Here I thought I'd summarise what I did on my East Midlands Rover (EMR). I don't plan to go into as much detail as the All-Line Rover Awards but certainly a few comparisons are worthwhile. First, a summary of where I went:
Day 1: Coventry - Rugby - Stoke-on-Trent - Derby - Matlock - Derby - Kettering (via Corby) - Leicester - Nottingham - Sheffield
Day 2: Sheffield - Doncaster - Grimsby - Barton-on-Humber - Cleethorpes - Sheffield (via Brigg) - Worksop - Nottingham - Leicester - Nuneaton - Coventry
Day 3: Coventry - Nuneaton - Peterborough - Doncaster (via Lincoln) - Barnetby - Newark North Gate (via Lincoln) - Collingham - Leicester - Nuneaton - Coventry
Over the course of the three days, I spent 22 hours and 57 minutes on a total of 28 different trains, covering 935.5 miles of the East Midlands. As I linked to in my initial post, this map shows the area of validity of the ticket, which is pretty generous.
I certainly covered the majority of that area, and though I would have needed another day to completely cover the area, in the end pretty much the only lines that I didn't get to travel on that I haven't been on before are the Bletchley-Bedford line (which I did plan to go on but had to skip in order to get to Sheffield) and the line to Skegness.
The ticket cost just £44.20, but had I just walk-up single tickets each time I would have paid £184.65. (I could probably get that down a bit by being creative with the ticketing, but that's a can of worms I don't want to go into right now!) As such, I averaged 4.7p per mile - even better value than the All-Line Rover!
Of course, unlike the All-Line Rover (ALR), where I spent most of the time taking longer journeys and seeing the sights of various lines, most of the journeys on this East Midlands Rover were quite short and rather more rural in nature.
The key difference was that I avoided one of the pitfalls I fell into on the ALR by planning ahead. I had a pretty firm plan laid out before I started, and while my insomnia the night before I started led to me swapping a couple of days over and cutting one bit, other than that I pretty much kept to the entire plan completely.
Indeed, I planned the EMR explicitly to cover as much of the territory of the ticket as possible; given the nature of the services in Lincolnshire (as I mentioned in Day 3's post) it took a considerable degree of planning to get the plan to work. Had I missed my connection at Peterborough I couldn't have just picked up the train an hour later, but would have had to re-plan everything.
On the one hand, it's immensely satisfying to see a long-held plan come to fruition; on the other hand, it removes some of the excitement of planning it on the spot. However, given the nature of the ticket and the limited routes by which I could get home, a little forward planning was essential, especially given it wasn't valid via Birmingham. I still find it slightly weird spending a weekend on trains in the midlands without even coming close to Birmingham New Street station...
One effect of going round the more rural lines in the region was that I changed trains a lot more than on the ALR; whereas I never exceeded seven trains a day on the ALR (and averaged about five), on each of the three days of the EMR I did nine or ten trains. Some of that stems from the lack of direct trains in the region, some of it stems from the nature of the lines I wished to cover, and some of it stems from my determination to cover everything, even if it means changing three times!
In some ways, in fact, changing trains so many times added to the excitement. Is it going to be late? Am I going to miss my connection? Will I have to sprint? I was pretty lucky that over the course of the weekend I never missed a connection that I was aiming for; the tightest connection I had was the three-minute dash across the footbridge at Kettering on Friday evening.
With going round almost all the rural lines in the area, I got to see pretty much every kind of train that's used. The Sprinters remain my favourite: while the seats are often a little bit hard, they are the workhorse of the rural lines, and without them many of the lines I was on simply wouldn't have a service.
While I've moaned about the Pacers, I can't say I've ever thought they're terrible, but they're not great, certainly for long journeys. My least favourite kind of train remains the class 170 Turbostars, which are a bad copy of the Sprinters and manage to be even less comfortable than a Pacer!
As for the stations I passed through, I must single out Sheffield for some worthy praise. While I've used the station before on a couple of occasions, Saturday morning was the first time I'd noticed how well laid-out it is, and how good the amenities are compared to other stations. What's more, it's fortunate not to have been blighted by automatic ticket barriers (yet!), so Jonathan was able to meet me on the platform, rather than on the concourse.
