearly as big as me, and don't bother trying to find a seat. This time I tried, and was surprised to succeed. Unfortunately it was heading backwards. In an aisle seat. With no visibility whatsoever.
The trains themselves were built for tilt, but their bodies seem even smaller than the Pendolinos, and feel very cramped. Granted there's more legroom than in the Turbostar I was on yesterday, but the seats were pretty hard and the visibility is really very poor indeed, with some "window" seats being in fact seats against the bulkhead.
When Virgin doubled the service frequencies, in what was known as "Operation Princess" on September 28th 2002, they bit off more than the network could chew. Punctuality nosedived, and only quite severe cuts to the CrossCountry network seemed to be able to solve that. As a result, Liverpool, Blackpool, Portsmouth and Swansea were left with no CrossCountry services.
What has also happened since then is that all the timetables now have an inordinate amount of padding time. The train I was on was due to sit for four minutes at York, five at Doncaster and five at Sheffield. It still managed to arrive early at Doncaster and Sheffield!
I was certainly glad to disembark the Voyager and get on its sister train, the Meridian:
1727 Sheffield to London St Pancras, arrive 1934
Distance: 165 miles, walk-up price: £40.60
(Headcode 1C70, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222006)
Scenery: 5/10 - Some nice countryside, but nothing special.
Punctuality: 8/10 - Two minutes late most of the way, we arrived a minute late into St Pancras.
Speed: 8/10 - Pretty fast; it certainly felt faster than the HST on the same line yesterday.
Comfort: 7/10 - The seats were comfortable, if different (see below); the visibility was really good, though, and the buffet car seemed pretty good.
Staff: 5/10 - Reasonably thorough ticket inspections, but the announcements were really annoying, see below.
The Meridians were built for Midland Main Line in the early 2000s, and they are also 125mph InterCity trains which usually come in quite short varieties. This, luckily, was a seven-car version instead of a five-car version.
I was expecting to hate the Meridians, but I actually quite liked them. The seats were different, the backs being completely flat rather than curved, which while not necessarily comfortable was a welcome change from the standard train seat. Most of the seats seemed to be at tables, and all of the seats had good visibility, which was much better than I was expecting.
The announcements, however, let the side down. The ticket inspector insisted on announcing after each stop (of which there were, mercifully, only three) that anyone with an advance-purchase ticket should check they were on the correct train and that if they weren't their ticket was "invalid" and they would have to buy a completely new ticket.
Whilst she was technically correct (the best kind of correct!), there was no need whatsoever to be that overbearing about it. It was almost menacing in tone, and that kind of attitude is what stops people using trains.
To add insult to injury, the automatic announcements, which had been silent until after our final intermediate call at Leicester, suddenly piped up with all sorts of safety announcements as well as announcing "This train is for London St Pancras, calling at." Clearly it wasn't designed to cope with non-stop trains.
The train was reasonably well-filled, much moreso than the Nottingham service I was on yesterday. The HSTs used to run to Sheffield but were switched to run to Nottingham for reasons of timing: the Meridians can accelerate faster and brake harder, so they can do things just a little bit quicker, and when you've got so many other services this can often help (though it can also hinder).
Anyway, I made it into St Pancras, grabbed some dinner, and sprinted for the Underground, loudly chastising those who were not obeying the universal London convention to stand on the right-hand side of the escalators.
Northern Line (City branch), King's Cross St Pancras to London Bridge
Unfortunately it was all in vain, and I missed the train to New Beckenham by about three minutes, and had to wait 27 minutes for the next one. No great harm done, though.
2030 London Bridge to New Beckenham, arr 2049
Distance: 7.75 miles, walk-up price included above, operated by Southeastern
So, today's statistics:
Total time spent on trains: 6 hours, 22 minutes.
Distance travelled: 423.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £78.60.
The shortest day so far in terms of time, though thanks to the fast trains to and from York by no means the shortest in distance, nor the cheapest in price.
Tomorrow holds the joys of the Settle and Carlisle: I'll meander my up from London to Glasgow via Manchester, Leeds, Skipton and Carlisle. I've booked a Travelodge in Glasgow for Thursday night, so I'll do something from Glasgow on Friday (weather-dependent) before ending up back in Glasgow on Friday night, by which time my parents will be there as well. The weekend will then be spent mostly celebrating my cousin's 30th birthday in Glasgow, though I might fit in one last train trip on Saturday.
It's starting to feel like it's near the end now, and I don't want it to end...
The weather forecast, in case you hadn't noticed, is pretty terrible for the rest of this week, at least for the north of Scotland. In fact, Wednesday was forecast as a washout across pretty much the whole country. So I looked for some inspiration.
The current Secretary of State for Transport, Andrew Adonis, bought an All-Line Rover in April and spent a week touring the country to see the network. He was neither as thorough nor as insane as I was (though he did seem to cope with early morning starts), but he saw fit to spend an afternoon in York visiting the National Railway Museum. Ian reminded me of its existence last night and it seemed like the perfect way to spend a dreary grey afternoon.
So, after watching the forecast this morning and deciding that the day was, indeed, a washout, I proceeded to King's Cross.
1025 New Beckenham to London Bridge, arr 1046
Distance 7.75 miles, walk-up return: £4.10, operated by Southeastern
1045 London Bridge to St Pancras (Thameslink), arr 1103
Distance 3 miles, walk-up price: £1.30, operated by First Capital Connect
I was intending to get the Northern Line, but I saw that we overtook a Thameslink train coming in to London Bridge and decided to use it as an alternative. This meant that I made a connection in which I should have departed a minute before I arrived. But hey, this is suburban rail: four minutes delay isn't bad. And, in fact, we made it up and were on time at St Pancras, which is just a short walk to King's Cross station. (At 18 minutes, however, I suspect the tube would have been faster.)
I got to King's Cross to discover the concourse crammed with passengers - an unusual situation at 11am on a Wednesday. It transpired that a person had been hit by a train down the line at Stevenage. I don't know the circumstances of the impact, but I happened to see the train involved in the crash; the nose was visibly damaged. Needless to say this caused a fair amount of disruption, with most incoming trains subject to delays of an hour or so, and some outgoing trains being cancelled. Fortunately for me, mine wasn't cancelled.
1127 London King's Cross to York, arr 1319
Distance: 188.5 miles, walk-up price £22.45
(Headcode 1N26, operated by Grand Central using HST 43065+43084)
Scenery: 4/10 - Nothing special, seen it all before...
Punctuality: 6/10 - Thirteen minutes late into York, but given the circumstances not too bad.
Speed: 9/10 - Had we been on time we would have averaged 101mph, which would have been the fastest train I'd been on. Impressive.
Comfort: 10/10 - Proper trains, proper seats, great visibility, good buffet car.
Staff: 10/10 - Attentive staff, who remembered me between asking them on the platform if my ticket was valid and checking my ticket on the train a while later.
Grand Central, like Wrexham and Shropshire, are an open-access operator. They perceived there was a lack of direct trains between London and Sunderland, so they petitioned to run three services each way per day. After a long and protracted battle between them and GNER watched over by the Office of Rail Regulation, they were awarded the rights to run the services in 2006. After many false starts, mainly due to delays in getting the rolling stock delivered, they finally started running trains on December 19th, 2007.
I boarded the 1127 service to Sunderland. Unlike many of the NXEC trains, it doesn't call at Peterborough, and in fact runs fast to York. We left, surprisingly, bang on time, but we were following trains that were delayed and we thus arrived in York 13 minutes late; given the circumstances that could be a lot worse.
Like many other trips, the point of this trip wasn't the journey or the scenery, it was the train itself. Grand Central, like Wrexham and Shropshire, they are using Mark 3 stock. Unlike Wrexham and Shropshire, they have already refurbished their carriages. And unlike everyone else who's refurbished their HSTs, the refurbishment has preserved the essence of the Mark 3 stock: the seats are low-backed and comfortable and the visibility is superb.
But they've managed to go one better than Wrexham and Shropshire: they already have power points for laptops and, better still, free wireless internet access. I know that Wrexham and Shropshire will have their refurbished carriages in service in just a few weeks, but Grand Central are ahead of them in that respect.
Grand Central's fares are also very reasonable: £35 single to York (without a railcard) is considerably better than NXEC, and perhaps a third of the passengers on the half-full service got off at York. It's not much more to Sunderland, too.
Like Wrexham and Shropshire, Grand Central also have a proper restaurant car. They offered hot bacon sandwiches, but unlike W&S who made them fresh, they were pre-made and heated in a microwave. Still good, though. All in all, not much to choose between Grand Central and Wrexham and Shropshire.
I arrived in York, which is a grand station with a long double-arched curved roof over the main platforms, complete with original LNER paintwork. I walked the short distance to the:
National Railway Museum, York
The National Railway Museum is the largest museum of its kind anywhere in the world; it boasts an impressive array of locomotives and coaching stock, a library of books and magazines about railways, as well as works where locomotives are restored to their former glory.
Taking pride of place in the Great Hall is the London and North Eastern Railway Class A4 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive, number 4468, otherwise known as Mallard:
Mallard still holds the world speed record for a steam train, at 126mph, set in 1938 going down Stoke Bank on the ECML. It's quite something to be able to touch a living piece of railway history.
The two halls have on exhibition a wide variety of carriages and locomotives, and I had a good time looking round them all. I was probably most enthusiastic about the "Search Engine", otherwise known as the Library. It seemed to contain every book about railways that had ever been written, as well as archives of many magazines, some dating back to before I was born.
All in all I spent a good two hours looking round the exhibits, before having a snack in the museum cafe and heading back to York station and on to London.
1625 York to Sheffield, arrive 1718
Distance: 51.5 miles, walk-up price: £10.15
(Headcode 1V92, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 220005)
Scenery: 4/10 - Nothing remarkable.
Punctuality: 7/10 - Early at both Doncaster and Sheffield, but there's clearly too much padding time.
Speed: 6/10 - Not great for an InterCity line, on this stretch we only averaged 56mph.
Comfort: 3/10 - Hard seats, terrible visibility, and a trolley service instead of a buffet car.
Staff: 2/10 - I saw the trolley go down once, but no ticket inspections at all.
I swore that I'd avoid using CrossCountry on this rover. Even though I used them yesterday between Leicester and Stansted, that didn't count because it was a Turbostar. This, however, was a Voyager.
Virgin revolutionised CrossCountry, but not all in a good way. They took the tired fleet of hodgepodge vehicles and engines and replaced it all with a brand-new fleet of four- and five-car diesel trains. The trains they replaced were invariably seven or eight cars long, but they justified the shorter trains on the grounds of higher service frequencies.
What they didn't bank on was that when they doubled the service frequencies, suddenly lots more people were attracted, and in ten years passenger numbers doubled. Meaning that the four- and five-car Voyagers simply cannot cope.
I am all too familiar with the Voyagers, being the only train used on the route connecting Leamington Spa with Birmingham International, for Birmingham airport. I usually have a case that's nearly as big as me, and don't bother trying to find a seat. This time I tried, and was surprised to succeed. Unfortunately it was heading backwards. In an aisle seat. With no visibility whatsoever.
The trains themselves were built for tilt, but their bodies seem even smaller than the Pendolinos, and feel very cramped. Granted there's more legroom than in the Turbostar I was on yesterday, but the seats were pretty hard and the visibility is really very poor indeed, with some "window" seats being in fact seats against the bulkhead.
When Virgin doubled the service frequencies, in what was known as "Operation Princess" on September 28th 2002, they bit off more than the network could chew. Punctuality nosedived, and only quite severe cuts to the CrossCountry network seemed to be able to solve that. As a result, Liverpool, Blackpool, Portsmouth and Swansea were left with no CrossCountry services.
What has also happened since then is that all the timetables now have an inordinate amount of padding time. The train I was on was due to sit for four minutes at York, five at Doncaster and five at Sheffield. It still managed to arrive early at Doncaster and Sheffield!
I was certainly glad to disembark the Voyager and get on its sister train, the Meridian:
1727 Sheffield to London St Pancras, arrive 1934
Distance: 165 miles, walk-up price: £40.60
(Headcode 1C70, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222006)
Scenery: 5/10 - Some nice countryside, but nothing special.
Punctuality: 8/10 - Two minutes late most of the way, we arrived a minute late into St Pancras.
Speed: 8/10 - Pretty fast; it certainly felt faster than the HST on the same line yesterday.
Comfort: 7/10 - The seats were comfortable, if different (see below); the visibility was really good, though, and the buffet car seemed pretty good.
Staff: 5/10 - Reasonably thorough ticket inspections, but the announcements were really annoying, see below.
The Meridians were built for Midland Main Line in the early 2000s, and they are also 125mph InterCity trains which usually come in quite short varieties. This, luckily, was a seven-car version instead of a five-car version.
I was expecting to hate the Meridians, but I actually quite liked them. The seats were different, the backs being completely flat rather than curved, which while not necessarily comfortable was a welcome change from the standard train seat. Most of the seats seemed to be at tables, and all of the seats had good visibility, which was much better than I was expecting.
The announcements, however, let the side down. The ticket inspector insisted on announcing after each stop (of which there were, mercifully, only three) that anyone with an advance-purchase ticket should check they were on the correct train and that if they weren't their ticket was "invalid" and they would have to buy a completely new ticket.
Whilst she was technically correct (the best kind of correct!), there was no need whatsoever to be that overbearing about it. It was almost menacing in tone, and that kind of attitude is what stops people using trains.
To add insult to injury, the automatic announcements, which had been silent until after our final intermediate call at Leicester, suddenly piped up with all sorts of safety announcements as well as announcing "This train is for London St Pancras, calling at." Clearly it wasn't designed to cope with non-stop trains.
The train was reasonably well-filled, much moreso than the Nottingham service I was on yesterday. The HSTs used to run to Sheffield but were switched to run to Nottingham for reasons of timing: the Meridians can accelerate faster and brake harder, so they can do things just a little bit quicker, and when you've got so many other services this can often help (though it can also hinder).
Anyway, I made it into St Pancras, grabbed some dinner, and sprinted for the Underground, loudly chastising those who were not obeying the universal London convention to stand on the right-hand side of the escalators.
Northern Line (City branch), King's Cross St Pancras to London Bridge
Unfortunately it was all in vain, and I missed the train to New Beckenham by about three minutes, and had to wait 27 minutes for the next one. No great harm done, though.
