All-Line Rover, Day 1

So, here we are. Day 1. The plan is simple: London to Liverpool, Liverpool to Norwich on the East Midlands Trains service via Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Peterborough and Ely, and then Norwich to London.

For each train (except cross-London transfers on the Underground, which are not included in the All-Line Rover anyway), I will record how much it would have cost if I'd gone to the ticket office and got a non-advance ticket for immediate travel (with a Young-Persons Railcard). I'll add it all up at the end to show just how good value the £429 ticket actually is. I'm also scoring each journey out of 10 on the scenery, the punctuality, the speed, the comfort, and the on-board staff.

0753 New Beckenham to Charing Cross, arr 0818
Distance 9.5 miles, walk-up day return: £4.10

I won't say much about journeys between London and New Beckenham in future, but I should explain that I'm crashing in New Beckenham in south-east London for some of the nights of this Rover.

Northern Line (CX branch), Embankment-Euston

0907 London Euston to Liverpool Lime Street, arr 1115
Distance 193.5 miles, walk-up price: £76.25
(Headcode 1F13, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390022)

Scenery: 4/10 - Thrashing through Rugby at 125mph and crossing the Mersey viaduct were nice, but otherwise nothing special.
Punctuality: 10/10 - Early all the way. Well done.
Speed: 9/10 - Very, very fast until we crossed the Mersey and started crawling to Liverpool.
Comfort: 7/10 - Good seats but the visibility out of the Windows isn't massive.
Staff: 2/10 - Overbearing announcements, no ticket inspections, credit-card only £5 wireless, and the shop didn't open until after we'd left Euston (so I didn't use it!)

Today is all about travelling the length of East Midlands Trains' insanely long cross-country service from Liverpool to Norwich. To get to Liverpool, I am sampling one of Virgin Trains' 125mph express services.

My God, this is fast.

We passed Watford Junction after 13 minutes, Milton Keynes after 29 minutes, Rugby after 45 minutes, and arrived in Stafford after just 73 minutes, two minutes early. That's an average speed of 109.7 miles per hour to Stafford.

We passed through Crewe on the through lines at about 80mph, which was a novel experience. Having run at 125mph most of the way to Crewe, we slowed down quite considerably after the stop at Runcorn and crossing the Mersey.

The tilt system on the Pendolinos is designed to make it more comfortable to go round the rather sharp corners at full speed. It works very well indeed, and the feeling of tilting while going at 125mph round a curve before slamming into the Linslade Tunnels at Leighton Buzzard is really quite something.

Say what you like about the reliability, but the speed of the West Coast Main Line - when it works - is staggering. That it's possible to take a Victorian main line with so many curves and run so many trains so fast is almost unbelievable. That it does so with some of the signalling still controlled from big lever frames which are, in some cases, more than a hundred years old is ridiculous.

We arrived four minutes early in Liverpool - an end-to-end time of just 2hr04, with at least four minutes spent standing in stations. It just goes to show that Liverpool could be just two hours away from London, if there were the capacity or the will.

The Pendolino trains themselves are, I admit, slightly more cramped than other InterCity trains. We have such small tunnels compared to the rest of the world that we actually have to make our tilting trains smaller so they don't hit the sides. But I didn't notice it at the time; only when I used older Mark 3 stock later in the day did I notice how much bigger the latter is. Otherwise, the Pendolinos were comfortable, though the seats may have been slightly hard.

The only gripe I had with Virgin was with their on-board service. No-one bothered to do a ticket inspection (granted there was one at Euston, but it was more of a cursory glance than an inspection); the staff in the shop told me curtly that the shop didn't open until we were moving (so I didn't bother using it at all); the announcements were the usual "please check you haven't left anything behind" nonsense; and the wireless access required £5 for 60 minutes use, and only took credit cards (not debit cards), meaning I had to put up with no internet until I got home.

All in all, an incredibly fast and efficient service, if somewhat dull; the lack of wireless was no big loss.

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Liverpool Lime Street is a rather nice station, with a double-span arched roof like King's Cross. I grabbed some lunch there and took a few photos of the nice, if somewhat small, concourse. I am pleased to report that no jobsworths tried to stop me taking photographs.