I used both East Midlands Trains and Northern Rail extensively, and while I like both, I think my preference is still in favour of Northern Rail, for two reasons: one, their trains tend to be more comfortable (even when they're the same kind of train as EMT have), and two, they seem to make better use of their stock and avoid the poor planning that Lincoln suffers from at the hands of EMT.
That said, of the longer-distance services I used, East Midlands Trains wins hands-down: Northern Rail don't really operate any, and CrossCountry and TPE run long-distance services with trains which are too short.
The best scenery was definitely on the Matlock branch: the line climbs through the Peak District, crossing the River Derwent many times, through some of the best countryside in England. I only wish the line still extended all the way to Manchester.
All three days had something to recommend them, but I think my favourite day was probably the Friday, thanks to being able to see both the WCML and the MML in full swing, as well as seeing the beautiful Matlock branch. Saturday was a lovely sunny day in north Lincolnshire, and Monday was particularly interesting for the freight at Barnetby, but I think Friday just pips them to the post.
WHAT'S NEXT?
This East Midlands Rover marks the start of a concerted attempt on my part to have travelled on the whole of the British railway network by the time I'm, say, 30. (I would say 25 but that only gives me another fifteen months!) Of course, one can argue at great length as to what exactly "the whole of the British railway network" actually means, but for the time being I'm thinking of it as colouring in my map.
Having done the East Midlands Rover, there are now only a few lines in the whole of the midlands - Grantham-Skegness, Oxford-Hereford, Chester-Crewe-Stoke, and some of the suburban lines around Birmingham - that I haven't travelled on. By contrast, there are some areas which I haven't touched at all - most notably Kent (which, aside from a Eurostar to Paris in 2002 I've never even passed through).
So what further plans do I have? I hope to do a Heart of England Rover - similar to the East Midlands Rover but covering the West Midlands - sometime in May or June, to finish off most of the West Midlands. After that, I'm planning on spending ten days in Scotland in July with Ian and Matt doing a Freedom of Scotland Travelpass, with the intention of going on all the lines in the highlands. I will, of course, be blogging about both.
You may ask: why not another All-Line Rover? There are a number of reasons: for one, as you've seen, the regional rovers are often better value (though there are areas which don't have one, particularly in the south-east). They also allow you to focus on one particular area, rather than touching on lots of different areas.
Most importantly, however, the ALR is only available in one- and two-week passes; being able to use 3-in-7 or 4-in-8 rovers to do a weekend here or a few days there means that I'm able to spread it out, so that it's more relaxing, and indeed so I enjoy it more! While the ALR was undoubtedly brilliant, it was also a bit exhausting.
There are, however, a whole host of rover (and also day ranger) tickets out there, all of which are extraordinarily good value. By chance, the current editions of Rail (issue 668, April 20-May 3) and of Today's Railways UK (issue 113, May 2011, on sale until May 6th) both have comprehensive guides to all the rover tickets currently available, and if you are even slightly interested in doing one I wholeheartedly recommend buying one (both should be available from most good WH Smith's). Failing that, you can look at the list on the National Rail website, though that includes a number of other things lumped in with it and can be a little more confusing to navigate.
Until my next adventure, then, happy travelling, and thank you for reading.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
East Midlands Rover, Day 3
After a rest on the Sunday, I started early on Monday morning to head for another day exploring the railways of Lincolnshire.
0906 Coventry to Nuneaton, arr 0925
Headcode: 2K09, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £1.45
I began as I finished on Saturday night with a trip on the shuttle to Nuneaton, on exactly the same train as before, though this time rather more lightly used.
It's a pity that the dash for speed (or, more accurately, capacity) on the WCML has led to the loss of direct Coventry-Leicester trains; while the Coventry-Nuneaton line itself is not in danger of closure, as it is much-used by freight trains, the passenger service is a far cry from what used to be provided, or indeed what Coventry or Nuneaton (or Leicester) deserve.
While a bridge now exists to take Birmingham-Leicester trains over the WCML, this is not usable by Coventry-Leicester trains; either another bridge, or else a reversing siding beyond the bridge (on the line towards Birmingham) would need to be provided in order to avoid having to cross the WCML on the flat.
