All-Line Rover, Days 7 and 8

If you haven't already, you probably want to read the "Day 6" post just below this one first, since otherwise this won't make much sense!

Day 7 was the Middle Sunday of the All-Line Rover, and, like Wimbledon, I declared it a day of rest. My thanks to Jonathan and his family for a lovely Sunday lunch and a great walk to Blue Lake in the middle of an abandoned quarry, a remarkably serene lake of pure blue nestled among seemingly innocuous hills.

This left me relaxed and refreshed to start afresh on Monday morning into Week 2. My route for Day 8 would take me through the little railways of Central Wales, over from Fairbourne to Shrewsbury on the Cambrian line, before penetrating south-west through the Heart of Wales line via Llandrindod Wells to Swansea, and then back to London to crash.

1111 Fairbourne to Machynlleth, arr 1159
Distance: 22.75 miles, walk-up price for Fairbourne-Shrewsbury: £14.90
(Headcode 2J14, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 158838)

Scenery: 9/10 - Not quite as spectacular as Friday night but still pretty impressive views of the Welsh coastline.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Sloppy timekeeping meant that on-time at Barmouth (after a 21-minute wait!) was five minutes late at Dovey Junction, saved once again by padding.
Speed: 6/10 - Again, quite slow: I think it could be a little faster without sacrificing the views.
Comfort: 7/10 - Yet another ATW Sprinter.
Staff: 7/10 - Thorough ticket inspections, though no catering (not that it's really needed before Machynlleth).

I picked up on Monday morning where I left off on Saturday night, heading south on the Cambrian Coast Line. The superb views resumed once more, with the railway now climbing so it can cut into the side of Cadair Idris, the mountain south of Barmouth, with cliff-like drops to the sea below. At one point there's a roof over the line as an avalanche shelter, such is the nature of the cliffs.

We then turn east up the valley of the River Dovey, eventually crossing it and passing through a very odd station in Dovey Junction. There is no road access; the station exists only to transfer between trains on the Pwllheli and Aberystwyth lines.

We were due to couple up to the train from Aberystwyth at the next station, Machynlleth, before the train proceeds on to Shrewsbury and Birmingham. For some reason, we were told to change at Machynlleth, because the train coming up from Aberystwyth was already four carriages (normally the Aberystwyth and Pwllheli portions are each two carriages). Quite why this was I have no idea, but that it's a Monday morning could well have something to do with it.

1207 Machynlleth to Shrewsbury, arr 1325
Distance: 61 miles, walk-up price included above
(Headcode 1G35, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinters 158830+158837)

Scenery: 6/10 - Nice Welsh hills, but nothing particularly eye-catching.
Punctuality: 9/10 - Bang on time except for a slight delay getting a platform at Shrewsbury.
Speed: 7/10 - Pretty good for a rural line in the middle of Wales, averaging 47mph.
Comfort: 7/10 - Yet another ATW Sprinter.
Staff: 8/10 - Thorough ticket checks, and friendly trolley staff who explained all the food had been gobbled up between Aberystwyth and Machynlleth.

From the Cambrian Coast line I travelled on over the "central belt" of Wales towards Shrewsbury. The Cambrian Line between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth has been home to some of the worst timekeeping in the country. On the face of it, a two-hourly service on a single-track line with several passing loops doesn't seem like much to ask. However, the service extends to possibly the biggest capacity constraint in the entire country: Birmingham New Street.

The station was rebuilt in 1965 to cope with 640 trains and 60,000 passengers every day. It currently handles - somehow - 1350 trains and over 120,000 passengers a day. It's a miracle the delays aren't ten times worse.

In December last year, the Cambrian timetable was revised - basically padded with extra time - and instead of having fifteen minutes to turn round at New Street, the services were extended to Birmingham International, essentially giving the trains an extra hour to turn around. It seems to have greatly improved things, with delays much reduced.

