Every so often, I start to wonder what if I'd been born at a different point in history. I sometimes wish I'd been alive in the 1960s: so many defining moments of the 20th century fell within that great decade, not least the first Moon landing, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Prague Spring; though if I were pressed to pick just one thing from that decade I'd probably choose to be present at John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, the "Ask not what your country can do for you" speech.
I've always felt my generation has been starved of moments that truly define history: with the exception of 9/11 and the ensuing chaos in the Middle East (not that there wasn't chaos there before), the political makeup of the world hasn't changed dramatically since I was very young. So today, I wish I were just a few years older, that I might remember the most momentous event of the last forty years: the fall of the Berlin Wall.
While tensions had been building for quite some time, and the feeling was that it was a question of when East Germany would collapse rather than if, the sudden nature of the downfall took almost everyone by surprise, including the East Germans.
In fact, it was all something of an accident. For a fascinating, and funny, insight of a western reporter into life in East Berlin when the wall fell, this article from the Sunday Times, an extract from a book by Peter Millar, is well worth a read.
On November 9th, 1989, the East German Politburo agreed to ease travel restrictions on East German citizens, letting them leave and re-enter the country at will, once they had a visa, which would be issued starting the following morning.
However, their spokesman wasn't quite speaking from the same script. Gunter Schabowski was handed the new rules just before a press conference, and announced them to the world. He wasn't clear on the details: he made no mention of the need to obtain a visa, for example, and when asked by a reporter when the laws came into effect, he replied: "Sofort. Unverzüglich."
Literally translated: "Immediately. Without delay."
The press conference was broadcast live on German television that evening. Within minutes tens of thousands of East Berliners flooded towards the checkpoints along the length of the wall, demanding to be let through. The border guards had not yet been informed of the new law, and had no idea what was happening. Eventually they were told, and tried to inform the crowd that they would have to queue up the following morning and get a visa stamped into their passport.
But the crowd were having none of it: somehow they knew the crowd had reached a critical mass, and that there was no turning back. They massively outnumbered the petrified border guards, who made frantic telephone calls to their superiors. Eventually, a guard at Bornholmerstraße checkpoint, acting on his own authority, decided that enough was enough: it was simply unsafe to hold the crowd back, and if he didn't do something there were going to be fatalities.
So he opened the gates, and people flooded towards the wall.
The word soon got out to the other checkpoints, and they released the floodgates. Thousands of East Berliners rushed to find thousands of West Berliners waiting at the wall to welcome them to freedom. And within just hours, the iconic pictures of people hacking away at the wall with whatever tools came to hand were beamed around the world, for all to see: the Berlin Wall had fallen, peacefully. Within a year, Germany had been reunited, and the deep scars of separation could begin to heal.
And that, for me, is one of the amazing things about the collapse of communism: that it all happened peacefully. Almost every other revolution in history, from the Greek victory over the Persians at Salamis in 480 BC, to the communist takeover of China in 1949, have been bloody, and long. 1989 was the great bloodless revolution.
So take a moment to remember that, twenty years ago today, East Germans got back something they had not had for a generation, something we too often take for granted: freedom.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Competition on Britain's railways: can it ever work?
Earlier this week, I read this article on the Guardian's "Comment is Free" section about a revolutionary idea: Zopa. The idea is simple: if banks are the middlemen between savers and borrowers, why not cut them out altogether and get savers to lend directly to borrowers?
It's certainly an interesting idea, though not without its flaws: even Zopa itself admits that getting people to lend enough money for long enough that people can take out mortgages is not going to happen any time soon, so the bank as we know it is here to stay, even if it is in for a bit of healthy competition.
This got me thinking about competition on Britain's railways. Ostensibly, the Conservative Party, in privatising the railways in the mid-1990s, thought that the railway services could be made better by allowing competition between more than one private operator, instead of having the government run it all itself.
This idea had revolutionised many other industries, for better or for worse, in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher. Arguably the biggest success has been in telecommunications: privatising British Telecom in 1984 led ultimately to cheaper prices - not only for traditional telephone services, but also for the internet.
Why did privatisation work well in telecommunications? Because there's a level playing field: every company can provide the same level of service using the same basic infrastructure; it's the same wires to your house regardless of who's providing you with internet. This led to genuine competition between companies, driving prices down, which is good for the consumer.
Or is it? Game theory tells us that if each individual tries to choose what's best for themselves, we may all end up worse off. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go read about the prisoner's dilemma.) If we're all paying less for our internet, this means there must be less money around to actively improve the network, so there's less investment in the infrastructure.
So while we're all paying less money, we're also paying the price of not having as fast a connection.
In fact, this is so much the case that a couple of months ago it was suggested that people should be taxed £6 a year to fund the improvements that we so badly need.
Imagine a counterfactual for a moment: suppose that BT had not been privatised. We might suppose that bills for internet access would be higher - maybe even £6 higher. But since there would have been no drop in prices, there would have been no drop in investment, so our network would have been able to cope.
In other words, if BT hadn't been privatised, it's quite possible that we'd all be paying £6 a year anyway in higher bills, and none of us would be complaining - at least, we wouldn't be complaining as much as some who say "£6 in tax per year? Outrageous!", etc.
So, is the same thing happening on the railways? I think we must separate the discussion into freight and passenger traffic, since the two are very different.
Railfreight is, in many ways, quite similar to telecommunications. There are several railfreight companies - DB Schenker, Freightliner, Direct Rail Services, FirstGBRf and Advenza - most of whom will be happy to take your goods from point A to point B, at a reasonable price.
The companies can then consult with the regulators and find suitable times to run the trains. Since allocation of the train times is, in theory, on a first-come, first-served basis, it doesn't matter which of the operators take your goods; they'll all get it there in the same time.
In other words, there's a level playing field. Admittedly, you have to book the transit of your goods a little in advance, but you would also have to book lorry drivers in advance.
There are two questions here, then: is it driving prices down, and is the quality of service getting worse? Unfortunately I don't know enough about railfreight to answer those questions directly. However, the percentage of goods moved by rail increased from 8.5% in 1995 (at the time of privatisation) to 11.5% in 2005.
A increase of a third in freight moved by rail doesn't happen for no good reason, and it is, at least in part, down to the free-market competition of privatisation. But it's also down to the investment that happened because of privatisation: because of the upgrades on the West Coast Main Line, there is far more capacity for freight trains than ever before.
So why not adopt the same model for passenger trains? Why not let companies run whatever trains they want, based solely on market forces? The most important reason is that there isn't enough capacity.
Take London to Manchester as a random example: assuming that we want to keep all the other local services, it's pretty much only possible to run three trains an hour between London and Manchester. While it might theoretically be possible to have more than one company operating such services, it would be a logistical nightmare trying to ensure it all worked.
Imagine the following: you need a car to commute to work. Instead of buying one car, you lease three cars at the same price as buying one. The catch is this: if you leave home or office between 0 and 19 minutes past the hour, you must use the VW Golf. If you leave between 20 and 39 minutes past the hour, you must use the Ford Focus. If you leave between 40 and 59 minutes past the hour, you must use the Renault Megane.
Since you have to use the same car to get home as you did to get to the office, you may only leave the office in a given 20-minute window each hour. Even if you normally leave home at 7:30am and the office at 5pm, you'd have to wait till 5:20pm to use the car.
What if you go out with some friends after work? Oh dear, the rules change at 7pm. To leave the office between 7pm and 8pm, you must use the VW Golf; 8pm-9pm is the Ford Focus and 9pm-10pm is the Renault Megane. After 10pm, you may not use the car until 6am. If you break these rules, you pay a heavy fine to the leasing company.
Now, what if one of your cars breaks down? Are you allowed to use another car outside its permitted period? No: because you left home at a particular time, you're stuck with one car all day. You can't get a friend to bring one of the other two cars you have, which are working perfectly, unless you pay a massive fine for using it outside the proper time. And by the time you've got on the phone and paid the fine, the mechanic has come out and fixed your car anyway.
Want to go to the garage on the way home and pick up a pint of milk? Oh my, no. You should have leased a Vauxhall Vectra for that.
Think this all sounds ridiculous? Imagine buying a plane ticket: you're stuck with one company, who only leave at given times, and changing companies at short notice is usually prohibitively expensive.
Fortunately, our railways aren't all that bad - yet. But it does highlight the folly of comparing trains and planes. With airlines, the only major capacity constraints are the airports themselves: planes queue in an orderly fashion to take off and land, and other than that they work, frankly, pretty well. With railways, there are many more capacity bottlenecks: not just stations, but junctions, tunnels, and curves.
Moreover, because trains are so heavy, they take quite a while to stop: a train travelling at 100mph takes more than a mile to come to a complete stand. So trains have to be kept very far apart - so they don't crash into each other - and so you can't fit that many on a given line.
Competition works on telephone lines - and indeed, airlines - because there's enough capacity to go round. With the railways as they are today, there's barely enough capacity for one company, let alone the dozens we currently have.
It's certainly an interesting idea, though not without its flaws: even Zopa itself admits that getting people to lend enough money for long enough that people can take out mortgages is not going to happen any time soon, so the bank as we know it is here to stay, even if it is in for a bit of healthy competition.
This got me thinking about competition on Britain's railways. Ostensibly, the Conservative Party, in privatising the railways in the mid-1990s, thought that the railway services could be made better by allowing competition between more than one private operator, instead of having the government run it all itself.
This idea had revolutionised many other industries, for better or for worse, in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher. Arguably the biggest success has been in telecommunications: privatising British Telecom in 1984 led ultimately to cheaper prices - not only for traditional telephone services, but also for the internet.
Why did privatisation work well in telecommunications? Because there's a level playing field: every company can provide the same level of service using the same basic infrastructure; it's the same wires to your house regardless of who's providing you with internet. This led to genuine competition between companies, driving prices down, which is good for the consumer.