Unlike Saturday night's brisk seven minute connection, on this occasion I had a full half hour to wait in the quiet airiness of Nuneaton station, to head east to Peterborough:
0952 Nuneaton to Peterborough, arr 1116
Headcode: 1L34, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170112
Distance: 71.25 miles; walk-up price: £16.90
The Birmingham-Stansted service is one of just a handful of east-west cross-country services in the whole of England: it is easy to get into and out of London, or to go north or south, but east or west are that bit more difficult; I suppose it's a natural side-effect of having a long, thin country.
The trains used - Turbostars - are only two carriages long (well, some are three carriages), and as such have to have fairly high-density seating with not much legroom, which doesn't quite seem to befit a long cross-country journey with an end-to-end time of over three hours.
The key difference with true InterCity trains is that not many travel the whole length, most being confined to shorter journeys; but the act of tying all these short local journeys together creates a very useful long-distance link.
On this occasion, we were delayed at Melton Mowbray for about ten minutes while an ambulance attended; a passenger appeared to have been feeling faint, and while they brought the stretcher out in the end he was able to walk - albeit slowly - off the train. He was taken off to hospital and we proceeded without further interruption, arriving at Peterborough only about six minutes late.
I noticed that our late running caused some unusual platforming at Peterborough: we had been booked to use platform 5, but that was occupied by a Norwich-Liverpool service, so we had to occupy platform 4. That meant both platforms on the west side of Peterborough were occupied, so the London-Leeds train which had been due to use platform 4 but now couldn't was instead sent across to use platform 3, on the east side of the station.
This may not sound like much to worry about, but it's an important reminder of the knock-on consequences that small disruptions can have. One of the key reasons we seem to have more disruption than, say, railways on the continent is that we run much closer to maximum capacity: the British are, in many ways, masters of wringing the most out of the network we have.
After buying some lunch in Peterborough, I duly boarded my next train, a stopping service to Doncaster via Lincoln:
1148 Peterborough to Doncaster, arr 1413
Headcode: 2K42, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 156404
Distance: 93.5 miles; walk-up price: £25.10
The main event of the day was to travel the so-called "Joint Line" from Peterborough to Doncaster via Lincoln. By contrast to the direct fast trains on the East Coast Main Line (via Newark), which take as little as 47 minutes, this service takes nearly two and a half hours. Indeed, it was advertised as the service to Gainsborough Lea Road (our penultimate stop) to avoid unwitting passengers for Doncaster being stuck on it for so long!
On this line we have the perfect example of how the make-do-and-mend approach, which in places means that the British railway network is one of the most efficient in the world, can lead to a really second-rate service for passengers. A perpetuation of timetable cuts in the 1980s, designed to cut costs, compounded by a latter-day shortage of available trains, lead to Lincolnshire (and Lincoln in particular) having one of the most irregular and unfriendly passenger timetables in the country.
The service between Peterborough and Lincoln is approximately hourly between 0830 and 1630. Because the journey time between Peterborough and Lincoln is just under an hour and a half, doing a round trip is a bit tight in three hours; but since they only have three units to use, the service is irregular and occasionally has a gap of an hour and a half.
However, because there are so many level crossings between Spalding and Sleaford, most of which require a local crossing-keeper, that section between Spalding and Sleaford is only open between 0830 and 1715, so that only one shift per day (and not two) is required. This means that the first arrival from Spalding into Lincoln is at 0959, and the last departure is at 1601, which is pretty much useless for commuters.
The Lincoln-Doncaster line, however, is even worse off, with just five trains a day in each direction, at irregular intervals: the next train after this one left five hours after this one. Had I missed my connection at Peterborough I would probably have been required to completely reinvent my plans as a result.
Again, this is mainly due to trying to run the service on fewer trains than are needed for a regular service. In fairness, the services are fairly lightly used, but whether that's a cause or an effect of the sparse train service is not clear.
The train I got is a rare case where the two services are tied together, so we went straight through Lincoln rather than having to change. That said, spending two-and-a-half hours at an average speed of 38mph, partly along jointed track, in a fairly old and relatively uncomfortable Sprinter, looking out over flat countryside, is not perhaps the most enjoyable train ride I have ever had. However, it was an experience, and if nothing else I can tick the line off my list.
I say two-and-a-half hours, but while the timetable said we were due at 1413, the guard announced that we were due to arrive at Doncaster at 1404, and indeed we arrived at 1404, meaning that it was only a little over two and a quarter hours. A curious discrepancy, but not one I can shed any light on.