However, it remains to be seen if things will stay that way. Work is currently underway to increase the number and length of passing loops to allow not just a two-hourly but an *hourly* service between Shrewsbury and Aberystwyth. This will require each train from Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury passing not one but three trains in the opposite direction, and will thus (in some sense) triple the risk of delay.

I agree that having an hourly service to the west coast of Wales is both necessary and desirable, but I don't know if the relatively small additional amount of double-track will be workable in practice. In theory it ought to be possible, but it doesn't really allow much margin for delay, so we could see performance next year (when the hourly service is due to start) nosediving to levels below even the worst levels of the mid-2000s.

I understand that the additional services between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury will extend not to Birmingham but to Crewe, which will provide a much-needed link between west and central Wales and the north of England. All that's left for Aberystwyth would be direct trains to London - and Arriva even have plans for that, with a handful of services to cater for peak flows much like WSMR do for Wrexham. But while WSMR run superb trains (see Day 6), Arriva are planning on using Class 158 Sprinters on the inter-city run to London.

Having spent the better part of two entire days on Class 158s, I can categorically say that they are not suitable for use on a long-distance service to London; they are simply too small, too cramped, don't have enough catering facilities, and don't have first class accommodation. On the other hand, there's a great shortage of rolling stock at the minute, so exactly what else ATW could use instead of Class 158s is, to be fair, quite a conundrum.

For all its faults, the Cambrian line is in fact a very nice run through the Welsh hills, but it's nothing half as spectacular as the Cambrian Coast Line. The train itself was yet another Sprinter, though I was disappointed to find the trolley had been restocked at Aberystwyth but had run out of sandwiches and most anything else by the time it had got to Machynlleth just 20 minutes later.

So I arrived in Shrewsbury rather hungry. This was my third time passing through Shrewsbury in four days, though the first time I had alighted since visiting the station a couple of years ago on a tour of the West Midlands. This time I didn't leave the platform; I got a nice hot baguette in the station cafe, and stocked up on drinks for the next train.

1405 Shrewsbury to Swansea, arr 1806
Distance 121.5 miles, walk-up price: £12.60
(Headcode 2V39, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using Sprinter 153362)

Scenery: 8/10 - Some fantastic scenes of Sugar Loaf mountain as well as ploughing through Welsh forests where you half-expect rally cars to scream through.
Punctuality: 4/10 - Absolute madness: sloppiness and slack station work meant that we gradually slipped later until we were 13 minutes late arriving into Llanelli; yet we still managed to be four minutes early into Swansea.
Speed: 5/10 - You can travel from Shrewsbury to Swansea 45 minutes faster by taking the much longer route via Cardiff. I know this route is rural, but that's no excuse for some really very slow speeds, even if the views are all the nicer.
Comfort: 2/10 - The airline seats were much too small for me (or anyone over 5ft 3in tall!), though the table seats were a bit better; there was still no catering on a very long route, though.
Staff: 6/10 - The ticket inspectors were thorough without being overbearing, though the platform work seemed to be somewhat lax and the lack of catering was disappointing.

The Heart of Wales Line is a railway line that, by rights, should not have survived. It is a tiny little railway through tiny little villages, a by-product of the eta of competition when the London, Midland and Scottish tried to thwart the Great Western's strangle-hold on Wales by ploughing through the middle from Crewe and Shrewsbury to Swansea. Rumour has it that it survived the cuts of Beeching because a cabinet member pointed out that it ran through seven marginal constituencies, and of course closing railways is hardly ever popular.

This service is (usually) operated by a very peculiar kind of train: a one-carriage Sprinter. The Class 153s are literally just a single carriage, just 23m long. They are affectionately known as "dogboxes" or (perhaps less affectionately) as "coffins".

I didn't realise until I sat down just why: they are fantastically cramped. I genuinely didn't think trains this cramped were possible. I'm about 5ft 11in tall and I've never had problems in an airline seat, a train seat or a bus seat. Until now.