2030 London Bridge to New Beckenham, arr 2049
Distance: 7.75 miles, walk-up price included above, operated by Southeastern
So, today's statistics:
Total time spent on trains: 6 hours, 22 minutes.
Distance travelled: 423.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £78.60.
The shortest day so far in terms of time, though thanks to the fast trains to and from York by no means the shortest in distance, nor the cheapest in price.
Tomorrow holds the joys of the Settle and Carlisle: I'll meander my up from London to Glasgow via Manchester, Leeds, Skipton and Carlisle. I've booked a Travelodge in Glasgow for Thursday night, so I'll do something from Glasgow on Friday (weather-dependent) before ending up back in Glasgow on Friday night, by which time my parents will be there as well. The weekend will then be spent mostly celebrating my cousin's 30th birthday in Glasgow, though I might fit in one last train trip on Saturday.
It's starting to feel like it's near the end now, and I don't want it to end...
Wednesday 29 July 2009
All-Line Rover, Day 9
After several long days exploring Wales and the Westcountry, I didn't have any firm ideas for today until this morning. I decided to keep it relatively simple and do a few things in the South East that I'd been meaning to do but hadn't got round to.
1010 New Beckenham to London Charing Cross, arr 1039
Distance: 9.5 miles, walk-up return: £4.10
District line, Embankment to Victoria
1115 Gatwick Express from London Victoria to Gatwick Airport, arr 1145
Distance: 26.75 miles, walk-up price: £11.15
(Headcode 1D60, operated by Southern (Gatwick Express) using 460001)
Scenery: 1/10 - Not the point of the journey. Nothing to see here, move along...
Punctuality: 9/10 - Half a minute late into Gatwick, possibly caused by a slow crawl through East Croydon.
Speed: 8/10 - Very good for such a crowded main line, though it is still only 54mph average.
Comfort: 9/10 - Plenty of room for luggage, decent seats, reasonable legroom, and a good trolley service.
Staff: 1/10 - See below.
I first decided to sample the Gatwick Express, linking Gatwick Airport non-stop to London Victoria station in just half an hour, with trains every 15 minutes. Once a part of InterCity under British Rail, it was a franchise all of its own until Southern took it over in June 2008.
This service is every timetable planner's worst nightmare. It uses the mainline from London to Brighton, which is very nearly full with commuters. Furthermore, it insists on using particular platforms at both Victoria and Gatwick. In particular it uses platforms 1 and 2 at Gatwick, which are on the west side of the station (nearest the airport, in fact), while the lines it uses immediately north of Gatwick are the two easternmost ones.
Somehow, it works. Just. Until recently it functioned completely independently of the massive commuter flows up and down the line; from last December, six morning services from Gatwick and six evening services to Gatwick have been extended to Brighton to ease somewhat the severe overcrowding.
In spite of being taken over by Southern, it still appears to function independently of Southern. It had a much larger contingent of staff than any other half-hour train would have, all out to make sure that the foreign-language travellers with lots of luggage get safely to and from the airport.
At least, that's the theory. The ticket inspector, however, didn't seem particularly friendly. I presented my all-line rover, and she stared intently at it for a good fifteen seconds before moving on, wordlessly, apparently satisfied. No "thank you". Not even "okay". She seemed almost disgusted that I didn't have to pay for a ticket.
Most operators in the South East have penalty fare systems: you have to buy a ticket before you board the train, otherwise you may be liable to pay £20. Gatwick Express believe, quite sensibly, that we shouldn't prey on unsuspecting foreigners who have just landed on the red-eye, and go as far as allowing you to buy a ticket - at no extra cost - on the train.
The by-product of this is, however, that the fares are really quite expensive. A single in standard class costs £11.15 with a railcard or £16.90 for full-fare adults. That's 63p per mile.
However, when you get to Gatwick Airport station, you can start to see why. Once you go up the escalator from platform level to the concourse, you are literally inside the airport concourse already; the station is completely integrated into the South Terminal, and indeed it was one of the first airports to have an integrated railway station all the way back in 1950.
Still, at that price, a little courtesy ought to come free.
1201 Gatwick Airport to London St Pancras
Distance: 29.5 miles, walk-up price: £5.90
(Headcode 1T20, operated by First Capital Connect using 377213+377507)
Scenery: 4/10 - The maze of lines through London Bridge is eye-opening, but otherwise nothing of interest.
Punctuality: 5/10 - Five minutes late into St Pancras, either due platform congestion at London Bridge or problems further up the line at Bedford (or both).
Speed: 7/10 - Not bad for what is, essentially, a commuter service.
Comfort: 4/10 - The train I was on had a few teething problems; that doesn't excuse hard seats with poor visibility.
Staff: N/A - Driver-only operation, no onboard staff.
From Gatwick Airport I proceeded back towards London on one of the greatest ideas for a service anyone's ever had: Thameslink.
The basic principle of such services is simple: instead of having lots of services to the suburbs of London running out of lots of different terminal stations, join the lines up with tunnels and run the suburban trains through the tunnels to the other side and have them continue on the other side.
There are two huge advantages of joining things up: one, it gives the passenger a choice of which central station to use, and thus spreads the load of passengers; and two, it massively reduces the demand for platform capacity at the London termini, and thus allows for more trains.
Thameslink was dreamed up in 1985, when someone noticed that there was a former mainline tunnel through central London which was now disused which ran from St Pancras through the City to Blackfriars. Reopening the tunnel allowed the BedPan service between Bedford and St Pancras to be joined to services south of the river, principally London-Brighton services.
The idea was so successful that a huge expansion of Thameslink is currently underway. A new junction is being installed to allow access from the central tunnel section not just to the Midland Main Line but also to the East Coast Main Line, thus permitting services from Peterborough, King's Lynn, Cambridge, Hertford, Stevenage and Welwyn to run through to the south of the river.
The number of through platforms at London Bridge is also being increased from 6 to 9, thus allowing many more services south of the river to run through to the north. The net effect will mean that the number of services through the central tunnel will *triple* from eight trains per hour to 24.
The whole expansion was initially called "Thameslink 2000". For various reasons it got delayed - planning permission and funding being two major stumbling blocks - and it will only be half-completed by the time of the Olympics in 2012. It's now known as the "Thameslink Programme" and will be completed - hopefully! - in 2015.
I happened to be on one of the first wave of new trains (class 377/5s, in this case 377507) being introduced to cope with a vast increase in through services. Unfortunately, they seemed to have a few teething problems; the only toilet I could find was out of order, and when I tried to move to the next carriage to find another the door failed to open. I know most of the users will be commuters, but that doesn't mean they should get second-rate trains: sort it out, First Capital Connect.
Prior to 2007, Thameslink trains didn't use the main King's Cross or St Pancras stations, but instead used King's Cross Thameslink, a cramped station about 15 minutes walk from King's Cross proper. Fortunately, when St Pancras was rebuilt to take Eurostar services, they added a brand-new station directly underneath the Midland Main Line platforms which is much more spacious and easier to access.
Every time I visit St Pancras it seems to become more grand. This was my first time here since all the shops and faciliites had been completed. You know you're doing something right when Guillaume Pépy, director of the French railways (SNCF), says "St Pancras is probably the greatest station in the world right now". Open question: when was the last time the French deferred to the English on matters of architecture? Scratch that, when was the last time they deferred to the English on anything?!
Barlow's magnificent single-span arch roof has been lovingly and beautifully restored, with the undercroft formerly used for storing beer barrels from Burton-on-Trent having been converted into the main concourse. One of the platforms under the main roof was removed to bring natural daylight to the concourse below, which connects the old part of the station with the new extension to the north which houses trains to the East Midlands and the Thameslink platforms, as well as platforms for the high-speed commuter services to Kent.
I got some lunch in the excellent Camden Food Co. They sell an excellent range of sandwiches, both hot and cold, pastries, cakes, fruit and drinks. They have many excellent twists on classics: my favourite being the ham ploughman's, a normal ploughman's sandwich of cheese, pickle, lettuce and tomato, with ham. They are, without doubt, the best station café company there is; look out for them next time you're in St Pancras, King's Cross, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, Victoria, Charing Cross, Euston, or Birmingham New Street.
1315 London St Pancras to Leicester, arr 1429
Distance: 99.25 miles, walk-up price: £30.35
(Headcode 1D37, operated by East Midlands Trains using HST 43081+43060)
Scenery: 4/10 - Some novelty value but otherwise bland English countryside.
Punctuality: 10/10 - Bang on time. Well done.
Speed: 7/10 - Not as slow as the Great Western, but suffers from underinvestment compared to the WCML and ECML.
Comfort: 7/10 - The seats were a bit worn and the padding was compressed, but the visibility was superb; the buffet car wasn't too bad, but disappointed me (see below).
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection; none between Market Harborough (our only intermediate stop) and Leicester; friendly buffet car staff.
I had never been on the Midland Main Line proper until today, where the InterCity services are run by East Midlands Trains. As the line is not electrified, the majority of services now use Class 222 Meridians, which are similar to the much-maligned Voyagers used by CrossCountry and Virgin Trains.
Given that I hate Voyagers, I expected to hate Meridians, so I chose carefully and got on one of the few services still operated by HSTs. However, I don't understand why this was being operated by an HST, since the service was ludicrously quiet - perhaps half-a-dozen people per carriage. Giving this service to Nottingham an eight-coach train while much busier services - particularly those to Sheffield - languish with four- and five-car trains is bad planning.
Unlike the three other major users of HSTs (FGW, NXEC and CrossCountry), East Midlands Trains (EMT) have not refurbished their Mark 3 coaches. I was thus hoping for the same level of comfort as I got from unrefurbished Mark 3 coaches of NXEA or WSMR; unfortunately those used by East Midlands Trains seem to have been used rather more intensively, and the padding had been badly compressed to make the seats more uncomfortable than they ought to have been.
The line itself is pretty busy: Thameslink services play leapfrog with each other while trying to keep out of the way of the mainline services. This does restrict the speeds at times, and we averaged 81.6mph to Leicester - not bad, and better than the Great Western (where trains are also still not electrified), but it is often overlooked for investment compared to the West Coast and East Coast Main Lines.
The buffet car once again failed to provide any healthy options, and the bottles of water were ludicrously small (£1.30 for a 330ml bottle!), which was disappointing. Fortunately, Leicester station provided plenty of opportunity to refill. The station itself seems a little run-down in places, though the station frontage is still well-kept and looks very nice indeed.
1517 Leicester to Stansted Airport, arr 1745
Distance: 113.5 miles, walk-up price: £27.35
(Headcode 1L44, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170116)
Scenery: 5/10 - Some nice English countryside, but quite flat really.
Punctuality: 4/10 - A crew change at Stamford left us about six minutes late, which grew gradually to 10 minutes late at Cambridge; we arrived just three minutes late into Stansted.
Speed: 5/10 - We averaged just 46mph, which for a major cross-country route ought to be better.
Comfort: 1/10 - Not nearly enough legroom, and the seats were not designed to be sat in for two and a half hours; see below.
Staff: 8/10 for Leicester-Stamford, 1/10 for Stamford-Stansted - see below.
The Birmingham-Stansted service, via Leicester, Peterborough and Cambridge, is a rare example of an east-west cross-country service south of the Pennines. Like the Liverpool-Norwich route I sampled on Day 1, this is a long, twisting route with few people going from one end to the other.
On this journey, however, there were noticeably more people using the service than used the Liverpool-Norwich; it was, in fact, busiest east of Peterborough, especially from Cambridge where we were essentially full of people going to the airport.
It's good to see such a service well-used, but CrossCountry provide terrible trains for the journey. The Turbostars they use have very little legroom indeed - not quite as bad as the single-carriage Class 153 Sprinter (see the Heart of Wales line on Day 8), but being in an airline seat for two-and-a-half hours was the least comfortable I've been on a train in years.
The staff didn't really help either. The first crew, which got off at Stamford, performed regular ticket checks and the trolley went up and down at least twice in an hour. Then it all started going downhill. First the trolley was removed at Peterborough.
Worse, however, was that I didn't see the ticket inspectors once between Stamford and Stansted. On a route on which so many people got on and off this was nothing short of scandalous. Even if there are automatic barriers at most of the stations en route, I have no doubt that some people will not have paid the fare.
Maybe if CrossCountry actually got all the fares they deserved they could afford better carriages than the Turbostars.
I arrived at Stansted Airport, a station I'd visited just once before, five years ago when I travelled to Cambridge for an interview there. (I didn't get in.) Unlike Gatwick, while the airport is connected to the station, I seem to recall the walk at Stansted taking a good ten minutes or so. It's not a place to spend any time, though, so I got immediately onto my next train.
1800 Stansted Express from Stansted Airport to London Liverpool Street, arr 1848
Distance: 37.5 miles, walk-up price: £12.55
(Headcode 1B99, operated by National Express East Anglia using 317710+317881)
Scenery: 1/10 - Again, not the point of the journey. Nothing to see here, move along...
Punctuality: 8/10 - A few minutes late at Tottenham Hale, but just a minute late into Liverpool Street in the end.
Speed: 2/10 - Both too slow and too fast. See below.
Comfort: 5/10 - Lots of legroom - almost too much - but the seats weren't very nice.
Staff: 2/10 - The trolley came down the aisle once; otherwise I saw no staff. I expected at least one ticket check.
I finished the day with another airport express service. Stansted is used by leisure traffic rather more than business traffic, and while the service runs every fifteen minutes with eight coaches, there can't have been more than half-a-dozen people per carriage on my Stansted Express train. This was in complete contrast to this morning's service to Gatwick, and it makes me wonder if the Stansted Express is viable as a service. I appreciate I'm not comparing like with like in terms of times of day and direction of flow, but nonetheless it was very empty.
One thing that probably doesn't help is that the journey time is at least 45 minutes; Gatwick is just 30 minutes from Victoria and Heathrow is just 15 minutes from Paddington. So on the face of it perhaps the Stansted Express just isn't "express" enough.
However, on the basis of this experience, I am inclined to say that perhaps the service is too fast. The quality of the ride was appalling. We were jolted around like we were going over a cobble-stone road at 60mph. Even though the track was continuous-welded rail, it felt like we were going over clackety-clack jointed track much, much too fast.
Not an experience I'd care to repeat. I gratefully alighted at Liverpool Street, where I got a little shopping before heading back to Ian's.
Circle Line, Liverpool Street to Cannon Street
1926 London Cannon Street to New Beckenham
Distance: 8.5 miles, walk-up price included in morning trip
So, today's statistics:
Total time on trains: 6 hours, 38 minutes.