Or is it? Game theory tells us that if each individual tries to choose what's best for themselves, we may all end up worse off. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go read about the prisoner's dilemma.) If we're all paying less for our internet, this means there must be less money around to actively improve the network, so there's less investment in the infrastructure.
So while we're all paying less money, we're also paying the price of not having as fast a connection.
In fact, this is so much the case that a couple of months ago it was suggested that people should be taxed £6 a year to fund the improvements that we so badly need.
Imagine a counterfactual for a moment: suppose that BT had not been privatised. We might suppose that bills for internet access would be higher - maybe even £6 higher. But since there would have been no drop in prices, there would have been no drop in investment, so our network would have been able to cope.
In other words, if BT hadn't been privatised, it's quite possible that we'd all be paying £6 a year anyway in higher bills, and none of us would be complaining - at least, we wouldn't be complaining as much as some who say "£6 in tax per year? Outrageous!", etc.
So, is the same thing happening on the railways? I think we must separate the discussion into freight and passenger traffic, since the two are very different.
Railfreight is, in many ways, quite similar to telecommunications. There are several railfreight companies - DB Schenker, Freightliner, Direct Rail Services, FirstGBRf and Advenza - most of whom will be happy to take your goods from point A to point B, at a reasonable price.
The companies can then consult with the regulators and find suitable times to run the trains. Since allocation of the train times is, in theory, on a first-come, first-served basis, it doesn't matter which of the operators take your goods; they'll all get it there in the same time.
In other words, there's a level playing field. Admittedly, you have to book the transit of your goods a little in advance, but you would also have to book lorry drivers in advance.
There are two questions here, then: is it driving prices down, and is the quality of service getting worse? Unfortunately I don't know enough about railfreight to answer those questions directly. However, the percentage of goods moved by rail increased from 8.5% in 1995 (at the time of privatisation) to 11.5% in 2005.
A increase of a third in freight moved by rail doesn't happen for no good reason, and it is, at least in part, down to the free-market competition of privatisation. But it's also down to the investment that happened because of privatisation: because of the upgrades on the West Coast Main Line, there is far more capacity for freight trains than ever before.
So why not adopt the same model for passenger trains? Why not let companies run whatever trains they want, based solely on market forces? The most important reason is that there isn't enough capacity.
Take London to Manchester as a random example: assuming that we want to keep all the other local services, it's pretty much only possible to run three trains an hour between London and Manchester. While it might theoretically be possible to have more than one company operating such services, it would be a logistical nightmare trying to ensure it all worked.
Imagine the following: you need a car to commute to work. Instead of buying one car, you lease three cars at the same price as buying one. The catch is this: if you leave home or office between 0 and 19 minutes past the hour, you must use the VW Golf. If you leave between 20 and 39 minutes past the hour, you must use the Ford Focus. If you leave between 40 and 59 minutes past the hour, you must use the Renault Megane.
Since you have to use the same car to get home as you did to get to the office, you may only leave the office in a given 20-minute window each hour. Even if you normally leave home at 7:30am and the office at 5pm, you'd have to wait till 5:20pm to use the car.
What if you go out with some friends after work? Oh dear, the rules change at 7pm. To leave the office between 7pm and 8pm, you must use the VW Golf; 8pm-9pm is the Ford Focus and 9pm-10pm is the Renault Megane. After 10pm, you may not use the car until 6am. If you break these rules, you pay a heavy fine to the leasing company.
Now, what if one of your cars breaks down? Are you allowed to use another car outside its permitted period? No: because you left home at a particular time, you're stuck with one car all day. You can't get a friend to bring one of the other two cars you have, which are working perfectly, unless you pay a massive fine for using it outside the proper time. And by the time you've got on the phone and paid the fine, the mechanic has come out and fixed your car anyway.
Want to go to the garage on the way home and pick up a pint of milk? Oh my, no. You should have leased a Vauxhall Vectra for that.
Think this all sounds ridiculous? Imagine buying a plane ticket: you're stuck with one company, who only leave at given times, and changing companies at short notice is usually prohibitively expensive.
Fortunately, our railways aren't all that bad - yet. But it does highlight the folly of comparing trains and planes. With airlines, the only major capacity constraints are the airports themselves: planes queue in an orderly fashion to take off and land, and other than that they work, frankly, pretty well. With railways, there are many more capacity bottlenecks: not just stations, but junctions, tunnels, and curves.
Moreover, because trains are so heavy, they take quite a while to stop: a train travelling at 100mph takes more than a mile to come to a complete stand. So trains have to be kept very far apart - so they don't crash into each other - and so you can't fit that many on a given line.
Competition works on telephone lines - and indeed, airlines - because there's enough capacity to go round. With the railways as they are today, there's barely enough capacity for one company, let alone the dozens we currently have.
Monday, 10 August 2009
In Retrospect: The All-Line Rover Awards
So, having had some time to look back over my travels, there are some things I'd like to praise, and others I'd like to decry. Mainly, however, for those of you not wishing to read the entire blog, this is intended as a summary of everything that I did. First, here's a brief summary of the routes I covered each day:
Day 1: London - Liverpool - Norwich - London
Day 2: London - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Aberdeen - Glasgow
Day 3: Glasgow - (sleeper train) - London - Bristol - Weymouth - London
Day 4: London - Penzance - Exeter - Exmouth
Day 5: Exmouth - Exeter - Salisbury - Cardiff - Crewe - London
Day 6: London - Wrexham - Holyhead - Llandudno Jct - Blaenau Ffestiniog - Porthmadog - Fairbourne
Day 7: Rest day in Fairbourne
Day 8: Fairbourne - Machynlleth - Shrewsbury - Swansea - London
Day 9: London - Gatwick Airport - London - Leicester - Stansted Airport - London
Day 10: London - York (National Railway Museum) - Sheffield - London
Day 11: London - Manchester - Leeds - Carlisle - Glasgow
Day 12: Glasgow - Lancaster - Barrow-in-Furness - Carlisle - Glasgow
Day 13: Rest day in Glasgow
Day 14: Glasgow - Fort William - Glasgow
Over the course of 14 days, I spent 4 days, 12 hours and 1 minute on trains. That's over a third of my life on trains, for two weeks. Imagine this: instead of working 9-5 everyday, travel on trains 9-5 every day for two weeks. Many people would regard that as a form of torture: I really enjoyed it.
In that time, I covered no fewer than 5622.75 miles. Given that Land's End to John O'Groats is 840 miles, I really did go up and down the length of the country several times over. The farthest north I got was Aberdeen, the farthest east was Norwich, and the farthest south and west was Penzance.
Had I paid every time for walk-up tickets, I would have paid £1,113.20. I actually paid just £429 for the ticket, plus £38 for the sleeper berth - considerably less than half. The walk-up prices would have been considerably higher if I'd made more early starts; only once did I end up on a peak-time ticket out of London. Nevertheless, the ticket really does represent incredible value, at just 7.6p per mile.
As a final statistic, lest anyone think that British trains are slow, for the whole time I was on trains I averaged 52.1mph - nothing to be sniffed at. As a more ridiculous figure, for the duration of the validity of the ticket, I averaged 16.7mph, even when I wasn't moving!
THE ALL-LINE ROVER AWARDS
First, some more frivolous awards:
Funniest Announcement: Heard at Victoria station on Day 9: "The next train to depart from platform 11 will be the 11:11 Southern service to London Bridge..." - the proliferation of "eleven" made me laugh, anyway.
Worst Announcement: The announcements on the East Midlands Trains service from Sheffield to London on Day 10 were quite overbearing: telling anyone with an advance-purchase ticket for the wrong train that "your ticket is invalid, and you will need to purchase a completely new ticket" was technically correct, but far too threatening. It's little things like that which mean people turn away from using trains.
Best Noise: The acceleration of the Class 465s, one of the main classes of electric train used on suburban routes south of London: the electric whine as it moves up through the gears is very satisfying.
Busiest Train: If we open this to the Underground, then nothing can ever beat the Northern Line train I took from London Bridge to Bank on the morning of Day 2: it was crammed, Japanese-style. If we don't allow that, and we disregard the many peak-time services between London and New Beckenham that I was on, then the busiest was probably the little two-car train from Glasgow to Fort William: it was the only train outside London on which people were forced to stand.
Emptiest Train: This one's easy: the Stansted Express on Day 9 was incredibly empty. So too was the London-Nottingham HST I was on earlier that day; both had eight carriages when three carriages would still have given us two seats each.
Best Station Café: The Camden Food Co. A hands-down winner on quality, selection, ambience, and price. Simply superb; find them at seven London terminals plus Birmingham New Street.
Best Staff Member: The attendant on the Caledonian Sleeper was very nice and made sure that my first experience of a sleeper train was as relaxing as possible.
Most Disorienting Feeling: Waking up, getting dressed, getting off the train, and walking onto Euston station concourse at 7:40am, in the morning sunshine, before the commuter rush had really started. Sleeper trains are weird. (See Night 2.)
Most Enjoyable Day: Without a doubt this was Day 6, the longest day in terms of time (though not distance). The circuit of North Wales was exhilarating for two reasons: one, the scenery was superb, and two, it had the potential to go disastrously wrong (there were some very tight connections!) but ended up all being fine.
Now, the big awards:
Best Overall Experience: All things considered, the ride on the Settle and Carlisle (on Day 11) was probably the best train journey I've ever made. Great scenery, comfortable seats, excellent visibility, the train went at just the right speed for photography, and the staff were friendly. If there had been a trolley service it would have been perfect.
Worst Overall Experience: Without doubt the Stansted Express (on Day 9) was the worst train I've ever been on. The ride was appalling - I could barely keep my fingers on the right keys on my laptop. The seats were uncomfortable, the tables were too high, the legroom was too generous, and the staff were non-existent. As for the service, it was empty, probably because it's too slow.