I tried an airline seat and realised I'd have to sit at an angle to actually get my legs in, so I moved to a table seat on the other side of the train. Which proved be a good move on two counts: one, no-one sat opposite me for the whole journey, and two, the left-hand side had the best of the views.

This was no rolling English countryside: this was Welsh hills and forests, good and proper. There were some long climbs, and the engine didn't half struggle, but in spite of that I managed to doze off for half an hour (probably due to the hot lunch). Nevertheless, the views of Sugar Loaf mountain were really good, as were the views of unspoilt Welsh forest; I half-expected a rally car to come screeching through the forest, it was that wild. Eventually the railway works its way down to the coast of Pembrokeshire at Llanelli, and it is really rather nice, especially in the sunshine.

The route is so long that the train crews swap over half way along, at Llandrindod Wells (possibly the biggest town on the route), and go back to whence they came. The first crew kept to time pretty well, though we were a few minutes late into Llandrindod; but the second crew seemed very sloppy, and we ended up a full 13 minutes late into Llanelli.

But we're allowed 10 minutes to turn round in Llanelli (to head towards Swansea, and not to south-west Wales); we needed only five minutes to turn round, and evidently the timetable from Llanelli to Swansea is incredibly slack because eight minutes late out of Llanelli became four minutes early at Swansea. It should not be possible to make up 12 minutes in the space of half an hour; the timetable is clearly far too slack.

On the other hand, I shouldn't really complain, because it gave me a little extra time in Swansea, in which I walked into the town centre to grab some dinner (McDonalds was the best I could find, unfortunately) and walk back up the hill to Swansea's four-track terminus station for my ride home.

1829 Swansea to London Paddington, arrive 2132
Distance: 192.75 miles, walk-up price: £42.90
(Headcode 1L92, operated by First Great Western using an HST with 43186+43056)

Scenery: 5/10 - Some nice bits in South Wales, otherwise nothing new.
Punctuality: 6/10 - Delayed by seven minutes at Swindon for confusing reasons, see below.
Speed: 6/10 - The linespeed west of Cardiff is terrible for an InterCity line, often not exceeding 60mph, and the number of stops is far too many.
Comfort: 7/10 - Another FGW HST; I'll say no more.
Staff: 6/10 - The ticket inspector was rather gruff and didn't announce his presence with any volume; however, the buffet car had friendly staff and was well-stocked even by Reading at 9pm.

Another day, another First Great Western HST. I needed to get back to London to crash since I hadn't got anything else planned, so I consigned myself to an HST for three hours. The scenery in South Wales was nothing to write home about, so I mainly caught up on writing the blog. We were held for seven minutes or so at Swindon to "await the arrival of a coach from Bath"; apparently there were signalling problems around Bath so the trains to Bristol were being diverted and missing out Bath, so in order that they still had a service they decided to wait for the coach. Which is fair enough, really.

However, it's depressing to think that 25 years ago this journey was 15 minutes faster than it is now. There hasn't been anything magical happened since - we're even using the same kind of train - it's simply that today's services stop far more often. In 1983/4, all the London-Swansea services didn't stop between London and Newport; today, they call at Reading, Swindon and Bristol Parkway without fail, and many also call at Didcot. People are claiming electrification will bring a speed-up of 20 minutes; you can have most of that now without any changes other than the timetable.

The delay put paid to any hopes I had of getting the 2152 out of Charing Cross back to New Beckenham, so I got a few things in the shops at Paddington that I'd been meaning to get and headed for the 2222 train instead.

Bakerloo line, Paddington to Charing Cross

2222 Charing Cross to New Beckenham, arr 2249
Distance: 9.5 miles, walk-up price £2.45

So, today's statistics:

Total time on trains: 9 hours, 37 minutes.
Distance travelled: 407.5 miles.
Walk-up price: £72.85.

Now, what should I do tomorrow...