Distance travelled: 324.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £91.40.
All in all a pretty short day. However, it's ridiculous to think that I spent nearly twice as long on trains on Saturday and would have paid considerably less (£78.60 vs. £91.40). East Midlands Trains stand out as being particularly expensive: more than £30.35 for an off-peak ticket to Leicester (with a railcard!) is much more than you'd have to pay even with Virgin, with which an off-peak single to Coventry is just £25 with a railcard. The Gatwick Express is the worst, though; I appreciate that you're paying for the convenience, but it's still ridiculous.
1010 New Beckenham to London Charing Cross, arr 1039
Distance: 9.5 miles, walk-up return: £4.10
District line, Embankment to Victoria
1115 Gatwick Express from London Victoria to Gatwick Airport, arr 1145
Distance: 26.75 miles, walk-up price: £11.15
(Headcode 1D60, operated by Southern (Gatwick Express) using 460001)
Scenery: 1/10 - Not the point of the journey. Nothing to see here, move along...
Punctuality: 9/10 - Half a minute late into Gatwick, possibly caused by a slow crawl through East Croydon.
Speed: 8/10 - Very good for such a crowded main line, though it is still only 54mph average.
Comfort: 9/10 - Plenty of room for luggage, decent seats, reasonable legroom, and a good trolley service.
Staff: 1/10 - See below.
I first decided to sample the Gatwick Express, linking Gatwick Airport non-stop to London Victoria station in just half an hour, with trains every 15 minutes. Once a part of InterCity under British Rail, it was a franchise all of its own until Southern took it over in June 2008.
This service is every timetable planner's worst nightmare. It uses the mainline from London to Brighton, which is very nearly full with commuters. Furthermore, it insists on using particular platforms at both Victoria and Gatwick. In particular it uses platforms 1 and 2 at Gatwick, which are on the west side of the station (nearest the airport, in fact), while the lines it uses immediately north of Gatwick are the two easternmost ones.
Somehow, it works. Just. Until recently it functioned completely independently of the massive commuter flows up and down the line; from last December, six morning services from Gatwick and six evening services to Gatwick have been extended to Brighton to ease somewhat the severe overcrowding.
In spite of being taken over by Southern, it still appears to function independently of Southern. It had a much larger contingent of staff than any other half-hour train would have, all out to make sure that the foreign-language travellers with lots of luggage get safely to and from the airport.
At least, that's the theory. The ticket inspector, however, didn't seem particularly friendly. I presented my all-line rover, and she stared intently at it for a good fifteen seconds before moving on, wordlessly, apparently satisfied. No "thank you". Not even "okay". She seemed almost disgusted that I didn't have to pay for a ticket.
Most operators in the South East have penalty fare systems: you have to buy a ticket before you board the train, otherwise you may be liable to pay £20. Gatwick Express believe, quite sensibly, that we shouldn't prey on unsuspecting foreigners who have just landed on the red-eye, and go as far as allowing you to buy a ticket - at no extra cost - on the train.
The by-product of this is, however, that the fares are really quite expensive. A single in standard class costs £11.15 with a railcard or £16.90 for full-fare adults. That's 63p per mile.
However, when you get to Gatwick Airport station, you can start to see why. Once you go up the escalator from platform level to the concourse, you are literally inside the airport concourse already; the station is completely integrated into the South Terminal, and indeed it was one of the first airports to have an integrated railway station all the way back in 1950.
Still, at that price, a little courtesy ought to come free.
1201 Gatwick Airport to London St Pancras
Distance: 29.5 miles, walk-up price: £5.90
(Headcode 1T20, operated by First Capital Connect using 377213+377507)
Scenery: 4/10 - The maze of lines through London Bridge is eye-opening, but otherwise nothing of interest.
Punctuality: 5/10 - Five minutes late into St Pancras, either due platform congestion at London Bridge or problems further up the line at Bedford (or both).
Speed: 7/10 - Not bad for what is, essentially, a commuter service.
Comfort: 4/10 - The train I was on had a few teething problems; that doesn't excuse hard seats with poor visibility.
Staff: N/A - Driver-only operation, no onboard staff.
From Gatwick Airport I proceeded back towards London on one of the greatest ideas for a service anyone's ever had: Thameslink.
The basic principle of such services is simple: instead of having lots of services to the suburbs of London running out of lots of different terminal stations, join the lines up with tunnels and run the suburban trains through the tunnels to the other side and have them continue on the other side.
There are two huge advantages of joining things up: one, it gives the passenger a choice of which central station to use, and thus spreads the load of passengers; and two, it massively reduces the demand for platform capacity at the London termini, and thus allows for more trains.
Thameslink was dreamed up in 1985, when someone noticed that there was a former mainline tunnel through central London which was now disused which ran from St Pancras through the City to Blackfriars. Reopening the tunnel allowed the BedPan service between Bedford and St Pancras to be joined to services south of the river, principally London-Brighton services.
The idea was so successful that a huge expansion of Thameslink is currently underway. A new junction is being installed to allow access from the central tunnel section not just to the Midland Main Line but also to the East Coast Main Line, thus permitting services from Peterborough, King's Lynn, Cambridge, Hertford, Stevenage and Welwyn to run through to the south of the river.
The number of through platforms at London Bridge is also being increased from 6 to 9, thus allowing many more services south of the river to run through to the north. The net effect will mean that the number of services through the central tunnel will *triple* from eight trains per hour to 24.
The whole expansion was initially called "Thameslink 2000". For various reasons it got delayed - planning permission and funding being two major stumbling blocks - and it will only be half-completed by the time of the Olympics in 2012. It's now known as the "Thameslink Programme" and will be completed - hopefully! - in 2015.
I happened to be on one of the first wave of new trains (class 377/5s, in this case 377507) being introduced to cope with a vast increase in through services. Unfortunately, they seemed to have a few teething problems; the only toilet I could find was out of order, and when I tried to move to the next carriage to find another the door failed to open. I know most of the users will be commuters, but that doesn't mean they should get second-rate trains: sort it out, First Capital Connect.
Prior to 2007, Thameslink trains didn't use the main King's Cross or St Pancras stations, but instead used King's Cross Thameslink, a cramped station about 15 minutes walk from King's Cross proper. Fortunately, when St Pancras was rebuilt to take Eurostar services, they added a brand-new station directly underneath the Midland Main Line platforms which is much more spacious and easier to access.
Every time I visit St Pancras it seems to become more grand. This was my first time here since all the shops and faciliites had been completed. You know you're doing something right when Guillaume Pépy, director of the French railways (SNCF), says "St Pancras is probably the greatest station in the world right now". Open question: when was the last time the French deferred to the English on matters of architecture? Scratch that, when was the last time they deferred to the English on anything?!
Barlow's magnificent single-span arch roof has been lovingly and beautifully restored, with the undercroft formerly used for storing beer barrels from Burton-on-Trent having been converted into the main concourse. One of the platforms under the main roof was removed to bring natural daylight to the concourse below, which connects the old part of the station with the new extension to the north which houses trains to the East Midlands and the Thameslink platforms, as well as platforms for the high-speed commuter services to Kent.
I got some lunch in the excellent Camden Food Co. They sell an excellent range of sandwiches, both hot and cold, pastries, cakes, fruit and drinks. They have many excellent twists on classics: my favourite being the ham ploughman's, a normal ploughman's sandwich of cheese, pickle, lettuce and tomato, with ham. They are, without doubt, the best station café company there is; look out for them next time you're in St Pancras, King's Cross, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, Victoria, Charing Cross, Euston, or Birmingham New Street.
1315 London St Pancras to Leicester, arr 1429
Distance: 99.25 miles, walk-up price: £30.35
(Headcode 1D37, operated by East Midlands Trains using HST 43081+43060)
Scenery: 4/10 - Some novelty value but otherwise bland English countryside.
Punctuality: 10/10 - Bang on time. Well done.
Speed: 7/10 - Not as slow as the Great Western, but suffers from underinvestment compared to the WCML and ECML.
Comfort: 7/10 - The seats were a bit worn and the padding was compressed, but the visibility was superb; the buffet car wasn't too bad, but disappointed me (see below).
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection; none between Market Harborough (our only intermediate stop) and Leicester; friendly buffet car staff.
I had never been on the Midland Main Line proper until today, where the InterCity services are run by East Midlands Trains. As the line is not electrified, the majority of services now use Class 222 Meridians, which are similar to the much-maligned Voyagers used by CrossCountry and Virgin Trains.
Given that I hate Voyagers, I expected to hate Meridians, so I chose carefully and got on one of the few services still operated by HSTs. However, I don't understand why this was being operated by an HST, since the service was ludicrously quiet - perhaps half-a-dozen people per carriage. Giving this service to Nottingham an eight-coach train while much busier services - particularly those to Sheffield - languish with four- and five-car trains is bad planning.
Unlike the three other major users of HSTs (FGW, NXEC and CrossCountry), East Midlands Trains (EMT) have not refurbished their Mark 3 coaches. I was thus hoping for the same level of comfort as I got from unrefurbished Mark 3 coaches of NXEA or WSMR; unfortunately those used by East Midlands Trains seem to have been used rather more intensively, and the padding had been badly compressed to make the seats more uncomfortable than they ought to have been.
The line itself is pretty busy: Thameslink services play leapfrog with each other while trying to keep out of the way of the mainline services. This does restrict the speeds at times, and we averaged 81.6mph to Leicester - not bad, and better than the Great Western (where trains are also still not electrified), but it is often overlooked for investment compared to the West Coast and East Coast Main Lines.
The buffet car once again failed to provide any healthy options, and the bottles of water were ludicrously small (£1.30 for a 330ml bottle!), which was disappointing. Fortunately, Leicester station provided plenty of opportunity to refill. The station itself seems a little run-down in places, though the station frontage is still well-kept and looks very nice indeed.
1517 Leicester to Stansted Airport, arr 1745
Distance: 113.5 miles, walk-up price: £27.35
(Headcode 1L44, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170116)
Scenery: 5/10 - Some nice English countryside, but quite flat really.
Punctuality: 4/10 - A crew change at Stamford left us about six minutes late, which grew gradually to 10 minutes late at Cambridge; we arrived just three minutes late into Stansted.
Speed: 5/10 - We averaged just 46mph, which for a major cross-country route ought to be better.
Comfort: 1/10 - Not nearly enough legroom, and the seats were not designed to be sat in for two and a half hours; see below.
Staff: 8/10 for Leicester-Stamford, 1/10 for Stamford-Stansted - see below.
The Birmingham-Stansted service, via Leicester, Peterborough and Cambridge, is a rare example of an east-west cross-country service south of the Pennines. Like the Liverpool-Norwich route I sampled on Day 1, this is a long, twisting route with few people going from one end to the other.
On this journey, however, there were noticeably more people using the service than used the Liverpool-Norwich; it was, in fact, busiest east of Peterborough, especially from Cambridge where we were essentially full of people going to the airport.
It's good to see such a service well-used, but CrossCountry provide terrible trains for the journey. The Turbostars they use have very little legroom indeed - not quite as bad as the single-carriage Class 153 Sprinter (see the Heart of Wales line on Day 8), but being in an airline seat for two-and-a-half hours was the least comfortable I've been on a train in years.
The staff didn't really help either. The first crew, which got off at Stamford, performed regular ticket checks and the trolley went up and down at least twice in an hour. Then it all started going downhill. First the trolley was removed at Peterborough.
Worse, however, was that I didn't see the ticket inspectors once between Stamford and Stansted. On a route on which so many people got on and off this was nothing short of scandalous. Even if there are automatic barriers at most of the stations en route, I have no doubt that some people will not have paid the fare.
Maybe if CrossCountry actually got all the fares they deserved they could afford better carriages than the Turbostars.
I arrived at Stansted Airport, a station I'd visited just once before, five years ago when I travelled to Cambridge for an interview there. (I didn't get in.) Unlike Gatwick, while the airport is connected to the station, I seem to recall the walk at Stansted taking a good ten minutes or so. It's not a place to spend any time, though, so I got immediately onto my next train.
1800 Stansted Express from Stansted Airport to London Liverpool Street, arr 1848
Distance: 37.5 miles, walk-up price: £12.55
(Headcode 1B99, operated by National Express East Anglia using 317710+317881)
Scenery: 1/10 - Again, not the point of the journey. Nothing to see here, move along...
Punctuality: 8/10 - A few minutes late at Tottenham Hale, but just a minute late into Liverpool Street in the end.
Speed: 2/10 - Both too slow and too fast. See below.
Comfort: 5/10 - Lots of legroom - almost too much - but the seats weren't very nice.
Staff: 2/10 - The trolley came down the aisle once; otherwise I saw no staff. I expected at least one ticket check.
I finished the day with another airport express service. Stansted is used by leisure traffic rather more than business traffic, and while the service runs every fifteen minutes with eight coaches, there can't have been more than half-a-dozen people per carriage on my Stansted Express train. This was in complete contrast to this morning's service to Gatwick, and it makes me wonder if the Stansted Express is viable as a service. I appreciate I'm not comparing like with like in terms of times of day and direction of flow, but nonetheless it was very empty.
One thing that probably doesn't help is that the journey time is at least 45 minutes; Gatwick is just 30 minutes from Victoria and Heathrow is just 15 minutes from Paddington. So on the face of it perhaps the Stansted Express just isn't "express" enough.
However, on the basis of this experience, I am inclined to say that perhaps the service is too fast. The quality of the ride was appalling. We were jolted around like we were going over a cobble-stone road at 60mph. Even though the track was continuous-welded rail, it felt like we were going over clackety-clack jointed track much, much too fast.
Not an experience I'd care to repeat. I gratefully alighted at Liverpool Street, where I got a little shopping before heading back to Ian's.
Circle Line, Liverpool Street to Cannon Street
1926 London Cannon Street to New Beckenham
Distance: 8.5 miles, walk-up price included in morning trip
So, today's statistics:
Total time on trains: 6 hours, 38 minutes.
Distance travelled: 324.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £91.40.
All in all a pretty short day. However, it's ridiculous to think that I spent nearly twice as long on trains on Saturday and would have paid considerably less (£78.60 vs. £91.40). East Midlands Trains stand out as being particularly expensive: more than £30.35 for an off-peak ticket to Leicester (with a railcard!) is much more than you'd have to pay even with Virgin, with which an off-peak single to Coventry is just £25 with a railcard. The Gatwick Express is the worst, though; I appreciate that you're paying for the convenience, but it's still ridiculous.