On arrival at Doncaster I bought a snack, and some drinks, since I didn't expect to have another opportunity to do so for most of the rest of the day. After a half hour observing a remarkably busy station and many trains passing through, I headed east.
1442 Doncaster to Barnetby, arr 1522
Headcode: 1B78, operated by Transpennine Express using Turbostar 170302
Distance: 34.5 miles; walk-up price: £9.65
I repeated the same journey I made on Saturday as far as Barnetby, only this time the usual class 185 Desiro was substituted with a class 170 Turbostar. As detailed above, Turbostars are not my favourite kind of train. A three-car 185 would have been pretty busy with how many people we had; as it was, the two-car 170 was rammed, at least as far as Scunthorpe.
Anyone who thinks that freight trains are a thing of the past should stand at Barnetby for an hour and witness the sheer volume of freight trains passing by: in my hour at Barnetby I counted more than a dozen freight trains coming and going, all heading to or from the docks at Immingham. Most are coal, oil and steel trains, while container trains are very rare.
Barnetby is also a very good place to witness how old mechanical signalling works. While most mainlines have been converted to run on modern colour-light signals, some of the branches of the network remain under the control of semaphore signals controlled by lever frames, and communicating between each other by telegraph wires and bell codes.
Wrawby Junction signal box, just east of Barnetby, is the second-largest mechanical signalbox still operating in the UK today, with 137 levers. (The largest is Severn Bridge Junction box in Shrewsbury.)
Wrawby Junction is where three lines converge for the run towards Grimsby. On Saturday I travelled the lines from Doncaster via Scunthorpe, and from Sheffield via Gainsborough. After an hour or so taking photographs at Barnetby, I completed the trio by taking the line towards Lincoln:
1621 Barnetby to Newark North Gate, arr 1725
Headcode: 2T56, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153374
Distance: 45.75 miles; walk-up price: £8.30
This line is another demonstration that none of the four lines radiating from Lincoln have a regular service. The service between Lincoln and Grimsby - a journey of under an hour between the two biggest towns in Lincolnshire - is approximately two hourly (but again fails to be nicely regular).
In this case, the train ran through Lincoln again to Newark North Gate. Newark has two stations: Newark North Gate on the ECML, with direct trains to London King's Cross, and Newark Castle, on the line between Nottingham and Lincoln. There is a curve to connect North Gate station to Lincoln, and we used that curve to get to Newark North Gate.
The service from Lincoln to Newark North Gate is, again, irregular, being sometimes two-hourly and sometimes hourly. Nonetheless, it provides the principal connection between Lincoln and London. There are not currently any through services, though there will be one service a day between Lincoln and London from the timetable change in May. The rest of the time, however, Lincoln has to put up with lousy connections, often being just too tight to be useful or else requiring a long wait at Newark.
We had been running about five minutes late all the way from Barnetby to Lincoln, but the usual padding time put us into Newark just half a minute late. I stepped off the platform, took a breath of fresh air, and got straight back on the same train:
1734 Newark North Gate to Collingham, arr 1742
Headcode: 2T53, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153374
Distance: 5 miles; walk-up price: £1.45
In this case, I wanted to make sure I'd been through both stations at Newark, so I headed back towards Lincoln, and changed trains at the first station, Collingham, to come back the other way and head through Newark Castle to Nottingham and on to Leicester.
This was probably the maddest moment of the whole weekend: I changed trains at a station in a sleepy village in the middle of nowhere in Nottinghamshire in order to have travelled on a bit of track that I hadn't been on before. Incidentally, I checked the statistics, and no-one is recorded as interchanging at Collingham in 2009/10, which shows just how mad this particular interchange was.
It was only a five minute connection, and indeed the line was so straight I could see my train coming the whole time, but I made the connection no problem, and settled down for a stopping train all the way back to Leicester.
1747 Collingham to Leicester, arr 1922
Headcode: 2L74, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153381+153379
Distance: 49.5 miles; walk-up price: £7.15
Aside from the Sheffield-Lincoln service, which is hourly, the Nottingham-Lincoln service is closest to being a "regular" timetable; there is about one train every hour, but because some of them have only three stops to Nottingham and others have twelve, the departures from Lincoln are a bit unevenly spaced.