Best Station:
1st: London St Pancras - A sight to behold: probably the best station in the world, with a great range of shops, fantastic places to eat (especially the Camden Food Co!), and an eye-opening range of destinations, from Sheffield to Brussels. (See Day 9.)
2nd: Manchester Piccadilly - A 92% satisfaction rating places it first in the country; it's easy to see why, it's a great station, with plenty of good shops and places to eat; it has enough space to move around, but so much that you feel lost. (See Day 11.)
3rd: Salisbury - A great little station, with a great café, and ramps to the subway instead of steps. (See Day 5.)
Commendations also go to London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads, and Leeds.
Worst Station:
Aberdeen - A grotty, empty station with nowhere to get any decent food; a real shame, since no doubt the station used to be much more important. (See Day 2.)
I also didn't much like Carlisle station: however, its crime is more one of mediocrity and blandness.
Best Train Operating Company:
Joint 1st: Wrexham and Shropshire and Grand Central - Both the open access operators I used were in a class of their own: the staff were friendly and helpful, even on the platforms; the food was hot and fresh, and the trains were comfortable and spacious. (See Day 6 for Wrexham and Shropshire, and Day 10 for Grand Central.)
2nd: South West Trains - Excellent by their understatement: the staff were efficient, there when you needed them but never in the way; the trolley service was good, and the trains were comfortable and punctual. (See Day 3 and Day 5.)
3rd: Northern Rail - I was only on two of their trains, but both were very comfortable, the staff were attentive, though the lack of catering was disappointing. (See Day 11 and Day 12.)
Commendations go to First ScotRail for the Caledonian Sleeper service (though the rest of their services aren't to the same standard), and to Chiltern Railways for an efficient service (with which I was so familiar that I didn't bother to sample this time).
Worst Train Operating Company:
Worst: CrossCountry - Admittedly I was only on two trains, and a lot of their failings are not down to them but the trains they inherited. Nonetheless, the two journeys I made on CrossCountry were among the most uncomfortable journeys I've ever made, the trains are too short, the timetable is convenient for operation but not for the passengers (sorry, "customers"), the staff were conspicuous by their absence, and the catering was pretty poor. (See Day 9 and Day 10.)
2nd Worst: Virgin Trains - If it weren't for the speed of their trains, Virgin Trains would easily be the worst train company I've been on. The trains themselves are quite uncomfortable; the visibility is terrible in all cases; the shop insists on selling magazines instead of decent hot food; in most cases the staff were lazy, and occasionally even rude; and the punctuality is very hit-and-miss. (See days 1, 5, 11 and 12.)
Best Rolling Stock:
1st: Mark 3 Stock - Sometimes the oldest is also the best: these thirty-year old carriages, used in every High-Speed Train, have stood the test of time (until, that is, they've been ruined by refurbishment). They are ubiquitous: see days 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10.
2nd: Sprinters (all classes) - The Sprinters are the workhorse of the regional services, and with just one or two exceptions provide a comfortable way to see the countryside, even if their top speed isn't great. Also ubiquitous: see days 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12 and 14.
Joint 3rd: Mark 4 Stock and Class 222 'Meridian' - The Mark 4 stock dates from 1989, while the Meridians date from 2004; both, however, are refreshingly modern trains which are comfortable and have good visibility. (See Day 2 for the Mark 4 stock, and Day 10 for the Meridians.)
The Desiros, both the diesel ones used by TransPennine Express and the electric ones used by South West Trains, also deserve a commendation.
Worst Rolling Stock:
Joint worst: Class 170 'Turbostar' and Class 175 'Coradia' - Both these recent classes are poor imitations of the Sprinters, and they both have terrible seats, not enough legroom, not enough luggage space, and poor visibility. (See Day 9 for the Turbostar and Day 5 for the Coradia.)
Joint 2nd worst: Class 220 'Voyager' and Class 221 'Super Voyager' - Much, much too short for InterCity journeys, with terrible seats, many with very poor visibility. (See Day 10 for the Voyager and Days 11 and 12 for the Super Voyager.)
If I were to give an award for worst visibility, it would have to go to the Class 390 Pendolinos; they avoid an award for Worst Rolling Stock only by virtue of their superb speed.
Last, but not least, the award for Best Scenery:
3rd: Exeter-Penzance - Brunel's masterpiece: the line runs along the coast and over the mountains of Devon, over the Tamar on the superb Royal Albert Bridge, and snakes its way along the spine of Cornwall to the sea. (See Day 4.)
2nd: North Wales - The lines in North Wales I traversed on Day 6, namely Holyhead-Llandudno Jct-Blaenau Ffestiniog-Porthmadog-Fairbourne are superb, and when put together they come very close to taking first prize.
1st: Glasgow-Fort William - The West Highland Line isn't just the best line in the UK, it's the best railway line in the world. Stunning views from a breathtakingly-engineered line. (See Day 14.)
FINAL REFLECTIONS:
First, let's get the disappointments out of the way. I was disappointed not to have seen more of Scotland - I should have gone north two days earlier than I did, and not worried so much about the weather forecast. Not seeing the Perth-Inverness line was the biggest disappointment; Mallaig and Wick are distant ends of long branch lines, while the line to Kyle of Lochalsh I've already seen (five years ago).
The original plan I had was thrown out the window before I even started: I originally planned to go to Scotland first, but I decided pretty quickly that the weather wasn't up to much. The original Day 10 became Day 1, with one or two changes. The Day 2 trip to Aberdeen that I finished with the sleeper train was in fact planned as Day 1, without the sleeper train, to get me to Scotland.
The exploration of the South West in Days 3, 4 and 5 was pretty different than what I'd planned; I originally intend to head to Penzance on a South West Trains service, and come back by the Night Riviera sleeper train. I'm very glad I changed my mind on that one - to miss the fantastic scenery while in a sleeper train would have been sacrilegious.
The only days that were pretty much as planned were Days 6 and 8 in Wales, because the arrangement to stay the weekend in Fairbourne was by far the hardest thing to change. That's not to say it wasn't a bit tight; ten minutes delay at Holyhead and I would have been stuffed, forced to replan things on the spot.
Days 9 and 10 (Tuesday and Wednesday) were done almost completely ad hoc, since I didn't get the chance to book anywhere for Tuesday night, and the forecast for Wednesday was abysmal. The services I went on were interesting, as was the trip to the National Railway Museum, but there wasn't much in the way of scenery. Fortunately, days 11, 12 and 14 made up for it: the Settle and Carlisle, the Cumbrian Coast Line and the West Highland Line are all really good lines.
But doing things ad hoc is part of the point of this ticket. The All-Line Rover is the ultimate flexible ticket, and as much as you can plan things there'll always be things that go wrong. Fortunately, while there were a few incidents along the way, none of them completely derailed my plans.
While there were a few points at which I was less than ecstatic, on the whole I loved the experience. The experiences of soaring through Berwick, curling slowly through Devon and Cornwall, climbing slowly over the roof of Wales, and crossing the wilderness of Rannoch Moor are just some of the memories that will last a lifetime.
So too will some of the less tangible memories: such as being crammed into the busiest tube train I've ever seen, the emptiness on the Stansted Express, and the coming-and-going of some of the regional services like Liverpool-Norwich.
Getting off the last train in Glasgow Queen Street, having come 5622 miles, was quite a poignant moment: I'd certainly had the value of the ticket, and I'd enjoyed it all thoroughly, but there was more I felt I could have done, especially in Scotland. But, frankly, I was pretty tired, and I was glad to get home and get a decent rest.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the two weeks on trains: the experiences will stay with me for a long time, and it will undoubtedly shape my future outlook on the railway network.
Will I do it again, someday? You bet.
Day 1: London - Liverpool - Norwich - London
Day 2: London - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Aberdeen - Glasgow
Day 3: Glasgow - (sleeper train) - London - Bristol - Weymouth - London
Day 4: London - Penzance - Exeter - Exmouth
Day 5: Exmouth - Exeter - Salisbury - Cardiff - Crewe - London
Day 6: London - Wrexham - Holyhead - Llandudno Jct - Blaenau Ffestiniog - Porthmadog - Fairbourne
Day 7: Rest day in Fairbourne
Day 8: Fairbourne - Machynlleth - Shrewsbury - Swansea - London
Day 9: London - Gatwick Airport - London - Leicester - Stansted Airport - London
Day 10: London - York (National Railway Museum) - Sheffield - London
Day 11: London - Manchester - Leeds - Carlisle - Glasgow
Day 12: Glasgow - Lancaster - Barrow-in-Furness - Carlisle - Glasgow
Day 13: Rest day in Glasgow
Day 14: Glasgow - Fort William - Glasgow
Over the course of 14 days, I spent 4 days, 12 hours and 1 minute on trains. That's over a third of my life on trains, for two weeks. Imagine this: instead of working 9-5 everyday, travel on trains 9-5 every day for two weeks. Many people would regard that as a form of torture: I really enjoyed it.
In that time, I covered no fewer than 5622.75 miles. Given that Land's End to John O'Groats is 840 miles, I really did go up and down the length of the country several times over. The farthest north I got was Aberdeen, the farthest east was Norwich, and the farthest south and west was Penzance.
Had I paid every time for walk-up tickets, I would have paid £1,113.20. I actually paid just £429 for the ticket, plus £38 for the sleeper berth - considerably less than half. The walk-up prices would have been considerably higher if I'd made more early starts; only once did I end up on a peak-time ticket out of London. Nevertheless, the ticket really does represent incredible value, at just 7.6p per mile.
As a final statistic, lest anyone think that British trains are slow, for the whole time I was on trains I averaged 52.1mph - nothing to be sniffed at. As a more ridiculous figure, for the duration of the validity of the ticket, I averaged 16.7mph, even when I wasn't moving!