Tuesday 28 July 2009
All-Line Rover, Days 7 and 8
If you haven't already, you probably want to read the "Day 6" post just below this one first, since otherwise this won't make much sense!
Day 7 was the Middle Sunday of the All-Line Rover, and, like Wimbledon, I declared it a day of rest. My thanks to Jonathan and his family for a lovely Sunday lunch and a great walk to Blue Lake in the middle of an abandoned quarry, a remarkably serene lake of pure blue nestled among seemingly innocuous hills.
This left me relaxed and refreshed to start afresh on Monday morning into Week 2. My route for Day 8 would take me through the little railways of Central Wales, over from Fairbourne to Shrewsbury on the Cambrian line, before penetrating south-west through the Heart of Wales line via Llandrindod Wells to Swansea, and then back to London to crash.
1111 Fairbourne to Machynlleth, arr 1159
Distance: 22.75 miles, walk-up price for Fairbourne-Shrewsbury: £14.90
(Headcode 2J14, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158838)
Scenery: 9/10 - Not quite as spectacular as Friday night but still pretty impressive views of the Welsh coastline.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Sloppy timekeeping meant that on-time at Barmouth (after a 21-minute wait!) was five minutes late at Dovey Junction, saved once again by padding.
Speed: 6/10 - Again, quite slow: I think it could be a little faster without sacrificing the views.
Comfort: 7/10 - Yet another ATW Sprinter.
Staff: 7/10 - Thorough ticket inspections, though no catering (not that it's really needed before Machynlleth).
I picked up on Monday morning where I left off on Saturday night, heading south on the Cambrian Coast Line. The superb views resumed once more, with the railway now climbing so it can cut into the side of Cadair Idris, the mountain south of Barmouth, with cliff-like drops to the sea below. At one point there's a roof over the line as an avalanche shelter, such is the nature of the cliffs.
We then turn east up the valley of the River Dovey, eventually crossing it and passing through a very odd station in Dovey Junction. There is no road access; the station exists only to transfer between trains on the Pwllheli and Aberystwyth lines.
We were due to couple up to the train from Aberystwyth at the next station, Machynlleth, before the train proceeds on to Shrewsbury and Birmingham. For some reason, we were told to change at Machynlleth, because the train coming up from Aberystwyth was already four carriages (normally the Aberystwyth and Pwllheli portions are each two carriages). Quite why this was I have no idea, but that it's a Monday morning could well have something to do with it.
1207 Machynlleth to Shrewsbury, arr 1325
Distance: 61 miles, walk-up price included above
(Headcode 1G35, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinters 158830+158837)
Scenery: 6/10 - Nice Welsh hills, but nothing particularly eye-catching.
Punctuality: 9/10 - Bang on time except for a slight delay getting a platform at Shrewsbury.
Speed: 7/10 - Pretty good for a rural line in the middle of Wales, averaging 47mph.
Comfort: 7/10 - Yet another ATW Sprinter.
Staff: 8/10 - Thorough ticket checks, and friendly trolley staff who explained all the food had been gobbled up between Aberystwyth and Machynlleth.
From the Cambrian Coast line I travelled on over the "central belt" of Wales towards Shrewsbury. The Cambrian Line between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth has been home to some of the worst timekeeping in the country. On the face of it, a two-hourly service on a single-track line with several passing loops doesn't seem like much to ask. However, the service extends to possibly the biggest capacity constraint in the entire country: Birmingham New Street.
The station was rebuilt in 1965 to cope with 640 trains and 60,000 passengers every day. It currently handles - somehow - 1350 trains and over 120,000 passengers a day. It's a miracle the delays aren't ten times worse.
In December last year, the Cambrian timetable was revised - basically padded with extra time - and instead of having fifteen minutes to turn round at New Street, the services were extended to Birmingham International, essentially giving the trains an extra hour to turn around. It seems to have greatly improved things, with delays much reduced.
However, it remains to be seen if things will stay that way. Work is currently underway to increase the number and length of passing loops to allow not just a two-hourly but an *hourly* service between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth. This will require each train from Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury passing not one but three trains in the opposite direction, and will thus (in some sense) triple the risk of delay.
I agree that having an hourly service to the west coast of Wales is both necessary and desirable, but I don't know if the relatively small additional amount of double-track will be workable in practice. In theory it ought to be possible, but it doesn't really allow much margin for delay, so we could see performance next year (when the hourly service is due to start) nosediving to levels below even the worst levels of the mid-2000s.
I understand that the additional services between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury will extend not to Birmingham but to Crewe, which will provide a much-needed link between west and central Wales and the north of England. All that's left for Aberystwyth would be direct trains to London - and Arriva even have plans for that, with a handful of services to cater for peak flows much like WSMR do for Wrexham. But while WSMR run superb trains (see Day 6), Arriva are planning on using Class 158 Sprinters on the inter-city run to London.
Having spent the better part of two entire days on Class 158s, I can categorically say that they are not suitable for use on a long-distance service to London; they are simply too small, too cramped, don't have enough catering facilities, and don't have first class accommodation. On the other hand, there's a great shortage of rolling stock at the minute, so exactly what else ATW could use instead of Class 158s is, to be fair, quite a conundrum.
For all its faults, the Cambrian line is in fact a very nice run through the Welsh hills, but it's nothing half as spectacular as the Cambrian Coast Line. The train itself was yet another Sprinter, though I was disappointed to find the trolley had been restocked at Aberystwyth but had run out of sandwiches and most anything else by the time it had got to Machynlleth just 20 minutes later.
So I arrived in Shrewsbury rather hungry. This was my third time passing through Shrewsbury in four days, though the first time I had alighted since visiting the station a couple of years ago on a tour of the West Midlands. This time I didn't leave the platform; I got a nice hot baguette in the station cafe, and stocked up on drinks for the next train.
1405 Shrewsbury to Swansea, arr 1806
Distance 121.5 miles, walk-up price: £12.60
(Headcode 2V39, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 153362)
Scenery: 8/10 - Some fantastic scenes of Sugar Loaf mountain as well as ploughing through Welsh forests where you half-expect rally cars to scream through.
Punctuality: 4/10 - Absolute madness: sloppiness and slack station work meant that we gradually slipped later until we were 13 minutes late arriving into Llanelli; yet we still managed to be four minutes early into Swansea.
Speed: 5/10 - You can travel from Shrewsbury to Swansea 45 minutes faster by taking the much longer route via Cardiff. I know this route is rural, but that's no excuse for some really very slow speeds, even if the views are all the nicer.
Comfort: 2/10 - The airline seats were much too small for me (or anyone over 5ft 3in tall!), though the table seats were a bit better; there was still no catering on a very long route, though.
Staff: 6/10 - The ticket inspectors were thorough without being overbearing, though the platform work seemed to be somewhat lax and the lack of catering was disappointing.
The Heart of Wales Line is a railway line that, by rights, should not have survived. It is a tiny little railway through tiny little villages, a by-product of the eta of competition when the London, Midland and Scottish tried to thwart the Great Western's strangle-hold on Wales by ploughing through the middle from Crewe and Shrewsbury to Swansea. Rumour has it that it survived the cuts of Beeching because a cabinet member pointed out that it ran through seven marginal constituencies, and of course closing railways is hardly ever popular.
This service is (usually) operated by a very peculiar kind of train: a one-carriage Sprinter. The Class 153s are literally just a single carriage, just 23m long. They are affectionately known as "dogboxes" or (perhaps less affectionately) as "coffins".
I didn't realise until I sat down just why: they are fantastically cramped. I genuinely didn't think trains this cramped were possible. I'm about 5ft 11in tall and I've never had problems in an airline seat, a train seat or a bus seat. Until now.
I tried an airline seat and realised I'd have to sit at an angle to actually get my legs in, so I moved to a table seat on the other side of the train. Which proved be a good move on two counts: one, no-one sat opposite me for the whole journey, and two, the left-hand side had the best of the views.
This was no rolling English countryside: this was Welsh hills and forests, good and proper. There were some long climbs, and the engine didn't half struggle, but in spite of that I managed to doze off for half an hour (probably due to the hot lunch). Nevertheless, the views of Sugar Loaf mountain were really good, as were the views of unspoilt Welsh forest; I half-expected a rally car to come screeching through the forest, it was that wild. Eventually the railway works its way down to the coast of Pembrokeshire at Llanelli, and it is really rather nice, especially in the sunshine.
The route is so long that the train crews swap over half way along, at Llandrindod Wells (possibly the biggest town on the route), and go back to whence they came. The first crew kept to time pretty well, though we were a few minutes late into Llandrindod; but the second crew seemed very sloppy, and we ended up a full 13 minutes late into Llanelli.
But we're allowed 10 minutes to turn round in Llanelli (to head towards Swansea, and not to south-west Wales); we needed only five minutes to turn round, and evidently the timetable from Llanelli to Swansea is incredibly slack because eight minutes late out of Llanelli became four minutes early at Swansea. It should not be possible to make up 12 minutes in the space of half an hour; the timetable is clearly far too slack.
On the other hand, I shouldn't really complain, because it gave me a little extra time in Swansea, in which I walked into the town centre to grab some dinner (McDonalds was the best I could find, unfortunately) and walk back up the hill to Swansea's four-track terminus station for my ride home.
1829 Swansea to London Paddington, arrive 2132
Distance: 192.75 miles, walk-up price: £42.90
(Headcode 1L92, operated by First Great Western using an HST with 43186+43056)
Scenery: 5/10 - Some nice bits in South Wales, otherwise nothing new.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Delayed by seven minutes at Swindon for confusing reasons, see below.
Speed: 6/10 - The linespeed west of Cardiff is terrible for an InterCity line, often not exceeding 60mph, and the number of stops is far too many.
Comfort: 7/10 - Another FGW HST; I'll say no more.
Staff: 6/10 - The ticket inspector was rather gruff and didn't announce his presence with any volume; however, the buffet car had friendly staff and was well-stocked even by Reading at 9pm.
Another day, another First Great Western HST. I needed to get back to London to crash since I hadn't got anything else planned, so I consigned myself to an HST for three hours. The scenery in South Wales was nothing to write home about, so I mainly caught up on writing the blog. We were held for seven minutes or so at Swindon to "await the arrival of a coach from Bath"; apparently there were signalling problems around Bath so the trains to Bristol were being diverted and missing out Bath, so in order that they still had a service they decided to wait for the coach. Which is fair enough, really.
However, it's depressing to think that 25 years ago this journey was 15 minutes faster than it is now. There hasn't been anything magical happened since - we're even using the same kind of train - it's simply that today's services stop far more often. In 1983/4, all the London-Swansea services didn't stop between London and Newport; today, they call at Reading, Swindon and Bristol Parkway without fail, and many also call at Didcot. People are claiming electrification will bring a speed-up of 20 minutes; you can have most of that now without any changes other than the timetable.
The delay put paid to any hopes I had of getting the 2152 out of Charing Cross back to New Beckenham, so I got a few things in the shops at Paddington that I'd been meaning to get and headed for the 2222 train instead.
Bakerloo line, Paddington to Charing Cross
2222 Charing Cross to New Beckenham, arr 2249
Distance: 9.5 miles, walk-up price £2.45
So, today's statistics:
Total time on trains: 9 hours, 37 minutes.
Distance travelled: 407.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £72.85.
Now, what should I do tomorrow...
Day 7 was the Middle Sunday of the All-Line Rover, and, like Wimbledon, I declared it a day of rest. My thanks to Jonathan and his family for a lovely Sunday lunch and a great walk to Blue Lake in the middle of an abandoned quarry, a remarkably serene lake of pure blue nestled among seemingly innocuous hills.
This left me relaxed and refreshed to start afresh on Monday morning into Week 2. My route for Day 8 would take me through the little railways of Central Wales, over from Fairbourne to Shrewsbury on the Cambrian line, before penetrating south-west through the Heart of Wales line via Llandrindod Wells to Swansea, and then back to London to crash.
1111 Fairbourne to Machynlleth, arr 1159
Distance: 22.75 miles, walk-up price for Fairbourne-Shrewsbury: £14.90
(Headcode 2J14, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158838)
Scenery: 9/10 - Not quite as spectacular as Friday night but still pretty impressive views of the Welsh coastline.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Sloppy timekeeping meant that on-time at Barmouth (after a 21-minute wait!) was five minutes late at Dovey Junction, saved once again by padding.
Speed: 6/10 - Again, quite slow: I think it could be a little faster without sacrificing the views.
Comfort: 7/10 - Yet another ATW Sprinter.
Staff: 7/10 - Thorough ticket inspections, though no catering (not that it's really needed before Machynlleth).
I picked up on Monday morning where I left off on Saturday night, heading south on the Cambrian Coast Line. The superb views resumed once more, with the railway now climbing so it can cut into the side of Cadair Idris, the mountain south of Barmouth, with cliff-like drops to the sea below. At one point there's a roof over the line as an avalanche shelter, such is the nature of the cliffs.
We then turn east up the valley of the River Dovey, eventually crossing it and passing through a very odd station in Dovey Junction. There is no road access; the station exists only to transfer between trains on the Pwllheli and Aberystwyth lines.
We were due to couple up to the train from Aberystwyth at the next station, Machynlleth, before the train proceeds on to Shrewsbury and Birmingham. For some reason, we were told to change at Machynlleth, because the train coming up from Aberystwyth was already four carriages (normally the Aberystwyth and Pwllheli portions are each two carriages). Quite why this was I have no idea, but that it's a Monday morning could well have something to do with it.
1207 Machynlleth to Shrewsbury, arr 1325
Distance: 61 miles, walk-up price included above
(Headcode 1G35, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinters 158830+158837)
Scenery: 6/10 - Nice Welsh hills, but nothing particularly eye-catching.
Punctuality: 9/10 - Bang on time except for a slight delay getting a platform at Shrewsbury.
Speed: 7/10 - Pretty good for a rural line in the middle of Wales, averaging 47mph.
Comfort: 7/10 - Yet another ATW Sprinter.
Staff: 8/10 - Thorough ticket checks, and friendly trolley staff who explained all the food had been gobbled up between Aberystwyth and Machynlleth.