Nonetheless, the timetable is considerably better than the other lines radiating from Lincoln, and indeed it was particularly well-used, even if I did chance upon one which did all twelve stops.
Most of the Lincoln-Nottingham services (including this one) continue on to Leicester as stopping trains; I could have gone home via Derby and Tamworth, but I decided that I'd had enough adventure for one weekend so I stayed on the train to head home via Leicester, an hour earlier than I did on Saturday, even if it did mean a full hour-and-a-half on a noisy class 153.
After nearly half an hour in Leicester, which I whiled away chatting on the phone, I boarded my penultimate train of the day:
1949 Leicester to Nuneaton, arr 2008
Headcode: 1N65, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170519
Distance: 18.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
Another Turbostar. Fortunately I wasn't on it for long; once again, I had a seven-minute connection at Nuneaton, though again both trains rather quieter than on Saturday night.
2015 Nuneaton to Coventry, arr 2034
Headcode: 2G60, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £1.45
My ninth and final train of the day was uneventful, and I headed home by bus to get some dinner and collapse in a heap. Monday's statistics, then:
Total time on trains: 8h 13m.
Total distance travelled: 338.25 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £77.45.
This was, by some distance, the longest day in both time and distance, largely thanks to the early start. It was an enjoyable and interesting day, not least for the hour stood at Barnetby watching freight go by. In my next blog post, I'll summarise the whole East Midlands Rover, and tell you what's next...
0906 Coventry to Nuneaton, arr 0925
Headcode: 2K09, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £1.45
I began as I finished on Saturday night with a trip on the shuttle to Nuneaton, on exactly the same train as before, though this time rather more lightly used.
It's a pity that the dash for speed (or, more accurately, capacity) on the WCML has led to the loss of direct Coventry-Leicester trains; while the Coventry-Nuneaton line itself is not in danger of closure, as it is much-used by freight trains, the passenger service is a far cry from what used to be provided, or indeed what Coventry or Nuneaton (or Leicester) deserve.
While a bridge now exists to take Birmingham-Leicester trains over the WCML, this is not usable by Coventry-Leicester trains; either another bridge, or else a reversing siding beyond the bridge (on the line towards Birmingham) would need to be provided in order to avoid having to cross the WCML on the flat.
Unlike Saturday night's brisk seven minute connection, on this occasion I had a full half hour to wait in the quiet airiness of Nuneaton station, to head east to Peterborough:
0952 Nuneaton to Peterborough, arr 1116
Headcode: 1L34, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170112
Distance: 71.25 miles; walk-up price: £16.90
The Birmingham-Stansted service is one of just a handful of east-west cross-country services in the whole of England: it is easy to get into and out of London, or to go north or south, but east or west are that bit more difficult; I suppose it's a natural side-effect of having a long, thin country.
The trains used - Turbostars - are only two carriages long (well, some are three carriages), and as such have to have fairly high-density seating with not much legroom, which doesn't quite seem to befit a long cross-country journey with an end-to-end time of over three hours.
The key difference with true InterCity trains is that not many travel the whole length, most being confined to shorter journeys; but the act of tying all these short local journeys together creates a very useful long-distance link.
On this occasion, we were delayed at Melton Mowbray for about ten minutes while an ambulance attended; a passenger appeared to have been feeling faint, and while they brought the stretcher out in the end he was able to walk - albeit slowly - off the train. He was taken off to hospital and we proceeded without further interruption, arriving at Peterborough only about six minutes late.
I noticed that our late running caused some unusual platforming at Peterborough: we had been booked to use platform 5, but that was occupied by a Norwich-Liverpool service, so we had to occupy platform 4. That meant both platforms on the west side of Peterborough were occupied, so the London-Leeds train which had been due to use platform 4 but now couldn't was instead sent across to use platform 3, on the east side of the station.
This may not sound like much to worry about, but it's an important reminder of the knock-on consequences that small disruptions can have. One of the key reasons we seem to have more disruption than, say, railways on the continent is that we run much closer to maximum capacity: the British are, in many ways, masters of wringing the most out of the network we have.