THE ALL-LINE ROVER AWARDS
First, some more frivolous awards:
Funniest Announcement: Heard at Victoria station on Day 9: "The next train to depart from platform 11 will be the 11:11 Southern service to London Bridge..." - the proliferation of "eleven" made me laugh, anyway.
Worst Announcement: The announcements on the East Midlands Trains service from Sheffield to London on Day 10 were quite overbearing: telling anyone with an advance-purchase ticket for the wrong train that "your ticket is invalid, and you will need to purchase a completely new ticket" was technically correct, but far too threatening. It's little things like that which mean people turn away from using trains.
Best Noise: The acceleration of the Class 465s, one of the main classes of electric train used on suburban routes south of London: the electric whine as it moves up through the gears is very satisfying.
Busiest Train: If we open this to the Underground, then nothing can ever beat the Northern Line train I took from London Bridge to Bank on the morning of Day 2: it was crammed, Japanese-style. If we don't allow that, and we disregard the many peak-time services between London and New Beckenham that I was on, then the busiest was probably the little two-car train from Glasgow to Fort William: it was the only train outside London on which people were forced to stand.
Emptiest Train: This one's easy: the Stansted Express on Day 9 was incredibly empty. So too was the London-Nottingham HST I was on earlier that day; both had eight carriages when three carriages would still have given us two seats each.
Best Station Café: The Camden Food Co. A hands-down winner on quality, selection, ambience, and price. Simply superb; find them at seven London terminals plus Birmingham New Street.
Best Staff Member: The attendant on the Caledonian Sleeper was very nice and made sure that my first experience of a sleeper train was as relaxing as possible.
Most Disorienting Feeling: Waking up, getting dressed, getting off the train, and walking onto Euston station concourse at 7:40am, in the morning sunshine, before the commuter rush had really started. Sleeper trains are weird. (See Night 2.)
Most Enjoyable Day: Without a doubt this was Day 6, the longest day in terms of time (though not distance). The circuit of North Wales was exhilarating for two reasons: one, the scenery was superb, and two, it had the potential to go disastrously wrong (there were some very tight connections!) but ended up all being fine.
Now, the big awards:
Best Overall Experience: All things considered, the ride on the Settle and Carlisle (on Day 11) was probably the best train journey I've ever made. Great scenery, comfortable seats, excellent visibility, the train went at just the right speed for photography, and the staff were friendly. If there had been a trolley service it would have been perfect.
Worst Overall Experience: Without doubt the Stansted Express (on Day 9) was the worst train I've ever been on. The ride was appalling - I could barely keep my fingers on the right keys on my laptop. The seats were uncomfortable, the tables were too high, the legroom was too generous, and the staff were non-existent. As for the service, it was empty, probably because it's too slow.
Best Station:
1st: London St Pancras - A sight to behold: probably the best station in the world, with a great range of shops, fantastic places to eat (especially the Camden Food Co!), and an eye-opening range of destinations, from Sheffield to Brussels. (See Day 9.)
2nd: Manchester Piccadilly - A 92% satisfaction rating places it first in the country; it's easy to see why, it's a great station, with plenty of good shops and places to eat; it has enough space to move around, but so much that you feel lost. (See Day 11.)
3rd: Salisbury - A great little station, with a great café, and ramps to the subway instead of steps. (See Day 5.)
Commendations also go to London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads, and Leeds.
Worst Station:
Aberdeen - A grotty, empty station with nowhere to get any decent food; a real shame, since no doubt the station used to be much more important. (See Day 2.)
I also didn't much like Carlisle station: however, its crime is more one of mediocrity and blandness.
Best Train Operating Company:
Joint 1st: Wrexham and Shropshire and Grand Central - Both the open access operators I used were in a class of their own: the staff were friendly and helpful, even on the platforms; the food was hot and fresh, and the trains were comfortable and spacious. (See Day 6 for Wrexham and Shropshire, and Day 10 for Grand Central.)
2nd: South West Trains - Excellent by their understatement: the staff were efficient, there when you needed them but never in the way; the trolley service was good, and the trains were comfortable and punctual. (See Day 3 and Day 5.)
3rd: Northern Rail - I was only on two of their trains, but both were very comfortable, the staff were attentive, though the lack of catering was disappointing. (See Day 11 and Day 12.)
Commendations go to First ScotRail for the Caledonian Sleeper service (though the rest of their services aren't to the same standard), and to Chiltern Railways for an efficient service (with which I was so familiar that I didn't bother to sample this time).
Worst Train Operating Company:
Worst: CrossCountry - Admittedly I was only on two trains, and a lot of their failings are not down to them but the trains they inherited. Nonetheless, the two journeys I made on CrossCountry were among the most uncomfortable journeys I've ever made, the trains are too short, the timetable is convenient for operation but not for the passengers (sorry, "customers"), the staff were conspicuous by their absence, and the catering was pretty poor. (See Day 9 and Day 10.)
2nd Worst: Virgin Trains - If it weren't for the speed of their trains, Virgin Trains would easily be the worst train company I've been on. The trains themselves are quite uncomfortable; the visibility is terrible in all cases; the shop insists on selling magazines instead of decent hot food; in most cases the staff were lazy, and occasionally even rude; and the punctuality is very hit-and-miss. (See days 1, 5, 11 and 12.)
Best Rolling Stock:
1st: Mark 3 Stock - Sometimes the oldest is also the best: these thirty-year old carriages, used in every High-Speed Train, have stood the test of time (until, that is, they've been ruined by refurbishment). They are ubiquitous: see days 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10.
2nd: Sprinters (all classes) - The Sprinters are the workhorse of the regional services, and with just one or two exceptions provide a comfortable way to see the countryside, even if their top speed isn't great. Also ubiquitous: see days 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12 and 14.
Joint 3rd: Mark 4 Stock and Class 222 'Meridian' - The Mark 4 stock dates from 1989, while the Meridians date from 2004; both, however, are refreshingly modern trains which are comfortable and have good visibility. (See Day 2 for the Mark 4 stock, and Day 10 for the Meridians.)
The Desiros, both the diesel ones used by TransPennine Express and the electric ones used by South West Trains, also deserve a commendation.
Worst Rolling Stock:
Joint worst: Class 170 'Turbostar' and Class 175 'Coradia' - Both these recent classes are poor imitations of the Sprinters, and they both have terrible seats, not enough legroom, not enough luggage space, and poor visibility. (See Day 9 for the Turbostar and Day 5 for the Coradia.)
Joint 2nd worst: Class 220 'Voyager' and Class 221 'Super Voyager' - Much, much too short for InterCity journeys, with terrible seats, many with very poor visibility. (See Day 10 for the Voyager and Days 11 and 12 for the Super Voyager.)
If I were to give an award for worst visibility, it would have to go to the Class 390 Pendolinos; they avoid an award for Worst Rolling Stock only by virtue of their superb speed.
Last, but not least, the award for Best Scenery:
3rd: Exeter-Penzance - Brunel's masterpiece: the line runs along the coast and over the mountains of Devon, over the Tamar on the superb Royal Albert Bridge, and snakes its way along the spine of Cornwall to the sea. (See Day 4.)
2nd: North Wales - The lines in North Wales I traversed on Day 6, namely Holyhead-Llandudno Jct-Blaenau Ffestiniog-Porthmadog-Fairbourne are superb, and when put together they come very close to taking first prize.
1st: Glasgow-Fort William - The West Highland Line isn't just the best line in the UK, it's the best railway line in the world. Stunning views from a breathtakingly-engineered line. (See Day 14.)
FINAL REFLECTIONS:
First, let's get the disappointments out of the way. I was disappointed not to have seen more of Scotland - I should have gone north two days earlier than I did, and not worried so much about the weather forecast. Not seeing the Perth-Inverness line was the biggest disappointment; Mallaig and Wick are distant ends of long branch lines, while the line to Kyle of Lochalsh I've already seen (five years ago).
The original plan I had was thrown out the window before I even started: I originally planned to go to Scotland first, but I decided pretty quickly that the weather wasn't up to much. The original Day 10 became Day 1, with one or two changes. The Day 2 trip to Aberdeen that I finished with the sleeper train was in fact planned as Day 1, without the sleeper train, to get me to Scotland.
The exploration of the South West in Days 3, 4 and 5 was pretty different than what I'd planned; I originally intend to head to Penzance on a South West Trains service, and come back by the Night Riviera sleeper train. I'm very glad I changed my mind on that one - to miss the fantastic scenery while in a sleeper train would have been sacrilegious.
The only days that were pretty much as planned were Days 6 and 8 in Wales, because the arrangement to stay the weekend in Fairbourne was by far the hardest thing to change. That's not to say it wasn't a bit tight; ten minutes delay at Holyhead and I would have been stuffed, forced to replan things on the spot.
Days 9 and 10 (Tuesday and Wednesday) were done almost completely ad hoc, since I didn't get the chance to book anywhere for Tuesday night, and the forecast for Wednesday was abysmal. The services I went on were interesting, as was the trip to the National Railway Museum, but there wasn't much in the way of scenery. Fortunately, days 11, 12 and 14 made up for it: the Settle and Carlisle, the Cumbrian Coast Line and the West Highland Line are all really good lines.
But doing things ad hoc is part of the point of this ticket. The All-Line Rover is the ultimate flexible ticket, and as much as you can plan things there'll always be things that go wrong. Fortunately, while there were a few incidents along the way, none of them completely derailed my plans.
While there were a few points at which I was less than ecstatic, on the whole I loved the experience. The experiences of soaring through Berwick, curling slowly through Devon and Cornwall, climbing slowly over the roof of Wales, and crossing the wilderness of Rannoch Moor are just some of the memories that will last a lifetime.