From the Cambrian Coast line I travelled on over the "central belt" of Wales towards Shrewsbury. The Cambrian Line between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth has been home to some of the worst timekeeping in the country. On the face of it, a two-hourly service on a single-track line with several passing loops doesn't seem like much to ask. However, the service extends to possibly the biggest capacity constraint in the entire country: Birmingham New Street.
The station was rebuilt in 1965 to cope with 640 trains and 60,000 passengers every day. It currently handles - somehow - 1350 trains and over 120,000 passengers a day. It's a miracle the delays aren't ten times worse.
In December last year, the Cambrian timetable was revised - basically padded with extra time - and instead of having fifteen minutes to turn round at New Street, the services were extended to Birmingham International, essentially giving the trains an extra hour to turn around. It seems to have greatly improved things, with delays much reduced.
However, it remains to be seen if things will stay that way. Work is currently underway to increase the number and length of passing loops to allow not just a two-hourly but an *hourly* service between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth. This will require each train from Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury passing not one but three trains in the opposite direction, and will thus (in some sense) triple the risk of delay.
I agree that having an hourly service to the west coast of Wales is both necessary and desirable, but I don't know if the relatively small additional amount of double-track will be workable in practice. In theory it ought to be possible, but it doesn't really allow much margin for delay, so we could see performance next year (when the hourly service is due to start) nosediving to levels below even the worst levels of the mid-2000s.
I understand that the additional services between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury will extend not to Birmingham but to Crewe, which will provide a much-needed link between west and central Wales and the north of England. All that's left for Aberystwyth would be direct trains to London - and Arriva even have plans for that, with a handful of services to cater for peak flows much like WSMR do for Wrexham. But while WSMR run superb trains (see Day 6), Arriva are planning on using Class 158 Sprinters on the inter-city run to London.
Having spent the better part of two entire days on Class 158s, I can categorically say that they are not suitable for use on a long-distance service to London; they are simply too small, too cramped, don't have enough catering facilities, and don't have first class accommodation. On the other hand, there's a great shortage of rolling stock at the minute, so exactly what else ATW could use instead of Class 158s is, to be fair, quite a conundrum.
For all its faults, the Cambrian line is in fact a very nice run through the Welsh hills, but it's nothing half as spectacular as the Cambrian Coast Line. The train itself was yet another Sprinter, though I was disappointed to find the trolley had been restocked at Aberystwyth but had run out of sandwiches and most anything else by the time it had got to Machynlleth just 20 minutes later.
So I arrived in Shrewsbury rather hungry. This was my third time passing through Shrewsbury in four days, though the first time I had alighted since visiting the station a couple of years ago on a tour of the West Midlands. This time I didn't leave the platform; I got a nice hot baguette in the station cafe, and stocked up on drinks for the next train.
1405 Shrewsbury to Swansea, arr 1806
Distance 121.5 miles, walk-up price: £12.60
(Headcode 2V39, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 153362)
Scenery: 8/10 - Some fantastic scenes of Sugar Loaf mountain as well as ploughing through Welsh forests where you half-expect rally cars to scream through.
Punctuality: 4/10 - Absolute madness: sloppiness and slack station work meant that we gradually slipped later until we were 13 minutes late arriving into Llanelli; yet we still managed to be four minutes early into Swansea.
Speed: 5/10 - You can travel from Shrewsbury to Swansea 45 minutes faster by taking the much longer route via Cardiff. I know this route is rural, but that's no excuse for some really very slow speeds, even if the views are all the nicer.
Comfort: 2/10 - The airline seats were much too small for me (or anyone over 5ft 3in tall!), though the table seats were a bit better; there was still no catering on a very long route, though.
Staff: 6/10 - The ticket inspectors were thorough without being overbearing, though the platform work seemed to be somewhat lax and the lack of catering was disappointing.
The Heart of Wales Line is a railway line that, by rights, should not have survived. It is a tiny little railway through tiny little villages, a by-product of the eta of competition when the London, Midland and Scottish tried to thwart the Great Western's strangle-hold on Wales by ploughing through the middle from Crewe and Shrewsbury to Swansea. Rumour has it that it survived the cuts of Beeching because a cabinet member pointed out that it ran through seven marginal constituencies, and of course closing railways is hardly ever popular.
This service is (usually) operated by a very peculiar kind of train: a one-carriage Sprinter. The Class 153s are literally just a single carriage, just 23m long. They are affectionately known as "dogboxes" or (perhaps less affectionately) as "coffins".
I didn't realise until I sat down just why: they are fantastically cramped. I genuinely didn't think trains this cramped were possible. I'm about 5ft 11in tall and I've never had problems in an airline seat, a train seat or a bus seat. Until now.
I tried an airline seat and realised I'd have to sit at an angle to actually get my legs in, so I moved to a table seat on the other side of the train. Which proved be a good move on two counts: one, no-one sat opposite me for the whole journey, and two, the left-hand side had the best of the views.
This was no rolling English countryside: this was Welsh hills and forests, good and proper. There were some long climbs, and the engine didn't half struggle, but in spite of that I managed to doze off for half an hour (probably due to the hot lunch). Nevertheless, the views of Sugar Loaf mountain were really good, as were the views of unspoilt Welsh forest; I half-expected a rally car to come screeching through the forest, it was that wild. Eventually the railway works its way down to the coast of Pembrokeshire at Llanelli, and it is really rather nice, especially in the sunshine.
The route is so long that the train crews swap over half way along, at Llandrindod Wells (possibly the biggest town on the route), and go back to whence they came. The first crew kept to time pretty well, though we were a few minutes late into Llandrindod; but the second crew seemed very sloppy, and we ended up a full 13 minutes late into Llanelli.
But we're allowed 10 minutes to turn round in Llanelli (to head towards Swansea, and not to south-west Wales); we needed only five minutes to turn round, and evidently the timetable from Llanelli to Swansea is incredibly slack because eight minutes late out of Llanelli became four minutes early at Swansea. It should not be possible to make up 12 minutes in the space of half an hour; the timetable is clearly far too slack.
On the other hand, I shouldn't really complain, because it gave me a little extra time in Swansea, in which I walked into the town centre to grab some dinner (McDonalds was the best I could find, unfortunately) and walk back up the hill to Swansea's four-track terminus station for my ride home.
1829 Swansea to London Paddington, arrive 2132
Distance: 192.75 miles, walk-up price: £42.90
(Headcode 1L92, operated by First Great Western using an HST with 43186+43056)
Scenery: 5/10 - Some nice bits in South Wales, otherwise nothing new.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Delayed by seven minutes at Swindon for confusing reasons, see below.
Speed: 6/10 - The linespeed west of Cardiff is terrible for an InterCity line, often not exceeding 60mph, and the number of stops is far too many.
Comfort: 7/10 - Another FGW HST; I'll say no more.
Staff: 6/10 - The ticket inspector was rather gruff and didn't announce his presence with any volume; however, the buffet car had friendly staff and was well-stocked even by Reading at 9pm.
Another day, another First Great Western HST. I needed to get back to London to crash since I hadn't got anything else planned, so I consigned myself to an HST for three hours. The scenery in South Wales was nothing to write home about, so I mainly caught up on writing the blog. We were held for seven minutes or so at Swindon to "await the arrival of a coach from Bath"; apparently there were signalling problems around Bath so the trains to Bristol were being diverted and missing out Bath, so in order that they still had a service they decided to wait for the coach. Which is fair enough, really.
However, it's depressing to think that 25 years ago this journey was 15 minutes faster than it is now. There hasn't been anything magical happened since - we're even using the same kind of train - it's simply that today's services stop far more often. In 1983/4, all the London-Swansea services didn't stop between London and Newport; today, they call at Reading, Swindon and Bristol Parkway without fail, and many also call at Didcot. People are claiming electrification will bring a speed-up of 20 minutes; you can have most of that now without any changes other than the timetable.
The delay put paid to any hopes I had of getting the 2152 out of Charing Cross back to New Beckenham, so I got a few things in the shops at Paddington that I'd been meaning to get and headed for the 2222 train instead.
Bakerloo line, Paddington to Charing Cross
2222 Charing Cross to New Beckenham, arr 2249
Distance: 9.5 miles, walk-up price £2.45
So, today's statistics:
Total time on trains: 9 hours, 37 minutes.
Distance travelled: 407.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £72.85.
Now, what should I do tomorrow...
Monday 27 July 2009
All-Line Rover, Day 6
Sorry for the delay in uploading this - I was without internet all weekend in Wales. Today's post will be along soon too.
If ever I needed a reminder of why I was spending two weeks travelling the country on trains, the railways of north Wales provided the answer. The scenery is simply stunning, and was all the better for getting a hot, sunny day to see it in.
I spent the first half of day 6 (Saturday) with Ian, one of the guys whose floor I was crashing on in New Beckenham every other day, and possibly the only person I know who knows more about trains than I do. He joined me on the first few legs of my trip, before heading back to London, while I headed to Fairbourne on the west coast of Wales to spend a couple of nights with Jonathan and his family in their holiday cottage.
In order to fit everything I wanted to do in, I had to get up at 6:30am. On a Saturday. You know you're getting up at an uncivilised hour when the Today programme hasn't even started - even the presenters want a lie-in on a Saturday, it starts at 7am instead of 6am during the week. Ian and I headed for London Marylebone:
0706 New Beckenham to Charing Cross, arr 0737
Distance 9.5 miles, walk-up price £2.45
Bakerloo line, Charing Cross to Marylebone
0814 London Marylebone to Wrexham General, arr 1226
Distance 189.75 miles, walk-up price £34.30
(Headcode 1J85, operated by Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railways using Mark 3 stock pushed by 67010)
Scenery: 5/10 - Mostly familiar, but nevertheless a nice run, especially in the Welsh marches from Shrewsbury to Wrexham.
Punctuality: 9/10 - Because this service is being threaded through all sorts of other services, it has quite a lot of slack in the timetable, so we were on time the whole way.
Speed: 6/10 - Not bad, but given the amount of slack it's a pity we couldn't have gone faster.
Comfort: 10/10 - A proper train with a superb restaurant car. Well done.
Staff: 10/10 - Friendly, attentive staff, and announcements which were neither too long nor too short. Well done again.
Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railways (WSMR) are one of a handful of so-called open-access companies. One of the intentions of the Conservatives in privatising the railways in the early 1990s was that it would end British Rail's monopoly on running trains. To this end, they made provision to allow anyone to come along and say "I want to run trains on this line at this time", and as long as there was the capacity, they paid the access charges, and they didn't go bust, they were to be allowed to run the trains.
The first, and most successful, open-access operator is Hull Trains. They came along in 2001 and noticed that Hull, a city of 240,000 people or so, had just one direct train a day to and from London, so they said "we'd like to run some more". A decade later, there are now eight direct trains a day between London and Hull, and Hull Trains have their own dedicated fleet of five trains.
Shropshire had, until 2002, enjoyed occasional direct trains from Shrewsbury and Telford through Birmingham to London Euston. But when the upgrade of the West Coast Main Line forced Virgin Trains to ensure the capacity was where it was needed, Shropshire lost its direct services to London because not enough people used them.
So, a couple of years ago, WSMR came along and said "we'd like to run trains between London and Shropshire". They figured there was no hope they could go into London Euston on the WCML, so instead they asked to use Marylebone, via the Chiltern line through High Wycombe and Banbury. Unfortunately this does lead to journey times of around four hours for London to Wrexham and just over three hours for London to Shrewsbury, which could be reduced by up to an hour if they were allowed to run at full speed down to Euston.
On the other hand, I think it's great that the service runs at all: until recent cost-cutting measures they ran five trains a day between London and Wrexham via Telford and Shrewsbury; it's now three to Wrexham and one to Shrewsbury.
They use some of the old Mark 3 carriages that Virgin discarded when they switched to using the Pendolinos. They also provide second-to-none catering on board their trains: they still actually have a restaurant car. As such, Ian and I felt compelled to sample their service.
And we were not disappointed. The restaurant car is excellent, and we enjoyed freshly-made hot bacon baps for breakfast. Restaurant cars (as opposed to buffet cars) are a dying breed, but there was certainly the demand for it on this service (in spite of it being early on a Saturday morning!).
What's more, the staff were friendly, the announcements were just right - neither too long nor too short - and the seats were fantastically comfortable. They've recently acquired their own carriages which they're refurbishing which will be in service in a few weeks, which will provide free wireless internet access as well (in the meantime, they hire carriages in from Cargo-D).
All in all, a superb train.
The route itself I was very familiar with: the first half was the London to Leamington line which I used many times as a student at the University of Warwick, and the rest were mainly lines in the West Midlands I had been on before. The main new section was that from Shrewsbury to Wrexham, which was a nice run through the Welsh Marches.
This brought us to Wrexham General, from where we walked to the centre of town and had some lunch, before returning to the station for our onward journey.
1300 Wrexham General to Holyhead, arr 1511
Distance 96.5 miles, walk-up price £15.05
(Headcode 1D18, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158830)
and
1523 Holyhead to Llandudno Junction, arr 1623
Distance: 40 miles, walk-up price: £6.80
(Headcode 1G60, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158830)
Scenery: 8/10 - Fantastic views of Conwy Castle and from the Britannia Bridge, as well as lots of rugged coastline.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Sloppy timekeeping left us six minutes late on the way to Holyhead and three minutes late into Llandudno Junction on the way back.
Speed: 4/10 - Averaging just 45mph on what used to be a very important mainline to Ireland shows just how much some parts of our railway have been run down.
Comfort: 7/10 - The seats were a little hard, but not too bad, and the visibility was good.
Staff: 8/10 - Cheery and friendly staff with frequent ticket inspections and a reasonably-priced trolley service; pity about the automated announcements.
Our next journey took us on to Chester, where we reversed and proceeded along the North Wales Coast Line to Holyhead, and back on the same train to Llandudno Junction. The North Wales Coast Line was built for one purpose: Ireland. Traffic, especially postal traffic, between London and Dublin was hot competition in the 19th century, and Thomas Telford's A5 road to Holyhead was matched soon after by Robert Stephenson's superb railway along the north coast.
This is another route I'm familiar with - but not by rail. The A5 and A55 are the two main routes between Holyhead and England, and I have used it many times in transit between university and home in Northern Ireland. The A5 runs through the mountains from Shrewsbury through Oswestry, Llangollen, and Betws-y-Coed, while the A55 runs from Chester north-west until it hits the coast around Abergele, before hugging the shoreline.
