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!