So too will some of the less tangible memories: such as being crammed into the busiest tube train I've ever seen, the emptiness on the Stansted Express, and the coming-and-going of some of the regional services like Liverpool-Norwich.
Getting off the last train in Glasgow Queen Street, having come 5622 miles, was quite a poignant moment: I'd certainly had the value of the ticket, and I'd enjoyed it all thoroughly, but there was more I felt I could have done, especially in Scotland. But, frankly, I was pretty tired, and I was glad to get home and get a decent rest.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the two weeks on trains: the experiences will stay with me for a long time, and it will undoubtedly shape my future outlook on the railway network.
Will I do it again, someday? You bet.
All-Line Rover, Day 14
At last we come to the story of the final day of my travels on the railways of Great Britain. My apologies once again for the length of time it's taken me to get round to writing this.
As I've already explained, I spent the weekend in Glasgow celebrating my cousin's 30th birthday. The party on Saturday night was fun, but being with family I left pretty early, mainly because my family were the only people I knew there. (I'm sure my parents would consider 11:30pm quite late, but that's life.)
On Sunday (2nd August), then, my mum went off with my aunt and uncle to see Pollok House near Glasgow, a National Trust property with some very nice gardens. My dad and I, however, had our sights on a much bigger prize: the West Highland Line.
Disappointingly, the Sunday timetable precludes the possibility of doing a day trip from Glasgow to Mallaig and back, since the first train doesn't leave Glasgow until 12:20pm. So we contented ourselves with the - admittedly superb - run to Fort William and back.
1220 Glasgow Queen St to Fort William, arr 1608
Distance: 122.75 miles; walk-up day return £15.65
(Headcode 1Y43, operated by First ScotRail using Sprinter 156467)
and
1731 Fort William to Glasgow Queen St, arr 2114
Distance: 122.75 miles; walk-up day return price listed above
(Headcode 1Y46, operated by First ScotRail using Sprinter 156456)
Scenery: 10/10 - What can I say? Not just the best railway-line scenery in the UK; I doubt it can be beaten anywhere in the world.
Punctuality: 7/10 and 8/10 respectively - A few minor delays due to the line being single-track, and also waiting for trains to join at Crianlarich, but otherwise very respectable for a single-track line.
Speed: 9/10 - Creditably fast for a line in the middle of nowhere (even if we didn't exceed 60mph).
Comfort: 8/10 - I expected to be much more tired after this journey, but the seats were comfortable, and the windows large enough to take many photographs.
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection in each direction; a good trolley service, even if it only passed up the train once; but the train was very busy and the staff were visibly flustered.
Being stuck in a Class 156 Sprinter for 3 hours, 45 minutes at a time was not something my dad and I were looking forward to. However, the seats were surprisingly comfortable, the legroom was good, and the visibility was better. I emerged from 7½ hours of sitting on trains feeling much less stiff than I had on many previous days, which was impressive.
The train from Glasgow was composed of three two-car units coupled together. We were to split into two portions at Crianlarich, half heading for Oban and half for Fort William. The sensible thing would have been to send four carriages to Fort William and two to Oban. But this is the British railway network: sense is a rarity. So, of course, four carriages went to Oban, leaving just two carriages to Fort William. On a sunny Sunday afternoon.
About three-quarters of the seats were reserved, and by the time we got there all the other window seats were taken. Fortunately, about ten minutes into the journey, someone pointed out that a number of the reservations hadn't been taken up, so we found two window seats that had been reserved but weren't being used.
The train was reasonably busy until Crianlarich, where a large party of about thirty foreign tourists boarded the train (having booked a large block of seats, fortunately!), meaning the train was full and standing from Crianlarich.
I walked briefly down to the Oban portion to use the toilet, and it was less than half-full before Crianlarich, with not that many getting on. So we had four cars going where two would have done, and two cars going where four would have made things much less unpleasant. Utter stupidity on the part of ScotRail.
Fortunately, the journey on the way back was rather quieter, and we got two more window seats on the opposite side of the line. Again, though, it was two cars from Fort William and four cars from Oban which joined at Crianlarich. (Unfortunately the platforms can't cope with anything longer than six cars, so the obvious solution of using eight-car trains with four going to each is not possible.)
Given the line was single-track, I didn't expect the punctuality to be perfect. On the way to Fort William, we were delayed by about five minutes at Ardlui waiting to pass the train in the other direction (and swap crews with them), though we made a little of this back up and arrived in Fort William just three minutes late.
On the way back, we were a few minutes late getting away from Fort William, but made it up easily and arrived in Crianlarich seven minutes early. However, the portion from Oban which was joining us was a little bit late, so we left three minutes late, but made most of it back and we arrived in Glasgow just one minute down.
But none of what I've said mattered. Not a jot. Because the West Highland Line, known in Scots Gaelic as "Rathad Iarainn nan Eilean" (literally "the Iron Road to the Isles"), is the greatest railway journey in the world.
It's not just me saying this: the readers of the travel magazine Wanderlust voted the West Highland Line as the best railway journey in the world; it even beat the iconic Trans-Siberian Railway.
The entire line is simply spectacular, and I'm going to run out of superlatives.
The line starts life as a suburban railway line along the north side of the Clyde; but at Helensburgh, we lurch to the right, leaving the commuter lines, and start climbing up the hill. We cling to the hillside, high above Gare Loch, with great views down to the water below. A brief cutting takes us from Gare Loch to Loch Long, which is much narrower, like a Norwegian fjord.
A short isthmus connecting Arrochar to Tarbert (with just the one station half-way between them) takes us from Loch Long to the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. Here is where the train starts to come into its own: the road along Loch Lomond traverses its western edge at the level of the water, but the railway line runs much higher up the hillside, giving you a spectacular view down to the loch.
At Ardlui, we leave Loch Lomond and start climbing up Glen Falloch to one of the great crossroads of the Highlands: Crianlarich. This tiny village of fewer than 200 people is one of the few mountain passes to the western Highlands. It is the crossroads of the A82, the great road north from Glasgow to Fort William and Inverness, and the A85, which runs east-west from Perth to Oban.
It is also a junction of railway lines, though not as major as it once was. Originally, there were two railway lines, one from Glasgow to Fort William, and the other from Stirling and Callander to Oban, much like the roads. The line to Callander was closed by a landslide in 1964, so Crianlarich is now a simple fork where trains from Glasgow choose to head to Oban or Fort William. (Or, in the case of our train, divide in two portions, one for each.)
Crianlarich marks, roughly speaking, the half-way point on our journey to Fort William. But while the scenery up to now has given us some great views of lochs, the views to come are even better.
Our next stop is Tyndrum - probably the smallest place in the world to boast two railway stations, owing to the necessity of having one at the bottom of the hill on the line to Oban, and one at the top of the hill on the line to Fort William - before we climb a valley up to Bridge of Orchy.
On the way up the valley, the economy of the railway builders works greatly in our favour. In order to save building a long viaduct over a small river, they turned the railway up the valley on one side, crossed the river a mile further up on a short viaduct, and brought the railway down the viaduct again. The whole effect is known as a "horseshoe curve", and it gives us some spectacular views of the valley and the surrounding mountains.
At Bridge of Orchy, we begin to climb on to one of the great wildernesses of Europe: Rannoch Moor. It was a gigantic feat of engineering to build a railway line over the vast, bleak, treeless bog of Rannoch Moor: the line is built on a bed of tree roots and brushwood which, essentially, floats on the peat. The line was completed in 1894, after seven years of construction.
Here we part company with the A82, which we have followed since Loch Lomond: its path is to the west, down Glen Coe to the coast at Ballachulish, before turning north for Fort William. The railway turns north-east, and takes a completely different route to Fort William, curving slowly round to the west and approaching Fort William from the north. The road passes to the west of Ben Nevis, along the coast; the railway line passes instead round the east and north of Britain's highest mountain.
The line of the road, apart from a steep climb out of Bridge of Orchy, is certainly the easier one: we are now climbing to a summit of 1350ft. The railway line is now all alone, apart from the odd farm track: there is no other means of transportation for miles around.
However, it can be explained once again by the builders' lack of money: while the route down Glen Coe would have been easier, it would have required a bridge over Loch Leven at Ballachulish. It was cheaper to plough through the unspoilt wilderness and climb to the roof of Rannoch Moor.
Once again, their thrift is our reward: the views over the unspoilt Rannoch Moor are second to none.
We climb steeply up the valley of Tulla, up to Rannoch station. Here we meet a road, but it comes not from the west, but from the east, from Pitlochry; the only way from Rannoch station to Fort William or Oban is by railway line, unless you want to drive for hours on end. From here, you can see down the long valley to the east that drains Loch Rannoch not into the Atlantic but the North Sea, with the pointy top of Schiehallion easily visible in the distance:
Ever so gradually, we snake our way up the hillsides to the 1350ft-high summit at Corrour, probably the remotest station in all of Britain. At least Rannoch had road access, even if it is 36 miles along a B-road to Pitlochry. Corrour has *none*. The only way in or out of Corrour is by train, or perhaps by Land Rover. There are literally no roads for at least ten miles.
Corrour is one of the greatest places to stay if you're hill-walking: there are at least seven Munros (hills over 3000ft) within easy reach, and there are basically no other ways to get at them. Britain's most remote hostel, on the shores of Loch Ossian, is one of a very small number of places to stay in the area.
Having crested the summit, we weave our way down slightly, before emerging high above the shores of Loch Treig. This beautiful loch was totally unknown before the railway line was built: we descend for five miles, gradually getting closer to the level of the water. This shot was taken from near the top:
After Tulloch station, we return to the road; but this time it is the A86 from Aviemore down to Fort William that we follow. We turn west, and head down Glen Spean, passing the stunning Monessie Gorge, before sweeping low round the north of Ben Nevis and, after a couple more stations, into Fort William.