The railway line is much closer to the coastline for the eastern part of the route, and you get really good views of the Dee Estuary and the Wirral Peninsula. Then the route turns slightly more west, and the views get more rugged: on one side you have the Irish Sea, and on the other you have huge hills and rock-faces.
One notable way in which the line differs from the A55 is through Conwy. The A55 is a fairly recent dual-carriageway, and tunnels under the historic town of Conwy. The railway line, however, crosses the River Conwy on a tubular bridge, from which you emerge into fantastic views of Conwy Castle, one of four castles in North Wales which is protected as a World Heritage Site, and it really is quite something.
Eventually the mountains run out, and you sweep onto George Stephenson's Britannia Bridge taking you from the mainland to Anglesey. The Britannia Bridge is a double-decker bridge, with the railway lying below the road (both the A5 and A55, in fact), and you get superb views out into the Menai Straits, including over to Thomas Telford's original Menai Bridge, which is rather lower and narrower but which carried the original A5.
I had previously only crossed Anglesey in haste on the A55, which lies in quite a lot of cuttings; the railway line, however, is at a height where you can see rather more of the landscape, which is rather nice, though nothing spectacular in comparison to the mountains of the mainland.
An on-time departure from Chester turned into six minutes late at Bangor due to nothing other than sloppiness, but we arrived one minute early into Holyhead by virtue of padding; we were similarly a couple of minutes late on the way back.
At Llandudno Junction, Ian remained on the train to proceed back to London via Liverpool, while I got off the train to head up over the roof of Wales.
1633 Llandudno Junction to Blaenau Ffestiniog, arr 1733
Distance: 31 miles, walk-up price £4.15
(Headcode 2D18, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 150255)
Scenery: 10/10 - Stunning views of the Conwy Valley in fantastic bright sunshine.
Punctuality: 8/10 - A couple of minutes late out of Llandudno Junction, but we arrived early at Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Speed: 9/10 - Not fast at all, averaging just 31mph, but you'd struggle to do much better on a railway like this - and it would spoil the view!
Comfort: 5/10 - The seats weren't great, a bit hard really, but the visibility was pretty good.
Staff: 6/10 - A slightly confused ticket inspector, and rather unclear announcements, which was surprising for a prime tourist railway.
Just for once, it didn't matter that the seats were as hard as rocks. It didn't matter that the announcements were almost unintelligible. It didn't matter that there were times when we were travelling at 20mph.
Because the views were magnificent. Breathtaking. A masterpiece of engineering, and a tour de force of nature's beauty. In fact you start to run out of superlatives rather quickly.
The Conwy Valley line climbs from sea-level at Llandudno alongside first the Conwy and then the Lledr, before reaching to 790 feet and tunnelling under the Crimea Pass to Blaenau Ffestiniog. The views of the valley on a hot summer's day are really superb - it feels like you're in a Welsh version of a Norwegian fjord. At first, it starts out like a U-shaped valley, with a wide and colourful flood plain; ever so gradually, it begins to narrow as we climb slowly up to Llanrwst and Betws-y-Coed.
Then we start climbing hard, twisting and turning, clinging to the side of the mountains, now within Snowdonia National Park. We go over Gethins Viaduct, a bridge in the middle of nowhere that's impossible to photograph because it's so inaccessible. We pass Dolwyddelan Castle, dating back to the 12th century, set among hills so high you start to wonder how we got here in the first place.
Then finally we plunge into the longest single-track tunnel on Britain's railways (not counting the Underground), the two mile and 333 yard tunnel which takes us down to the slate-trade town of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Some have likened the scene of Blaenau Ffestiniog to a "post-nuclear bleakness"; I can see what they mean, but that doesn't mean I don't like it. It's a welcome dose of man-made reality to bring you down from the high of the natural scenery of the Conwy Valley.
I had been slightly nervous about making some of the connections today. For one, I had only ten minutes to change trains at Llandudno Junction, and if I missed the branch line train to Blaenau Ffestiniog I would have a three-hour wait for the next one.
But more importantly, if the train to Blaenau was late, then I ran the risk of missing my two-minute connection at Blaenau, on to the narrow-gauge Ffestiniog Railway:
Ffestiniog Railway: 1735 Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog Harbour, arr 1845
Distance: 13.5 miles, price £12.00
The Ffestiniog Railway is one of the Great Little Trains of Wales. Wales has a strangely large number of narrow-gauge railways, with the rails being (normally) just two feet apart (61cm) instead of the usual 4ft 8.5in (143.5cm). Narrow-gauge is good for one reason: twisting and turning. Which is rather necessary when your task is to get through the mountain ranges of Wales in a train.
The Ffestiniog Railway is privately owned and run mainly by volunteers. But because it forms what would otherwise be the missing link in the Great Circuit of North Wales, there has been a long-standing arrangement with British Rail (and subsequently with the Association of Train Operating Companies) that the All-Line Rover and some of the Welsh rover tickets are valid on the Ffestiniog Railway.
I had, technically speaking, a two-minute connection from the Conwy Valley train to the Ffestiniog Railway at Blaenau. Fortunately the Conwy Valley train ran a few minutes early, and I made the connection with time to spare.
I shouldn't have worried, because as a private company with no connections to guarantee, their approach to punctuality was, shall we say, somewhat more lax than I had become accustomed to. A few minutes after the scheduled departure time, I overheard the guard say to one of the platform staff, "Well, I was ready to go, Jo." As she then responded, you just can't rely on engine crews.
And certainly not when they're driving steam trains.
Thirteen miles of iron-road spaghetti, draped on the Moelwynion, being driven along it by a steam train. Sheer brilliance.
I don't think it's fair to rate this train like the other trains. We left ten minutes late and arrived half an hour late thanks to an unscheduled stop in the middle of the forest. The guard said there was a "minor incident with the...", but I didn't hear any more. And even for track this sinewy it was pretty slow; we averaged just under 10mph. Cars in Central London can do faster; but they don't have the view to look at, so I think I'll let them away with it.
The carriages were vintage carriages made out of wood with limited cushioning and, of course, limited height due to the narrow gauge. The windows were half-open, enabling photography without reflections from the glass. There was also an at-seat refreshment service, and the staff were all very friendly and attentive.
I arrived in Porthmadog Harbour station armed with a recommendation of a good fish-and-chip shop on Snowdon Street. It wasn't just good, it was very good indeed, and the fifteen-minute queue (understandable at 7:30pm on a Saturday in high summer) was well worth the wait. I walked the ten minutes or so over to Porthmadog station proper, on the Cambrian Coast Line, for my last train of the marathon.
2023 Porthmadog to Fairbourne, arr 2121
Distance: 21.75 miles, walk-up price: £3.85
(Headcode 2J32, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158833)
Scenery: 10/10 - Stunning sunsets over the Llyn peninsula and back towards Snowdon.
Punctuality: 8/10 - A few minutes late here and there, but it didn't make much difference at this time of night.
Speed: 6/10 - Quite slow: I think it could be a little faster without sacrificing the superb views.
Comfort: 7/10 - Another Arriva Trains Wales Sprinter; I shall say no more.
Staff: 6/10 - Reasonably thorough ticket inspections, though the attitude towards request stops seemed a little lax, placing too much onus on the passengers.
The Cambrian Coast Line, running along the west coast of Wales between Machynlleth (on the Cambrian Line proper between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth) and Pwllheli, is one of the real jewels of the railway network; not just the British railway network, but the world railway network.
For once, I shall agree with the mantra that a picture speaks a thousand words. This is the view of the Llyn peninsula and Snowdonia from the train window:
I think you'll agree it's simply stunning. Other views include Harlech castle, perched high on the cliffs above the line, and Barmouth bridge, which is a two-mile long bridge over a causeway that saves a very long detour up one side of the estuary and down the other.
It was the perfect way to arrive at my place of rest for the weekend in Fairbourne, where Jonathan's family have had a holiday cottage for seventy years, in a fantastic location overlooking Fairbourne and Barmouth.
The overall statistics for the day:
Total time spent on trains: 11 hours, 27 minutes (including 25 minutes delay on the Ffestiniog Railway).
Distance travelled: 402 miles.
Walk-up price: £66.60, plus £12.00 for the Ffestiniog Railway.
In terms of distance, my shortest day, but in terms of time, my longest excluding the sleeper train. Just goes to show that distance travelled isn't everything; the long day was well worth it.
If ever I needed a reminder of why I was spending two weeks travelling the country on trains, the railways of north Wales provided the answer. The scenery is simply stunning, and was all the better for getting a hot, sunny day to see it in.
I spent the first half of day 6 (Saturday) with Ian, one of the guys whose floor I was crashing on in New Beckenham every other day, and possibly the only person I know who knows more about trains than I do. He joined me on the first few legs of my trip, before heading back to London, while I headed to Fairbourne on the west coast of Wales to spend a couple of nights with Jonathan and his family in their holiday cottage.
In order to fit everything I wanted to do in, I had to get up at 6:30am. On a Saturday. You know you're getting up at an uncivilised hour when the Today programme hasn't even started - even the presenters want a lie-in on a Saturday, it starts at 7am instead of 6am during the week. Ian and I headed for London Marylebone:
0706 New Beckenham to Charing Cross, arr 0737
Distance 9.5 miles, walk-up price £2.45
Bakerloo line, Charing Cross to Marylebone
0814 London Marylebone to Wrexham General, arr 1226
Distance 189.75 miles, walk-up price £34.30
(Headcode 1J85, operated by Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railways using Mark 3 stock pushed by 67010)
Scenery: 5/10 - Mostly familiar, but nevertheless a nice run, especially in the Welsh marches from Shrewsbury to Wrexham.
Punctuality: 9/10 - Because this service is being threaded through all sorts of other services, it has quite a lot of slack in the timetable, so we were on time the whole way.
Speed: 6/10 - Not bad, but given the amount of slack it's a pity we couldn't have gone faster.
Comfort: 10/10 - A proper train with a superb restaurant car. Well done.
Staff: 10/10 - Friendly, attentive staff, and announcements which were neither too long nor too short. Well done again.
Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railways (WSMR) are one of a handful of so-called open-access companies. One of the intentions of the Conservatives in privatising the railways in the early 1990s was that it would end British Rail's monopoly on running trains. To this end, they made provision to allow anyone to come along and say "I want to run trains on this line at this time", and as long as there was the capacity, they paid the access charges, and they didn't go bust, they were to be allowed to run the trains.
The first, and most successful, open-access operator is Hull Trains. They came along in 2001 and noticed that Hull, a city of 240,000 people or so, had just one direct train a day to and from London, so they said "we'd like to run some more". A decade later, there are now eight direct trains a day between London and Hull, and Hull Trains have their own dedicated fleet of five trains.
Shropshire had, until 2002, enjoyed occasional direct trains from Shrewsbury and Telford through Birmingham to London Euston. But when the upgrade of the West Coast Main Line forced Virgin Trains to ensure the capacity was where it was needed, Shropshire lost its direct services to London because not enough people used them.
So, a couple of years ago, WSMR came along and said "we'd like to run trains between London and Shropshire". They figured there was no hope they could go into London Euston on the WCML, so instead they asked to use Marylebone, via the Chiltern line through High Wycombe and Banbury. Unfortunately this does lead to journey times of around four hours for London to Wrexham and just over three hours for London to Shrewsbury, which could be reduced by up to an hour if they were allowed to run at full speed down to Euston.
On the other hand, I think it's great that the service runs at all: until recent cost-cutting measures they ran five trains a day between London and Wrexham via Telford and Shrewsbury; it's now three to Wrexham and one to Shrewsbury.
They use some of the old Mark 3 carriages that Virgin discarded when they switched to using the Pendolinos. They also provide second-to-none catering on board their trains: they still actually have a restaurant car. As such, Ian and I felt compelled to sample their service.
And we were not disappointed. The restaurant car is excellent, and we enjoyed freshly-made hot bacon baps for breakfast. Restaurant cars (as opposed to buffet cars) are a dying breed, but there was certainly the demand for it on this service (in spite of it being early on a Saturday morning!).
What's more, the staff were friendly, the announcements were just right - neither too long nor too short - and the seats were fantastically comfortable. They've recently acquired their own carriages which they're refurbishing which will be in service in a few weeks, which will provide free wireless internet access as well (in the meantime, they hire carriages in from Cargo-D).
All in all, a superb train.
The route itself I was very familiar with: the first half was the London to Leamington line which I used many times as a student at the University of Warwick, and the rest were mainly lines in the West Midlands I had been on before. The main new section was that from Shrewsbury to Wrexham, which was a nice run through the Welsh Marches.
This brought us to Wrexham General, from where we walked to the centre of town and had some lunch, before returning to the station for our onward journey.
1300 Wrexham General to Holyhead, arr 1511
Distance 96.5 miles, walk-up price £15.05
(Headcode 1D18, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158830)
and
1523 Holyhead to Llandudno Junction, arr 1623
Distance: 40 miles, walk-up price: £6.80
(Headcode 1G60, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158830)
Scenery: 8/10 - Fantastic views of Conwy Castle and from the Britannia Bridge, as well as lots of rugged coastline.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Sloppy timekeeping left us six minutes late on the way to Holyhead and three minutes late into Llandudno Junction on the way back.
Speed: 4/10 - Averaging just 45mph on what used to be a very important mainline to Ireland shows just how much some parts of our railway have been run down.
Comfort: 7/10 - The seats were a little hard, but not too bad, and the visibility was good.
Staff: 8/10 - Cheery and friendly staff with frequent ticket inspections and a reasonably-priced trolley service; pity about the automated announcements.
Our next journey took us on to Chester, where we reversed and proceeded along the North Wales Coast Line to Holyhead, and back on the same train to Llandudno Junction. The North Wales Coast Line was built for one purpose: Ireland. Traffic, especially postal traffic, between London and Dublin was hot competition in the 19th century, and Thomas Telford's A5 road to Holyhead was matched soon after by Robert Stephenson's superb railway along the north coast.
This is another route I'm familiar with - but not by rail. The A5 and A55 are the two main routes between Holyhead and England, and I have used it many times in transit between university and home in Northern Ireland. The A5 runs through the mountains from Shrewsbury through Oswestry, Llangollen, and Betws-y-Coed, while the A55 runs from Chester north-west until it hits the coast around Abergele, before hugging the shoreline.
The railway line is much closer to the coastline for the eastern part of the route, and you get really good views of the Dee Estuary and the Wirral Peninsula. Then the route turns slightly more west, and the views get more rugged: on one side you have the Irish Sea, and on the other you have huge hills and rock-faces.