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1152 Liverpool Lime Street to Norwich, arr 1713
Distance 245.25 miles, walk-up price £50.80
(Headcode 1L10, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 158783)

Scenery: 6/10 - Lots of nice English countryside, with some industry west of Manchester and a nice run down the Hope Valley to Sheffield.
Punctuality: 9/10 - A slight delay at Grantham, otherwise very impressive for this very complicated route, even if there was a bit of slack in the timetable.
Speed: 6/10 - Pretty good where we happen to use the mainlines, otherwise not often exceeding 75mph, which isn't great for such a long route.
Comfort: 4/10 - Good visibility but the seats weren't made to be sat in for long distances; not much luggage space; disappointing lack of catering.
Staff: 9/10 - Clear, simple announcements, and prompt ticket checks after every station.

East Midlands Trains' service between Liverpool and Norwich is one of just three east-west cross-country services south of the Pennines, the others being CrossCountry's Birmingham-Stansted service and FGW's Cardiff-Portsmouth service.

The line is a tale of two halves: Liverpool-Nottingham and Nottingham-Norwich. The Liverpool-Nottingham section passes through Manchester and Sheffield, and as such is a pretty busy inter-regional service connecting four of the ten largest cities in the UK. The Nottingham-Norwich section is rather more rural, with a smattering of towns such as Grantham, Peterborough and Ely interrupting the flow of the rolling countryside - well, actually, east of Ely we hit Norfolk, which is very, very flat.

The trouble is that, while the route intersects no fewer than four of the main InterCity routes out of London, it doesn't count as a main line, so the service is pretty slow. There are a few parts where we get up to 100mph - notably between Sheffield and Nottingham and between Grantham and Peterborough - but otherwise we're lucky to hit 75mph, especially east of Nottingham where we have to put up with lots of "clackety-clack" jointed track.

Not only is the line slow, but the trains are normally just two carriages long. Occasionally, during the peaks, two are coupled together for the busier section between Nottingham and Liverpool, but my train was, unfortunately, a single two-car class 158 unit, which didn't really have enough luggage space.

So I turned up at platform 6 at Liverpool Lime Street just hoping I could get a seat. I did. The train was pretty busy all the way to Nottingham, especially between Manchester and Sheffield. Between Nottingham and Peterborough it was pretty quiet, but we picked up quite a lot at Peterborough - which makes me think that services between the north-east and east Anglia might be useful. It quietened down again at Ely, with many changing for onward services to Cambridge.

The train itself was adequate, but the seats were pretty hard and there was no catering, so I had to go thirsty for the last hour and a half of the trip. There used to be a trolley service - much needed on this five-and-a-half hour marathon - but it was cut to save money.

People like me traversing the length of the route were very much in the minority - the vast majority of people were on the train for an hour or so between two of the major stations. So I suppose you could argue the trolley service isn't as needed as, say, a buffet on InterCity services out of London.

I suppose the reason few people use the entire length is due to the length of time it takes to traverse the entire route - at five hours and 20 minutes from Liverpool to Norwich, it's considerably faster to go via London (up to 45 minutes). A few speed upgrades - especially on the Liverpool-Nottingham portion - would help improve passenger numbers.

Another idea might be a wider variety of destinations in East Anglia. This service started life 25 years ago as a service between Harwich Port and the North West for passengers travelling to Europe, before morphing into its current form sometime in the early 1990s when the Birmingham-Norwich service was diverted to Stansted Airport. Now, I'm not suggesting we serve Harwich again; but surely Ipswich could do with more than a two-hourly service to Peterborough? Do people from Ipswich not wish to be in contact with the north of England?

All in all, I find services like these fascinating - there will never be that many people wanting to do the full end-to-end run, but the very opportunity is enough for my liking. The use of it is in the many overlapping possibilities for journeys such as Liverpool-Nottingham and Sheffield-Peterborough. The current wisdom has been to split up such long-distance links as being too hard to keep punctual; I think we need more such services, not less, and that punctuality shouldn't be the overriding concern all the time.

