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...