It was a pity that the Sunday timetable did not permit us to get to Mallaig and back, since the section from Fort William to Mallaig is just as spectacular again, with the famous viaduct at Glenfinnan (featured in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). But, frankly, the section of railway over Rannoch Moor is so spectacular that any disappointment disappeared very quickly.
We spent some time looking around Fort William; by now, the high cloud had dissipated somewhat and the sun was beginning to shine all the brighter. After a little over an hour in Fort William, we boarded our return train back to Glasgow. The ride over Rannoch Moor was all the more spectacular for the sunshine.
Photography along the line was quite difficult: much of the line is surrounded by trees. Most of the return journey was spent with me looking forwards, trying to see the next opening in the trees, and when I did I would shout "clear!" to my dad, at which point he (looking backwards) would fire off as many photographs as he could before the trees closed in again.
This was particularly frustrating along the shores of Loch Lomond, where the views were superb but all too fleeting. Between us we took over 600 photographs on the day; unfortunately the majority have trees in just the wrong places. (I dread to think what it would have cost in developing if we had been using film - thankfully we were using digital!)
I can safely say that is, without doubt, the best railway line I've ever been on. And I look forward to travelling on it again.
The whole day was both the shortest in distance, and the cheapest (not counting the days on which I did nothing!), though since we averaged 33mph it was certainly not the shortest in time:
Total time on trains: 7 hours, 31 minutes.
Distance travelled: 245.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £15.65.
I'll write one more post, with the final tally of statistics, as well as making some awards, looking back at the whole two weeks, in the near future. Watch this space!
As I've already explained, I spent the weekend in Glasgow celebrating my cousin's 30th birthday. The party on Saturday night was fun, but being with family I left pretty early, mainly because my family were the only people I knew there. (I'm sure my parents would consider 11:30pm quite late, but that's life.)
On Sunday (2nd August), then, my mum went off with my aunt and uncle to see Pollok House near Glasgow, a National Trust property with some very nice gardens. My dad and I, however, had our sights on a much bigger prize: the West Highland Line.
Disappointingly, the Sunday timetable precludes the possibility of doing a day trip from Glasgow to Mallaig and back, since the first train doesn't leave Glasgow until 12:20pm. So we contented ourselves with the - admittedly superb - run to Fort William and back.
1220 Glasgow Queen St to Fort William, arr 1608
Distance: 122.75 miles; walk-up day return £15.65
(Headcode 1Y43, operated by First ScotRail using Sprinter 156467)
and
1731 Fort William to Glasgow Queen St, arr 2114
Distance: 122.75 miles; walk-up day return price listed above
(Headcode 1Y46, operated by First ScotRail using Sprinter 156456)
Scenery: 10/10 - What can I say? Not just the best railway-line scenery in the UK; I doubt it can be beaten anywhere in the world.
Punctuality: 7/10 and 8/10 respectively - A few minor delays due to the line being single-track, and also waiting for trains to join at Crianlarich, but otherwise very respectable for a single-track line.
Speed: 9/10 - Creditably fast for a line in the middle of nowhere (even if we didn't exceed 60mph).
Comfort: 8/10 - I expected to be much more tired after this journey, but the seats were comfortable, and the windows large enough to take many photographs.
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection in each direction; a good trolley service, even if it only passed up the train once; but the train was very busy and the staff were visibly flustered.
Being stuck in a Class 156 Sprinter for 3 hours, 45 minutes at a time was not something my dad and I were looking forward to. However, the seats were surprisingly comfortable, the legroom was good, and the visibility was better. I emerged from 7½ hours of sitting on trains feeling much less stiff than I had on many previous days, which was impressive.
The train from Glasgow was composed of three two-car units coupled together. We were to split into two portions at Crianlarich, half heading for Oban and half for Fort William. The sensible thing would have been to send four carriages to Fort William and two to Oban. But this is the British railway network: sense is a rarity. So, of course, four carriages went to Oban, leaving just two carriages to Fort William. On a sunny Sunday afternoon.
About three-quarters of the seats were reserved, and by the time we got there all the other window seats were taken. Fortunately, about ten minutes into the journey, someone pointed out that a number of the reservations hadn't been taken up, so we found two window seats that had been reserved but weren't being used.
The train was reasonably busy until Crianlarich, where a large party of about thirty foreign tourists boarded the train (having booked a large block of seats, fortunately!), meaning the train was full and standing from Crianlarich.
I walked briefly down to the Oban portion to use the toilet, and it was less than half-full before Crianlarich, with not that many getting on. So we had four cars going where two would have done, and two cars going where four would have made things much less unpleasant. Utter stupidity on the part of ScotRail.
Fortunately, the journey on the way back was rather quieter, and we got two more window seats on the opposite side of the line. Again, though, it was two cars from Fort William and four cars from Oban which joined at Crianlarich. (Unfortunately the platforms can't cope with anything longer than six cars, so the obvious solution of using eight-car trains with four going to each is not possible.)
Given the line was single-track, I didn't expect the punctuality to be perfect. On the way to Fort William, we were delayed by about five minutes at Ardlui waiting to pass the train in the other direction (and swap crews with them), though we made a little of this back up and arrived in Fort William just three minutes late.
On the way back, we were a few minutes late getting away from Fort William, but made it up easily and arrived in Crianlarich seven minutes early. However, the portion from Oban which was joining us was a little bit late, so we left three minutes late, but made most of it back and we arrived in Glasgow just one minute down.
But none of what I've said mattered. Not a jot. Because the West Highland Line, known in Scots Gaelic as "Rathad Iarainn nan Eilean" (literally "the Iron Road to the Isles"), is the greatest railway journey in the world.
It's not just me saying this: the readers of the travel magazine Wanderlust voted the West Highland Line as the best railway journey in the world; it even beat the iconic Trans-Siberian Railway.
The entire line is simply spectacular, and I'm going to run out of superlatives.
The line starts life as a suburban railway line along the north side of the Clyde; but at Helensburgh, we lurch to the right, leaving the commuter lines, and start climbing up the hill. We cling to the hillside, high above Gare Loch, with great views down to the water below. A brief cutting takes us from Gare Loch to Loch Long, which is much narrower, like a Norwegian fjord.
A short isthmus connecting Arrochar to Tarbert (with just the one station half-way between them) takes us from Loch Long to the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. Here is where the train starts to come into its own: the road along Loch Lomond traverses its western edge at the level of the water, but the railway line runs much higher up the hillside, giving you a spectacular view down to the loch.
At Ardlui, we leave Loch Lomond and start climbing up Glen Falloch to one of the great crossroads of the Highlands: Crianlarich. This tiny village of fewer than 200 people is one of the few mountain passes to the western Highlands. It is the crossroads of the A82, the great road north from Glasgow to Fort William and Inverness, and the A85, which runs east-west from Perth to Oban.
It is also a junction of railway lines, though not as major as it once was. Originally, there were two railway lines, one from Glasgow to Fort William, and the other from Stirling and Callander to Oban, much like the roads. The line to Callander was closed by a landslide in 1964, so Crianlarich is now a simple fork where trains from Glasgow choose to head to Oban or Fort William. (Or, in the case of our train, divide in two portions, one for each.)
Crianlarich marks, roughly speaking, the half-way point on our journey to Fort William. But while the scenery up to now has given us some great views of lochs, the views to come are even better.
Our next stop is Tyndrum - probably the smallest place in the world to boast two railway stations, owing to the necessity of having one at the bottom of the hill on the line to Oban, and one at the top of the hill on the line to Fort William - before we climb a valley up to Bridge of Orchy.
On the way up the valley, the economy of the railway builders works greatly in our favour. In order to save building a long viaduct over a small river, they turned the railway up the valley on one side, crossed the river a mile further up on a short viaduct, and brought the railway down the viaduct again. The whole effect is known as a "horseshoe curve", and it gives us some spectacular views of the valley and the surrounding mountains.
At Bridge of Orchy, we begin to climb on to one of the great wildernesses of Europe: Rannoch Moor. It was a gigantic feat of engineering to build a railway line over the vast, bleak, treeless bog of Rannoch Moor: the line is built on a bed of tree roots and brushwood which, essentially, floats on the peat. The line was completed in 1894, after seven years of construction.
Here we part company with the A82, which we have followed since Loch Lomond: its path is to the west, down Glen Coe to the coast at Ballachulish, before turning north for Fort William. The railway turns north-east, and takes a completely different route to Fort William, curving slowly round to the west and approaching Fort William from the north. The road passes to the west of Ben Nevis, along the coast; the railway line passes instead round the east and north of Britain's highest mountain.
The line of the road, apart from a steep climb out of Bridge of Orchy, is certainly the easier one: we are now climbing to a summit of 1350ft. The railway line is now all alone, apart from the odd farm track: there is no other means of transportation for miles around.
However, it can be explained once again by the builders' lack of money: while the route down Glen Coe would have been easier, it would have required a bridge over Loch Leven at Ballachulish. It was cheaper to plough through the unspoilt wilderness and climb to the roof of Rannoch Moor.
Once again, their thrift is our reward: the views over the unspoilt Rannoch Moor are second to none.
We climb steeply up the valley of Tulla, up to Rannoch station. Here we meet a road, but it comes not from the west, but from the east, from Pitlochry; the only way from Rannoch station to Fort William or Oban is by railway line, unless you want to drive for hours on end. From here, you can see down the long valley to the east that drains Loch Rannoch not into the Atlantic but the North Sea, with the pointy top of Schiehallion easily visible in the distance:
Ever so gradually, we snake our way up the hillsides to the 1350ft-high summit at Corrour, probably the remotest station in all of Britain. At least Rannoch had road access, even if it is 36 miles along a B-road to Pitlochry. Corrour has *none*. The only way in or out of Corrour is by train, or perhaps by Land Rover. There are literally no roads for at least ten miles.