One notable way in which the line differs from the A55 is through Conwy. The A55 is a fairly recent dual-carriageway, and tunnels under the historic town of Conwy. The railway line, however, crosses the River Conwy on a tubular bridge, from which you emerge into fantastic views of Conwy Castle, one of four castles in North Wales which is protected as a World Heritage Site, and it really is quite something.
Eventually the mountains run out, and you sweep onto George Stephenson's Britannia Bridge taking you from the mainland to Anglesey. The Britannia Bridge is a double-decker bridge, with the railway lying below the road (both the A5 and A55, in fact), and you get superb views out into the Menai Straits, including over to Thomas Telford's original Menai Bridge, which is rather lower and narrower but which carried the original A5.
I had previously only crossed Anglesey in haste on the A55, which lies in quite a lot of cuttings; the railway line, however, is at a height where you can see rather more of the landscape, which is rather nice, though nothing spectacular in comparison to the mountains of the mainland.
An on-time departure from Chester turned into six minutes late at Bangor due to nothing other than sloppiness, but we arrived one minute early into Holyhead by virtue of padding; we were similarly a couple of minutes late on the way back.
At Llandudno Junction, Ian remained on the train to proceed back to London via Liverpool, while I got off the train to head up over the roof of Wales.
1633 Llandudno Junction to Blaenau Ffestiniog, arr 1733
Distance: 31 miles, walk-up price £4.15
(Headcode 2D18, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 150255)
Scenery: 10/10 - Stunning views of the Conwy Valley in fantastic bright sunshine.
Punctuality: 8/10 - A couple of minutes late out of Llandudno Junction, but we arrived early at Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Speed: 9/10 - Not fast at all, averaging just 31mph, but you'd struggle to do much better on a railway like this - and it would spoil the view!
Comfort: 5/10 - The seats weren't great, a bit hard really, but the visibility was pretty good.
Staff: 6/10 - A slightly confused ticket inspector, and rather unclear announcements, which was surprising for a prime tourist railway.
Just for once, it didn't matter that the seats were as hard as rocks. It didn't matter that the announcements were almost unintelligible. It didn't matter that there were times when we were travelling at 20mph.
Because the views were magnificent. Breathtaking. A masterpiece of engineering, and a tour de force of nature's beauty. In fact you start to run out of superlatives rather quickly.
The Conwy Valley line climbs from sea-level at Llandudno alongside first the Conwy and then the Lledr, before reaching to 790 feet and tunnelling under the Crimea Pass to Blaenau Ffestiniog. The views of the valley on a hot summer's day are really superb - it feels like you're in a Welsh version of a Norwegian fjord. At first, it starts out like a U-shaped valley, with a wide and colourful flood plain; ever so gradually, it begins to narrow as we climb slowly up to Llanrwst and Betws-y-Coed.
Then we start climbing hard, twisting and turning, clinging to the side of the mountains, now within Snowdonia National Park. We go over Gethins Viaduct, a bridge in the middle of nowhere that's impossible to photograph because it's so inaccessible. We pass Dolwyddelan Castle, dating back to the 12th century, set among hills so high you start to wonder how we got here in the first place.
Then finally we plunge into the longest single-track tunnel on Britain's railways (not counting the Underground), the two mile and 333 yard tunnel which takes us down to the slate-trade town of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Some have likened the scene of Blaenau Ffestiniog to a "post-nuclear bleakness"; I can see what they mean, but that doesn't mean I don't like it. It's a welcome dose of man-made reality to bring you down from the high of the natural scenery of the Conwy Valley.
I had been slightly nervous about making some of the connections today. For one, I had only ten minutes to change trains at Llandudno Junction, and if I missed the branch line train to Blaenau Ffestiniog I would have a three-hour wait for the next one.
But more importantly, if the train to Blaenau was late, then I ran the risk of missing my two-minute connection at Blaenau, on to the narrow-gauge Ffestiniog Railway:
Ffestiniog Railway: 1735 Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog Harbour, arr 1845
Distance: 13.5 miles, price £12.00
The Ffestiniog Railway is one of the Great Little Trains of Wales. Wales has a strangely large number of narrow-gauge railways, with the rails being (normally) just two feet apart (61cm) instead of the usual 4ft 8.5in (143.5cm). Narrow-gauge is good for one reason: twisting and turning. Which is rather necessary when your task is to get through the mountain ranges of Wales in a train.
The Ffestiniog Railway is privately owned and run mainly by volunteers. But because it forms what would otherwise be the missing link in the Great Circuit of North Wales, there has been a long-standing arrangement with British Rail (and subsequently with the Association of Train Operating Companies) that the All-Line Rover and some of the Welsh rover tickets are valid on the Ffestiniog Railway.
I had, technically speaking, a two-minute connection from the Conwy Valley train to the Ffestiniog Railway at Blaenau. Fortunately the Conwy Valley train ran a few minutes early, and I made the connection with time to spare.
I shouldn't have worried, because as a private company with no connections to guarantee, their approach to punctuality was, shall we say, somewhat more lax than I had become accustomed to. A few minutes after the scheduled departure time, I overheard the guard say to one of the platform staff, "Well, I was ready to go, Jo." As she then responded, you just can't rely on engine crews.
And certainly not when they're driving steam trains.
Thirteen miles of iron-road spaghetti, draped on the Moelwynion, being driven along it by a steam train. Sheer brilliance.
I don't think it's fair to rate this train like the other trains. We left ten minutes late and arrived half an hour late thanks to an unscheduled stop in the middle of the forest. The guard said there was a "minor incident with the...", but I didn't hear any more. And even for track this sinewy it was pretty slow; we averaged just under 10mph. Cars in Central London can do faster; but they don't have the view to look at, so I think I'll let them away with it.
The carriages were vintage carriages made out of wood with limited cushioning and, of course, limited height due to the narrow gauge. The windows were half-open, enabling photography without reflections from the glass. There was also an at-seat refreshment service, and the staff were all very friendly and attentive.
I arrived in Porthmadog Harbour station armed with a recommendation of a good fish-and-chip shop on Snowdon Street. It wasn't just good, it was very good indeed, and the fifteen-minute queue (understandable at 7:30pm on a Saturday in high summer) was well worth the wait. I walked the ten minutes or so over to Porthmadog station proper, on the Cambrian Coast Line, for my last train of the marathon.
2023 Porthmadog to Fairbourne, arr 2121
Distance: 21.75 miles, walk-up price: £3.85
(Headcode 2J32, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158833)
Scenery: 10/10 - Stunning sunsets over the Llyn peninsula and back towards Snowdon.
Punctuality: 8/10 - A few minutes late here and there, but it didn't make much difference at this time of night.
Speed: 6/10 - Quite slow: I think it could be a little faster without sacrificing the superb views.
Comfort: 7/10 - Another Arriva Trains Wales Sprinter; I shall say no more.
Staff: 6/10 - Reasonably thorough ticket inspections, though the attitude towards request stops seemed a little lax, placing too much onus on the passengers.
The Cambrian Coast Line, running along the west coast of Wales between Machynlleth (on the Cambrian Line proper between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth) and Pwllheli, is one of the real jewels of the railway network; not just the British railway network, but the world railway network.
For once, I shall agree with the mantra that a picture speaks a thousand words. This is the view of the Llyn peninsula and Snowdonia from the train window:
I think you'll agree it's simply stunning. Other views include Harlech castle, perched high on the cliffs above the line, and Barmouth bridge, which is a two-mile long bridge over a causeway that saves a very long detour up one side of the estuary and down the other.
It was the perfect way to arrive at my place of rest for the weekend in Fairbourne, where Jonathan's family have had a holiday cottage for seventy years, in a fantastic location overlooking Fairbourne and Barmouth.
The overall statistics for the day:
Total time spent on trains: 11 hours, 27 minutes (including 25 minutes delay on the Ffestiniog Railway).
Distance travelled: 402 miles.
Walk-up price: £66.60, plus £12.00 for the Ffestiniog Railway.
In terms of distance, my shortest day, but in terms of time, my longest excluding the sleeper train. Just goes to show that distance travelled isn't everything; the long day was well worth it.
Friday 24 July 2009
All-Line Rover, Day 5
It's amazing how we all take for granted such simple pleasures as sleeping in a bed. But for five of the last six nights I've slept on a roll mat on a hard floor, and the other night was spent on a bunk on a moving train. I am therefore very grateful to Tom for providing me with a bed, and with it my first good night's sleep in a week.
Unfortunately, come the morning, my luck ran out: I had a 25-minute walk to Exmouth station, and it decided to rain - quite heavily - for the duration, and then to stop raining just as I got to the station, leaving me rather wet. To add injury to insult, I then ended up back on the same Pacer I arrived on last night.
0923 Exmouth to Exeter St. David's, arrive 0953
Distance: 13.25 miles, walk-up price: £2.05
(Headcode 2T12, operated by First Great Western using Pacer 142029)
Since it was the same train on the same line as last night, I'll not bother with the ratings for this one. Anyway, by the time the train left Exmouth, the heavy shower that I'd been caught in had passed over and we were left with some nice sunshine - not as nice, admittedly, as the arrival last night, but still a decent view of the Exe estuary.
The train was considerably busier than last night, being more like half-full than quarter-full. That said, I overheard comments that it was considerably quieter than normal, and that because it was the school holidays the roads were much clearer and people were driving into Exeter instead.
We arrived in Exeter on time, and I had fifteen minutes to grab a magazine and a newspaper before getting my first proper train of the day.
1010 Exeter St. David's to Salisbury, arrive 1215
Distance: 88.75 miles, walk-up price: £18.00
(Headcode 1L40, operated by South West Trains using Sprinters 159106+159107)
Scenery: 6/10 - Nice rolling English countryside.
Punctuality: 8/10 - A four-minute delay due to the route being single-track was made up thanks to a seven-minute scheduled stop at Yeovil Junction; all in all, not bad for a single-track line.
Speed: 6/10 - There's a lot of potential on this line for semi-fast trains, but with the restricted capacity everything has to stop everywhere, which is unfortunate.
Comfort: 9/10 - Comfortable seats and good visibility, let down only by the tables being a tad too low to get into the seats easily.
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection, though to be fair I suspect there were more after I left; a good trolley service which passed up and down the train twice in the space of two hours.
Sprinters are the workhorse of the regional railway network in this country: they were built in batches in the late 1980s and early 1990s to replace a multitude of different kinds of train. The process, known as "Sprinterization"(!), basically spelt the end of locomotive-hauled regional services.
Even South West Trains have a small fleet of Sprinters, based at Salisbury, which cover the few non-electrified routes they operate, the most important of which is London Waterloo to Exeter. This is the oft-forgotten second route to the south west, going through Salisbury and Yeovil rather than the Great Western route through Reading, Westbury and Taunton.
The line was, unfortunately, reduced to a single track with passing loops west of Salisbury as a cost-cutting measure in the 1960s. This means that the best possible service is one train per 90 minutes or so; the current service remains haphazard, sometimes hourly, but often with two-hour gaps.
Fortunately, the powers that be have recognised the potential of this line, which is the fastest way from Southampton and Portsmouth to the South West (changing at Salisbury). An extra passing loop is being added at Axminster to enable an hourly service between London and Exeter from this December, and fully restoring double-track and even electrifying the line have been mooted.
Anyway, having spent five hours on Monday on a Sprinter on the Liverpool-Norwich route, I had pretty much written off Sprinters as cheap and cheerful. South West Trains have, surprisingly, restored my confidence. The seats were actually comfortable, though the tables were a little low and it made getting in and out of the seats mildly difficult.
The visibility was good, which made it all the better to admire the view: the Exeter-Salisbury route isn't nearly as exciting as anything I saw yesterday, but the rolling countryside of Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire was certainly very nice.
We arrived in Salisbury on time, in spite of a few delays due to the single track working. I was pleased with the member of staff who announced that the halt-in-the-middle-of-a-field just after we'd stopped at Tisbury was in fact timetabled (we stopped for about seven minutes to let a service in the other direction go through).
I was rather pleased with Salisbury station. For one, it has a subway with not stairs, but ramps, which when you're dragging a small suitcase with half your life in it is a great help. Secondly, the cafe on the platform - admittedly one in the Pumpkin chain - was very good, the hot baguette I had being both tasty and soft (which pleased my teeth).
1241 Salisbury to Cardiff Central, arrive 1445
Distance: 90.75 miles, walk-up price: £16.85
(Headcode 1F16, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 158951)
Scenery: 4/10 - Some nice bits, but I'd seen most of it before, and the bits I hadn't weren't particularly nice.
Punctuality: 8/10 - We ran a few minutes late to Bristol, but a quick turnaround at Bristol put us back on time.
Speed: 5/10 - Could and should be a lot better; it's a major inter-regional route and my journey averaged 44mph. No wonder people drive.
Comfort: 8/10 - Nearly as good a Sprinter as SWT, but not quite; good seats, but the visibility wasn't quite as good.
Staff: 4/10 - No catering service, which for a three-hour long service between major cities is appalling. Ticket checks were pretty thorough, though.
I proceeded on from Salisbury towards Cardiff, on the so-called Wessex Main Line. I'd been on various bits of this route, but not the whole lot in one go. The only new bits for me were Salisbury to Westbury, which passes through rural Wiltshire, and from Filton to Cardiff, which passes through the Severn Tunnel to Wales.
This was, in fact, my first time on a train in Wales. For some reason I've never been a brilliant fan of Wales; I've always thought of its scenery as a poor cousin to Scotland. To make matters worse, the Severn Tunnel deposits us in South Wales, which is, I believe, to Wales what the Firth of Clyde is to Scotland - it's the centre of industry, and thus not very pretty.
All in all, the scenery wasn't anything spectacular, though rural Wiltshire is reasonably pretty. The train itself was quite busy, it having started back at Portsmouth (via Southampton); most of the business, like that on Liverpool-Norwich, was relatively short-distance traffic, with few seeming to travel the whole length.
This particular journey was pretty much a means to an end, the end being the next train I took from Cardiff. I had a (tighter than recommended) five-minute connection at Cardiff; fortunately we arrived a little early, so I made my next train with time to spare.
1450 Cardiff Central to Crewe, arrive 1726
Distance 138.75 miles, walk-up price £28.60
(Headcode 1W27, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using "Coradia" 175006)
Scenery: 7/10 - Some very nice hills and castles, both Welsh and English.