Just as long as the seats are more comfortable.

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I expected Norwich station, being the station for the largest city in East Anglia, to be impressive; unfortunately the station is actually quite small and was somewhat disappointing. There are ticket barriers, which predictably did not accept my All-Line Rover; it ought to open every barrier, but it will probably open none at all.

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1730 Norwich to London Liverpool Street, arr 1927
Distance 115 miles, walk-up price £26.25
(Headcode 1P55, operated by National Express East Anglia using 90014 and Mark 3 stock)

Scenery: 3/10 - Flat East Anglian countryside. 'Nuff said.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Three signal checks at Witham, Shenfield and Ilford led to us being 8 late at Stratford; padding ensured we were just 4 late at Liverpool Street.
Speed: 9/10 - Pretty fast, certainly for a commuter train. Probably no real need for any greater speed.
Comfort: 10/10 - You just can't beat Mark 3 stock for comfort, or for visibility.
Staff: 8/10 - Attentive ticket inspections, but slightly waffling announcements.

Finally, a "proper" train. That is, one formed of a locomotive attached to some coaches. What's more, the coaches are proper old Mark 3 stock, with comfortable squishy seats, lots of tables, and seatbacks high enough to snooze on but low enough to get a fantastic view. And there's a buffet car.

My last major journey of day 1 had two purposes: firstly, sampling the service on the Great Eastern Main Line, and secondly, getting me back to London to crash. The service used to be classified as InterCity, but the distinction was lost when the Greater Anglia franchise was awarded to "One Railway" in 2004. It's now not much more than just another commuter service; even the excellent restaurant cars have been replace with buffets, again for cost-cutting purposes. Though there is also a trolley service, which passed through not once but twice, which for a journey of just two hours is pretty good really.

The difference in visibility that having low seatbacks makes is quite surprising, actually. It means that you can see out of not just one window nearest you, but out of every window in the carriage from your seat. Much better.

A pity, then, that the scenery is, in all honesty, quite dull. But I suppose that's mainly because East Anglia is really rather flat, and I quite like the sight of hills. The train itself was also pretty quiet: I was travelling very much against the peak flow, so I had an entire table and four seats to myself. I can imagine that in the opposite direction the train would be full of commuters heading home.

The most interesting piece of "scenery" that I did notice is that the masts holding the overhead electric wires up on this line are quite different to the ones on both the West Coast and East Coast main lines, probably because this line was electrified by the early 1950s and the WCML wasn't even started until the 1960s. There are separate masts for each track, unlike other main lines where they have a gantry from which the wires for all the tracks are suspended.

I was also pleased that the ticket inspector actually read my ticket and noticed it was an All-Line Rover. Kudos to you, sir. His announcements again waffled about "please ensure you take your belongings with you", though it also contained the more helpful "if you are leaving the train here, we'd be very grateful if you could firmly close the doors behind you" and "don't forget your ticket as Ipswich station is barriered". Just goes to show that pith is an art (one I'm well aware that I haven't mastered either).

Unfortunately, the only foot NXEA put wrong was on the punctuality front. We were slowed to 20mph at Witham while a peak train was being sent across our path to terminate, and we continued to be checked all the way in from Shenfield to Liverpool Street. We were eight minutes late at Stratford, and ought to have been the same at Liverpool Street. But because lateness figures are only recorded for the terminal station, companies always insert padding between the penultimate and last stations. So we were just four minutes late into Liverpool Street, coming magically within the five minute limit for recording a train as "on time". Sigh.

Nonetheless, the train itself was fantastic: comfortable, fantastic visibility, and a fantastic catering service. Pity about the view, and the punctuality. However, I still managed to grab a McDonalds, take a few photos at Liverpool Street and make my train back to New Beckenham:

Circle Line from Liverpool Street to Cannon Street

1956 Cannon Street to New Beckenham, arr 2019
Distance 8.5 miles (price included in morning trip)


All in all, a pretty good day. The overall statistics were:

Total time on trains: 10 hours, 16 minutes.
Distance covered: 571.75 miles.
Walk-up price: £157.90.

Three more days like that and I'll have had the value of the ticket!