Corrour is one of the greatest places to stay if you're hill-walking: there are at least seven Munros (hills over 3000ft) within easy reach, and there are basically no other ways to get at them. Britain's most remote hostel, on the shores of Loch Ossian, is one of a very small number of places to stay in the area.
Having crested the summit, we weave our way down slightly, before emerging high above the shores of Loch Treig. This beautiful loch was totally unknown before the railway line was built: we descend for five miles, gradually getting closer to the level of the water. This shot was taken from near the top:
After Tulloch station, we return to the road; but this time it is the A86 from Aviemore down to Fort William that we follow. We turn west, and head down Glen Spean, passing the stunning Monessie Gorge, before sweeping low round the north of Ben Nevis and, after a couple more stations, into Fort William.
It was a pity that the Sunday timetable did not permit us to get to Mallaig and back, since the section from Fort William to Mallaig is just as spectacular again, with the famous viaduct at Glenfinnan (featured in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). But, frankly, the section of railway over Rannoch Moor is so spectacular that any disappointment disappeared very quickly.
We spent some time looking around Fort William; by now, the high cloud had dissipated somewhat and the sun was beginning to shine all the brighter. After a little over an hour in Fort William, we boarded our return train back to Glasgow. The ride over Rannoch Moor was all the more spectacular for the sunshine.
Photography along the line was quite difficult: much of the line is surrounded by trees. Most of the return journey was spent with me looking forwards, trying to see the next opening in the trees, and when I did I would shout "clear!" to my dad, at which point he (looking backwards) would fire off as many photographs as he could before the trees closed in again.
This was particularly frustrating along the shores of Loch Lomond, where the views were superb but all too fleeting. Between us we took over 600 photographs on the day; unfortunately the majority have trees in just the wrong places. (I dread to think what it would have cost in developing if we had been using film - thankfully we were using digital!)
I can safely say that is, without doubt, the best railway line I've ever been on. And I look forward to travelling on it again.
The whole day was both the shortest in distance, and the cheapest (not counting the days on which I did nothing!), though since we averaged 33mph it was certainly not the shortest in time:
Total time on trains: 7 hours, 31 minutes.
Distance travelled: 245.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £15.65.
I'll write one more post, with the final tally of statistics, as well as making some awards, looking back at the whole two weeks, in the near future. Watch this space!
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
All-Line Rover, Days 12 and 13
Firstly, my apologies to everyone reading for taking so long to get round to writing. I spent the weekend in Glasgow celebrating my cousin's 30th birthday, and between that and having a comfortable bed to sleep in I didn't get much written over the weekend. Now that I'm home I no longer have such excuses, so here we go.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Day 12, otherwise known as last Friday. I had two plans: either to go to Mallaig and back on the West Highland Line, or to go south and go round the Cumbrian coast line. (Note Cumbrian, not Cambrian; the latter is in Wales, and I went on it on days 6 and 8; the former is between Lancaster and Carlisle.)
For once, the forecast was accurate. The rain had come in from the west, and the highlands of Scotland in bad weather are - as I found out on Day 2 - depressing. So I headed for the Cumbrian coast instead.
0940 Glasgow Central to Lancaster, arr 1137
Distance: 171.25 miles, walk-up price: £16.30
(Headcode 1M10, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390029)
Scenery: 6/10 - A nice ride over Shap summit, but the visibility on the train was so poor that I couldn't see much of it.
Punctuality: 9/10 - A minute or two late into Lancaster, otherwise fine.
Speed: 9/10 - Incredibly fast, especially given all those curves; pity it's almost too fast to see the scenery.
Comfort: 3/10 - The quiet coach was anything but quiet, the seats weren't great and didn't match the windows particularly well, and there aren't nearly enough plug sockets.
Staff: 6/10 - At least this time there was a ticket check, and the shop staff were friendly enough.
Another day, another Virgin Pendolino. Today, however, the route was not the boring part of the West Coast Main Line; it was the spectacular through the Lake District over Shap summit.
Anyone who's ever driven to Scotland on the M6 will have been over Shap summit; that section of the M6 is certainly my favourite bit of motorway, though probably not my favourite bit of road (that honour would have to go to the Bealach na Bà in Scotland).
I was therefore expecting the railway to deliver; last time I was over this stretch it was a very nice ride. But here the lack of visibility in the Pendolinos finally reared its ugly head: there simply isn't enough glass to be able to see everything.
Of course, at the speeds we were going - we averaged an impressive 88mph - you had to concentrate to see anything at all, and I found that eleven days of train travel had taken their toll; I managed to doze off before lunch. A task made much more difficult thanks to people sitting in the quiet coach using their mobile phones. It's clearly marked, it's announced after every station and on the platform, passengers have no excuse for talking on their phones in the quiet zone.
We arrived in Lancaster after just two hours - really rather impressive for a 171-mile journey. I had expected Lancaster to be rather bigger, but it's really quite a small station; the café on the station platform, however, provided me with a nice bacon sandwich.
1214 Lancaster to Barrow-in-Furness, arr 1310
Distance: 34.75 miles, walk-up price: £7.35
(Headcode 1C52, operated by First Transpennine Express using Desiro 185137)
Scenery: 8/10 - The brooding dark clouds over the sands of Morecambe Bay made for quite a view.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Five minutes late, due to the preceeding train at Lancaster (the 1020 Birmingham to Edinburgh) being delayed for unknown reasons.
Speed: 3/10 - On a double-track line to a reasonably substantial town we ought to be able to do a lot better than 37mph average (and this wasn't even a stopping train!)
Comfort: 7/10 - As before, pretty reasonable seats, good visibility and space.
Staff: 5/10 - A rather uninterested ticket-checker, who barely glanced at anyone's ticket.
The Cumbrian coast line is divided into two parts: Lancaster to Barrow-in-Furness, and Barrow-in-Furness to Carlisle. The first part is served by trains from Manchester Airport, and for most of its journey could be regarded as a "Regional Express" service.
Between Lancaster and Barrow, however, the description of this train as "express" would be laughable: the line is very slow, with my journey - which didn't even stop at all the stations - averaging just 37mph. I think a town of 60,000 people deserves better, especially if (heaven forbid!) people wish to commute to Preston, Manchester and Liverpool by train.
But, as a tourist, I don't mind: the views out over the huge sands of Morecambe Bay were easier to appreciate thanks to the lack of speed. The views were made all the more memorable by the incredible mass of dark, high cloud brooding in the sky: it gave it a quite different feel than it might have had on a sunny day.
An unknown delay to the previous train on the platform at Lancaster, the 1020 Birmingham to Edinburgh, meant that our train had to wait to arrive at Lancaster; by the time it did, we were five minutes late, time we never really made up. A disappointing delay, but on this occasion it can't be pinned on Transpennine Express; I don't even know that it can be pinned on Virgin Trains.
I arrived in Barrow-in-Furness and made my way straight to my train for the second part of the Cumbrian coast line:
1331 Barrow-in-Furness to Carlisle, arr 1558
Distance 85.25 miles, walk-up price: £10.15
(Headcode 2C37, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 156454)
Scenery: 7/10 - Some very nice rugged coastline on the edge of the Lake District.
Punctuality: 10/10 - On time at every station, and five minutes early into Carlisle. Well done, Northern Rail.
Speed: 5/10 - Pretty slow, but this time it's slightly more understandable; there's no great need for speed on this line.
Comfort: 7/10 - Decent seats and visibility, and I even got a seat with a table for my laptop.
Staff: 7/10 - Two comprehensive ticket checks, both pretty thorough; no trolley service, which is disappointing but understandable.
The line from Barrow to Carlisle is an altogether more rural affair: we are back in the land of request stops. It seems like a pretty sleepy backwater of a line, something I've been used to in Wales and in Scotland, but which in England is rather more surprising.
I appreciate that the lack of speed and the lack of a trolley service are both because this service is lucky to still be operating, and costs have to be cut somewhere. However, at least the line itself isn't in danger of closure: it serves Sellafield nuclear power plant, and a large amount of freight travels to and from Sellafield by rail.
I was impressed, however, at the punctuality: Northern Rail have got the skill of request stops down to a fine art. In order not to waste too much time, you have to decide pretty quickly whether or not you actually need to stop; Northern Rail were noticeably quicker than FGW or ATW in deciding to speed up again. This meant we were on time - neither early nor late - at every station, until we arrived in Carlisle about five minutes early. (Just shows you how much padding there is.)
The view of the coastline was certainly nice, but by this stage I was struggling to stay awake at all, and I was playing games on my laptop just to stop myself falling fast asleep. I decided to cut the day short: I had planned to proceed from Carlisle over the Tyne Valley to Newcastle and back to Glasgow via Berwick and Edinburgh, which would certainly have been a nice run, but I was simply too tired.
I decided to head straight for Glasgow, since then I could collapse into my hotel room and then enjoy a meal with my parents and my cousin, instead of having to eat Burger King again.
1603 Carlisle to Glasgow Central, arr 1720
Distance: 102.25 miles, walk-up price: £12.20
(Headcode 1S65, operated by Virgin Trains using a Class 221 Super Voyager)
Scenery: 6/10 - A nice run over Beattock summit, but this time in windswept rain.
Punctuality: 7/10 - A bit baffling this one: we left Carlisle five minutes late, and managed to arrive in Glasgow two minutes early.
Speed: 8/10 - Impressive, but - seemingly unnecessarily - timetabled at five minutes longer than the same journey yesterday.
Comfort: 3/10 - See below.
Staff: 4/10 - No ticket check, and the shop was (literally) melting, though it did remain open until Glasgow again.