Punctuality: 9/10 - One or two stops were a minute late, but overall it was pretty much bang on time.
Speed: 7/10 - Not too bad for an inter-regional route, but it could be better (see below).
Comfort: 1/10 - Without a doubt the worst train I've been on so far. See below.
Staff: 6/10 - The trolley service only went as far as Shrewsbury, which is a bit early to give up; ticket checks were reasonably thorough.
As soon as I sat down on this train, a so-called "Coradia" class 175, I immediately began to regret having done so; this was not a pleasant train to be on.
At one end of the carriage, there are two sets of four seats which face each other, like at a table. But there were no tables, mainly because there wasn't room for them. Seeing one of these free I took one and immediately regretted it. I had almost no legroom.
To make matters worse, my case, which is hand-luggage sized, and has fitted in every overhead rack so far this week, failed to fit in the overhead rack of this train. So I had to put it in the main luggage rack, which was a bit further away. OK, not a huge inconvenience, but I wasn't a great fan of leaving my stuff a bit out of my sight.
But these pale into insignificance when compared to my greatest complaint: the train had no bins.
Now, I'm used to stations having no bins, lest Irish terrorists drop bombs in them or something. But trains?! Since when has it been sensible for a train to have no bins?! I might not have minded so much, but the litter-pickers seems to pack up and go home at Shrewsbury, leaving me to take my rubbish with me when I got off at Crewe.
Anyway, enough moaning, because aside from the train, the route itself was actually rather nice. It forms part of the mammoth Manchester to Milford Haven route, which passes through Crewe, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Llanelli and Carmarthen. The portion of the route I was on took us through the Welsh Marches, past some very nice hills and castles. It was a real pity that the train itself pissed me off.
Also, the speed of the train isn't bad for an inter-regional route, but it would be much better if the local flows - such as Newport to Cwmbran and Abergavenny - were not served by a long-distance train from Carmarthen to Manchester. Three hours from Cardiff to Manchester ought to be possible (and I understand it used to happen).
One thing that did strike me as odd is how noticeably poorer the people travelling on this train seemed to be than on, say, the Exeter-Salisbury train I had been on earlier. To go from the Exeter-Salisbury train, which had a number of women - not women in suits, just women on a day out - sitting in first class, presumably because they could afford it, to the Cardiff-Crewe train, where I sat beside a guy who was phoning in bets on horses and eating a pastie, was an unusual juxtaposition. Maybe the North-South divide really does exist.
Anyway, I was heading back to London tonight, so I tried to make a three-minute connection at Crewe to:
1729 Crewe to London Euston, arrive 1908
Distance 158 miles, walk-up price £39.15
(Headcode 1A56, operated by Virgin Trains using a Class 390 Pendolino)
Scenery: 3/10 - Rainy, drab and industrialised, and nothing I've not seen before.
Punctuality: 5/10 - We were a couple of minutes late at Crewe, and got delayed further as we went south to end up six minutes late. Disappointing.
Speed: 8/10 - Fast, yes, but the delays cost us.
Comfort: 7/10 - Good seats; didn't care about the visibility this time.
Staff: 7/10 - Helpful shop assistant and a nice conductor who carefully checked the tickets, though her announcements, while friendly, did tend to ramble on a bit.
I'd done Crewe-London before, and I'd been on a Pendolino before, so this wasn't anything new. Except, that is, for the Virgin Shop. Instead of a standard buffet car, Virgin insist that you'd much prefer to be able to buy six copies of Hello! on the train instead of a hot meal. However, they did have fruit salad, which was much healthier than anything NXEC offered me on Tuesday.
I made it into Euston a bit late, but time enough to buy some dinner and (just about) make my train back to New Beckenham.
Northern Line (City branch), Euston to London Bridge
1946 London Bridge to New Beckenham, arrive 2006
Distance 7.75 miles, walk-up price £2.45
Not a bad day, but there wasn't anything special to capture my imagination today. Today's statistics were:
Total time on trains: 9 hours, 14 minutes.
Distance covered: 497.25 miles.
Walk-up price: £107.10.
Tomorrow, I head for North Wales. I'm staying on Saturday and Sunday with a friend of mine on the west coast of Wales (in Fairbourne, to be precise), and he doesn't have any internet, so Saturday's blog post may have to wait until Monday. Never fear, I shall return soon!
Unfortunately, come the morning, my luck ran out: I had a 25-minute walk to Exmouth station, and it decided to rain - quite heavily - for the duration, and then to stop raining just as I got to the station, leaving me rather wet. To add injury to insult, I then ended up back on the same Pacer I arrived on last night.
0923 Exmouth to Exeter St. David's, arrive 0953
Distance: 13.25 miles, walk-up price: £2.05
(Headcode 2T12, operated by First Great Western using Pacer 142029)
Since it was the same train on the same line as last night, I'll not bother with the ratings for this one. Anyway, by the time the train left Exmouth, the heavy shower that I'd been caught in had passed over and we were left with some nice sunshine - not as nice, admittedly, as the arrival last night, but still a decent view of the Exe estuary.
The train was considerably busier than last night, being more like half-full than quarter-full. That said, I overheard comments that it was considerably quieter than normal, and that because it was the school holidays the roads were much clearer and people were driving into Exeter instead.
We arrived in Exeter on time, and I had fifteen minutes to grab a magazine and a newspaper before getting my first proper train of the day.
1010 Exeter St. David's to Salisbury, arrive 1215
Distance: 88.75 miles, walk-up price: £18.00
(Headcode 1L40, operated by South West Trains using Sprinters 159106+159107)
Scenery: 6/10 - Nice rolling English countryside.
Punctuality: 8/10 - A four-minute delay due to the route being single-track was made up thanks to a seven-minute scheduled stop at Yeovil Junction; all in all, not bad for a single-track line.
Speed: 6/10 - There's a lot of potential on this line for semi-fast trains, but with the restricted capacity everything has to stop everywhere, which is unfortunate.
Comfort: 9/10 - Comfortable seats and good visibility, let down only by the tables being a tad too low to get into the seats easily.
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection, though to be fair I suspect there were more after I left; a good trolley service which passed up and down the train twice in the space of two hours.
Sprinters are the workhorse of the regional railway network in this country: they were built in batches in the late 1980s and early 1990s to replace a multitude of different kinds of train. The process, known as "Sprinterization"(!), basically spelt the end of locomotive-hauled regional services.
Even South West Trains have a small fleet of Sprinters, based at Salisbury, which cover the few non-electrified routes they operate, the most important of which is London Waterloo to Exeter. This is the oft-forgotten second route to the south west, going through Salisbury and Yeovil rather than the Great Western route through Reading, Westbury and Taunton.
The line was, unfortunately, reduced to a single track with passing loops west of Salisbury as a cost-cutting measure in the 1960s. This means that the best possible service is one train per 90 minutes or so; the current service remains haphazard, sometimes hourly, but often with two-hour gaps.
Fortunately, the powers that be have recognised the potential of this line, which is the fastest way from Southampton and Portsmouth to the South West (changing at Salisbury). An extra passing loop is being added at Axminster to enable an hourly service between London and Exeter from this December, and fully restoring double-track and even electrifying the line have been mooted.
Anyway, having spent five hours on Monday on a Sprinter on the Liverpool-Norwich route, I had pretty much written off Sprinters as cheap and cheerful. South West Trains have, surprisingly, restored my confidence. The seats were actually comfortable, though the tables were a little low and it made getting in and out of the seats mildly difficult.
The visibility was good, which made it all the better to admire the view: the Exeter-Salisbury route isn't nearly as exciting as anything I saw yesterday, but the rolling countryside of Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire was certainly very nice.
We arrived in Salisbury on time, in spite of a few delays due to the single track working. I was pleased with the member of staff who announced that the halt-in-the-middle-of-a-field just after we'd stopped at Tisbury was in fact timetabled (we stopped for about seven minutes to let a service in the other direction go through).
I was rather pleased with Salisbury station. For one, it has a subway with not stairs, but ramps, which when you're dragging a small suitcase with half your life in it is a great help. Secondly, the cafe on the platform - admittedly one in the Pumpkin chain - was very good, the hot baguette I had being both tasty and soft (which pleased my teeth).
1241 Salisbury to Cardiff Central, arrive 1445
Distance: 90.75 miles, walk-up price: £16.85
(Headcode 1F16, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 158951)
Scenery: 4/10 - Some nice bits, but I'd seen most of it before, and the bits I hadn't weren't particularly nice.
Punctuality: 8/10 - We ran a few minutes late to Bristol, but a quick turnaround at Bristol put us back on time.
Speed: 5/10 - Could and should be a lot better; it's a major inter-regional route and my journey averaged 44mph. No wonder people drive.
Comfort: 8/10 - Nearly as good a Sprinter as SWT, but not quite; good seats, but the visibility wasn't quite as good.
Staff: 4/10 - No catering service, which for a three-hour long service between major cities is appalling. Ticket checks were pretty thorough, though.
I proceeded on from Salisbury towards Cardiff, on the so-called Wessex Main Line. I'd been on various bits of this route, but not the whole lot in one go. The only new bits for me were Salisbury to Westbury, which passes through rural Wiltshire, and from Filton to Cardiff, which passes through the Severn Tunnel to Wales.
This was, in fact, my first time on a train in Wales. For some reason I've never been a brilliant fan of Wales; I've always thought of its scenery as a poor cousin to Scotland. To make matters worse, the Severn Tunnel deposits us in South Wales, which is, I believe, to Wales what the Firth of Clyde is to Scotland - it's the centre of industry, and thus not very pretty.
All in all, the scenery wasn't anything spectacular, though rural Wiltshire is reasonably pretty. The train itself was quite busy, it having started back at Portsmouth (via Southampton); most of the business, like that on Liverpool-Norwich, was relatively short-distance traffic, with few seeming to travel the whole length.
This particular journey was pretty much a means to an end, the end being the next train I took from Cardiff. I had a (tighter than recommended) five-minute connection at Cardiff; fortunately we arrived a little early, so I made my next train with time to spare.
1450 Cardiff Central to Crewe, arrive 1726
Distance 138.75 miles, walk-up price £28.60
(Headcode 1W27, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using "Coradia" 175006)
Scenery: 7/10 - Some very nice hills and castles, both Welsh and English.
Punctuality: 9/10 - One or two stops were a minute late, but overall it was pretty much bang on time.
Speed: 7/10 - Not too bad for an inter-regional route, but it could be better (see below).
Comfort: 1/10 - Without a doubt the worst train I've been on so far. See below.
Staff: 6/10 - The trolley service only went as far as Shrewsbury, which is a bit early to give up; ticket checks were reasonably thorough.
As soon as I sat down on this train, a so-called "Coradia" class 175, I immediately began to regret having done so; this was not a pleasant train to be on.
At one end of the carriage, there are two sets of four seats which face each other, like at a table. But there were no tables, mainly because there wasn't room for them. Seeing one of these free I took one and immediately regretted it. I had almost no legroom.
To make matters worse, my case, which is hand-luggage sized, and has fitted in every overhead rack so far this week, failed to fit in the overhead rack of this train. So I had to put it in the main luggage rack, which was a bit further away. OK, not a huge inconvenience, but I wasn't a great fan of leaving my stuff a bit out of my sight.
But these pale into insignificance when compared to my greatest complaint: the train had no bins.
Now, I'm used to stations having no bins, lest Irish terrorists drop bombs in them or something. But trains?! Since when has it been sensible for a train to have no bins?! I might not have minded so much, but the litter-pickers seems to pack up and go home at Shrewsbury, leaving me to take my rubbish with me when I got off at Crewe.
Anyway, enough moaning, because aside from the train, the route itself was actually rather nice. It forms part of the mammoth Manchester to Milford Haven route, which passes through Crewe, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Llanelli and Carmarthen. The portion of the route I was on took us through the Welsh Marches, past some very nice hills and castles. It was a real pity that the train itself pissed me off.
Also, the speed of the train isn't bad for an inter-regional route, but it would be much better if the local flows - such as Newport to Cwmbran and Abergavenny - were not served by a long-distance train from Carmarthen to Manchester. Three hours from Cardiff to Manchester ought to be possible (and I understand it used to happen).
One thing that did strike me as odd is how noticeably poorer the people travelling on this train seemed to be than on, say, the Exeter-Salisbury train I had been on earlier. To go from the Exeter-Salisbury train, which had a number of women - not women in suits, just women on a day out - sitting in first class, presumably because they could afford it, to the Cardiff-Crewe train, where I sat beside a guy who was phoning in bets on horses and eating a pastie, was an unusual juxtaposition. Maybe the North-South divide really does exist.
Anyway, I was heading back to London tonight, so I tried to make a three-minute connection at Crewe to:
1729 Crewe to London Euston, arrive 1908
Distance 158 miles, walk-up price £39.15
(Headcode 1A56, operated by Virgin Trains using a Class 390 Pendolino)
Scenery: 3/10 - Rainy, drab and industrialised, and nothing I've not seen before.
Punctuality: 5/10 - We were a couple of minutes late at Crewe, and got delayed further as we went south to end up six minutes late. Disappointing.
Speed: 8/10 - Fast, yes, but the delays cost us.
Comfort: 7/10 - Good seats; didn't care about the visibility this time.
Staff: 7/10 - Helpful shop assistant and a nice conductor who carefully checked the tickets, though her announcements, while friendly, did tend to ramble on a bit.
I'd done Crewe-London before, and I'd been on a Pendolino before, so this wasn't anything new. Except, that is, for the Virgin Shop. Instead of a standard buffet car, Virgin insist that you'd much prefer to be able to buy six copies of Hello! on the train instead of a hot meal. However, they did have fruit salad, which was much healthier than anything NXEC offered me on Tuesday.
I made it into Euston a bit late, but time enough to buy some dinner and (just about) make my train back to New Beckenham.
Northern Line (City branch), Euston to London Bridge
1946 London Bridge to New Beckenham, arrive 2006
Distance 7.75 miles, walk-up price £2.45
Not a bad day, but there wasn't anything special to capture my imagination today. Today's statistics were:
Total time on trains: 9 hours, 14 minutes.
Distance covered: 497.25 miles.
Walk-up price: £107.10.
Tomorrow, I head for North Wales. I'm staying on Saturday and Sunday with a friend of mine on the west coast of Wales (in Fairbourne, to be precise), and he doesn't have any internet, so Saturday's blog post may have to wait until Monday. Never fear, I shall return soon!
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