You remember everything nice I said about SuperVoyagers on Day 11? How I was surprised at how much nicer they were than Voyagers? I take it all back. This was a horrible journey.
The previous day's service was a mid-afternoon train on a Thursday. This, however, was the 1320 from Birmingham to Glasgow. On a Friday. Everyone going north for the weekend was there. It was full.
What's worse, the air conditioning was broken. Most of the train was really pretty cold, except the coach with the shop. The shop coach was incredibly hot. Indeed, it had been so since leaving Birmingham. As a result, all the chocolate had melted.
And to add insult to injury, one of the toilets was out of service. Clearly this was par for the course, since I mentioned this to the shop assistant, and she responded "Only one?"
While enduring the hot and cold, I saw the reason I'd headed south: rain. The rain started at around Lockerbie and turned to an incessant heavy drizzle by the time we reached Glasgow; it made for quite a different view over Beattock from the previous day's journey.
By this stage, I was actually sick of trains. Tired and hungry, I disembarked at Glasgow Central with ideas of things to do over the weekend, but no firm plans. Friday's statistics were as follows:
Total time on trains: 6 hours, 37 minutes.
Distance travelled: 393.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £46.00.
I decided eventually to take another day off on Saturday (Day 13), since I simply needed the rest, and given that my cousin's party started at 7pm there wasn't much I could do in the Scottish highlands and still get back in time.
Sunday, however, was a different story altogether.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Day 12, otherwise known as last Friday. I had two plans: either to go to Mallaig and back on the West Highland Line, or to go south and go round the Cumbrian coast line. (Note Cumbrian, not Cambrian; the latter is in Wales, and I went on it on days 6 and 8; the former is between Lancaster and Carlisle.)
For once, the forecast was accurate. The rain had come in from the west, and the highlands of Scotland in bad weather are - as I found out on Day 2 - depressing. So I headed for the Cumbrian coast instead.
0940 Glasgow Central to Lancaster, arr 1137
Distance: 171.25 miles, walk-up price: £16.30
(Headcode 1M10, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390029)
Scenery: 6/10 - A nice ride over Shap summit, but the visibility on the train was so poor that I couldn't see much of it.
Punctuality: 9/10 - A minute or two late into Lancaster, otherwise fine.
Speed: 9/10 - Incredibly fast, especially given all those curves; pity it's almost too fast to see the scenery.
Comfort: 3/10 - The quiet coach was anything but quiet, the seats weren't great and didn't match the windows particularly well, and there aren't nearly enough plug sockets.
Staff: 6/10 - At least this time there was a ticket check, and the shop staff were friendly enough.
Another day, another Virgin Pendolino. Today, however, the route was not the boring part of the West Coast Main Line; it was the spectacular through the Lake District over Shap summit.
Anyone who's ever driven to Scotland on the M6 will have been over Shap summit; that section of the M6 is certainly my favourite bit of motorway, though probably not my favourite bit of road (that honour would have to go to the Bealach na Bà in Scotland).
I was therefore expecting the railway to deliver; last time I was over this stretch it was a very nice ride. But here the lack of visibility in the Pendolinos finally reared its ugly head: there simply isn't enough glass to be able to see everything.
Of course, at the speeds we were going - we averaged an impressive 88mph - you had to concentrate to see anything at all, and I found that eleven days of train travel had taken their toll; I managed to doze off before lunch. A task made much more difficult thanks to people sitting in the quiet coach using their mobile phones. It's clearly marked, it's announced after every station and on the platform, passengers have no excuse for talking on their phones in the quiet zone.
We arrived in Lancaster after just two hours - really rather impressive for a 171-mile journey. I had expected Lancaster to be rather bigger, but it's really quite a small station; the café on the station platform, however, provided me with a nice bacon sandwich.
1214 Lancaster to Barrow-in-Furness, arr 1310
Distance: 34.75 miles, walk-up price: £7.35
(Headcode 1C52, operated by First Transpennine Express using Desiro 185137)
Scenery: 8/10 - The brooding dark clouds over the sands of Morecambe Bay made for quite a view.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Five minutes late, due to the preceeding train at Lancaster (the 1020 Birmingham to Edinburgh) being delayed for unknown reasons.
Speed: 3/10 - On a double-track line to a reasonably substantial town we ought to be able to do a lot better than 37mph average (and this wasn't even a stopping train!)
Comfort: 7/10 - As before, pretty reasonable seats, good visibility and space.
Staff: 5/10 - A rather uninterested ticket-checker, who barely glanced at anyone's ticket.
The Cumbrian coast line is divided into two parts: Lancaster to Barrow-in-Furness, and Barrow-in-Furness to Carlisle. The first part is served by trains from Manchester Airport, and for most of its journey could be regarded as a "Regional Express" service.
Between Lancaster and Barrow, however, the description of this train as "express" would be laughable: the line is very slow, with my journey - which didn't even stop at all the stations - averaging just 37mph. I think a town of 60,000 people deserves better, especially if (heaven forbid!) people wish to commute to Preston, Manchester and Liverpool by train.
But, as a tourist, I don't mind: the views out over the huge sands of Morecambe Bay were easier to appreciate thanks to the lack of speed. The views were made all the more memorable by the incredible mass of dark, high cloud brooding in the sky: it gave it a quite different feel than it might have had on a sunny day.
An unknown delay to the previous train on the platform at Lancaster, the 1020 Birmingham to Edinburgh, meant that our train had to wait to arrive at Lancaster; by the time it did, we were five minutes late, time we never really made up. A disappointing delay, but on this occasion it can't be pinned on Transpennine Express; I don't even know that it can be pinned on Virgin Trains.
I arrived in Barrow-in-Furness and made my way straight to my train for the second part of the Cumbrian coast line:
1331 Barrow-in-Furness to Carlisle, arr 1558
Distance 85.25 miles, walk-up price: £10.15
(Headcode 2C37, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 156454)
Scenery: 7/10 - Some very nice rugged coastline on the edge of the Lake District.
Punctuality: 10/10 - On time at every station, and five minutes early into Carlisle. Well done, Northern Rail.
Speed: 5/10 - Pretty slow, but this time it's slightly more understandable; there's no great need for speed on this line.
Comfort: 7/10 - Decent seats and visibility, and I even got a seat with a table for my laptop.
Staff: 7/10 - Two comprehensive ticket checks, both pretty thorough; no trolley service, which is disappointing but understandable.
The line from Barrow to Carlisle is an altogether more rural affair: we are back in the land of request stops. It seems like a pretty sleepy backwater of a line, something I've been used to in Wales and in Scotland, but which in England is rather more surprising.
I appreciate that the lack of speed and the lack of a trolley service are both because this service is lucky to still be operating, and costs have to be cut somewhere. However, at least the line itself isn't in danger of closure: it serves Sellafield nuclear power plant, and a large amount of freight travels to and from Sellafield by rail.
I was impressed, however, at the punctuality: Northern Rail have got the skill of request stops down to a fine art. In order not to waste too much time, you have to decide pretty quickly whether or not you actually need to stop; Northern Rail were noticeably quicker than FGW or ATW in deciding to speed up again. This meant we were on time - neither early nor late - at every station, until we arrived in Carlisle about five minutes early. (Just shows you how much padding there is.)
The view of the coastline was certainly nice, but by this stage I was struggling to stay awake at all, and I was playing games on my laptop just to stop myself falling fast asleep. I decided to cut the day short: I had planned to proceed from Carlisle over the Tyne Valley to Newcastle and back to Glasgow via Berwick and Edinburgh, which would certainly have been a nice run, but I was simply too tired.
I decided to head straight for Glasgow, since then I could collapse into my hotel room and then enjoy a meal with my parents and my cousin, instead of having to eat Burger King again.
1603 Carlisle to Glasgow Central, arr 1720
Distance: 102.25 miles, walk-up price: £12.20
(Headcode 1S65, operated by Virgin Trains using a Class 221 Super Voyager)
Scenery: 6/10 - A nice run over Beattock summit, but this time in windswept rain.
Punctuality: 7/10 - A bit baffling this one: we left Carlisle five minutes late, and managed to arrive in Glasgow two minutes early.
Speed: 8/10 - Impressive, but - seemingly unnecessarily - timetabled at five minutes longer than the same journey yesterday.
Comfort: 3/10 - See below.
Staff: 4/10 - No ticket check, and the shop was (literally) melting, though it did remain open until Glasgow again.
You remember everything nice I said about SuperVoyagers on Day 11? How I was surprised at how much nicer they were than Voyagers? I take it all back. This was a horrible journey.
The previous day's service was a mid-afternoon train on a Thursday. This, however, was the 1320 from Birmingham to Glasgow. On a Friday. Everyone going north for the weekend was there. It was full.
What's worse, the air conditioning was broken. Most of the train was really pretty cold, except the coach with the shop. The shop coach was incredibly hot. Indeed, it had been so since leaving Birmingham. As a result, all the chocolate had melted.
And to add insult to injury, one of the toilets was out of service. Clearly this was par for the course, since I mentioned this to the shop assistant, and she responded "Only one?"
While enduring the hot and cold, I saw the reason I'd headed south: rain. The rain started at around Lockerbie and turned to an incessant heavy drizzle by the time we reached Glasgow; it made for quite a different view over Beattock from the previous day's journey.
By this stage, I was actually sick of trains. Tired and hungry, I disembarked at Glasgow Central with ideas of things to do over the weekend, but no firm plans. Friday's statistics were as follows:
Total time on trains: 6 hours, 37 minutes.
Distance travelled: 393.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £46.00.
I decided eventually to take another day off on Saturday (Day 13), since I simply needed the rest, and given that my cousin's party started at 7pm there wasn't much I could do in the Scottish highlands and still get back in time.
Sunday, however, was a different story altogether.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
All-Line Rover, Day 11
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!
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!
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.
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