After buying some lunch in Peterborough, I duly boarded my next train, a stopping service to Doncaster via Lincoln:
1148 Peterborough to Doncaster, arr 1413
Headcode: 2K42, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 156404
Distance: 93.5 miles; walk-up price: £25.10
The main event of the day was to travel the so-called "Joint Line" from Peterborough to Doncaster via Lincoln. By contrast to the direct fast trains on the East Coast Main Line (via Newark), which take as little as 47 minutes, this service takes nearly two and a half hours. Indeed, it was advertised as the service to Gainsborough Lea Road (our penultimate stop) to avoid unwitting passengers for Doncaster being stuck on it for so long!
On this line we have the perfect example of how the make-do-and-mend approach, which in places means that the British railway network is one of the most efficient in the world, can lead to a really second-rate service for passengers. A perpetuation of timetable cuts in the 1980s, designed to cut costs, compounded by a latter-day shortage of available trains, lead to Lincolnshire (and Lincoln in particular) having one of the most irregular and unfriendly passenger timetables in the country.
The service between Peterborough and Lincoln is approximately hourly between 0830 and 1630. Because the journey time between Peterborough and Lincoln is just under an hour and a half, doing a round trip is a bit tight in three hours; but since they only have three units to use, the service is irregular and occasionally has a gap of an hour and a half.
However, because there are so many level crossings between Spalding and Sleaford, most of which require a local crossing-keeper, that section between Spalding and Sleaford is only open between 0830 and 1715, so that only one shift per day (and not two) is required. This means that the first arrival from Spalding into Lincoln is at 0959, and the last departure is at 1601, which is pretty much useless for commuters.
The Lincoln-Doncaster line, however, is even worse off, with just five trains a day in each direction, at irregular intervals: the next train after this one left five hours after this one. Had I missed my connection at Peterborough I would probably have been required to completely reinvent my plans as a result.
Again, this is mainly due to trying to run the service on fewer trains than are needed for a regular service. In fairness, the services are fairly lightly used, but whether that's a cause or an effect of the sparse train service is not clear.
The train I got is a rare case where the two services are tied together, so we went straight through Lincoln rather than having to change. That said, spending two-and-a-half hours at an average speed of 38mph, partly along jointed track, in a fairly old and relatively uncomfortable Sprinter, looking out over flat countryside, is not perhaps the most enjoyable train ride I have ever had. However, it was an experience, and if nothing else I can tick the line off my list.
I say two-and-a-half hours, but while the timetable said we were due at 1413, the guard announced that we were due to arrive at Doncaster at 1404, and indeed we arrived at 1404, meaning that it was only a little over two and a quarter hours. A curious discrepancy, but not one I can shed any light on.
On arrival at Doncaster I bought a snack, and some drinks, since I didn't expect to have another opportunity to do so for most of the rest of the day. After a half hour observing a remarkably busy station and many trains passing through, I headed east.
1442 Doncaster to Barnetby, arr 1522
Headcode: 1B78, operated by Transpennine Express using Turbostar 170302
Distance: 34.5 miles; walk-up price: £9.65
I repeated the same journey I made on Saturday as far as Barnetby, only this time the usual class 185 Desiro was substituted with a class 170 Turbostar. As detailed above, Turbostars are not my favourite kind of train. A three-car 185 would have been pretty busy with how many people we had; as it was, the two-car 170 was rammed, at least as far as Scunthorpe.
Anyone who thinks that freight trains are a thing of the past should stand at Barnetby for an hour and witness the sheer volume of freight trains passing by: in my hour at Barnetby I counted more than a dozen freight trains coming and going, all heading to or from the docks at Immingham. Most are coal, oil and steel trains, while container trains are very rare.
Barnetby is also a very good place to witness how old mechanical signalling works. While most mainlines have been converted to run on modern colour-light signals, some of the branches of the network remain under the control of semaphore signals controlled by lever frames, and communicating between each other by telegraph wires and bell codes.
Wrawby Junction signal box, just east of Barnetby, is the second-largest mechanical signalbox still operating in the UK today, with 137 levers. (The largest is Severn Bridge Junction box in Shrewsbury.)
Wrawby Junction is where three lines converge for the run towards Grimsby. On Saturday I travelled the lines from Doncaster via Scunthorpe, and from Sheffield via Gainsborough. After an hour or so taking photographs at Barnetby, I completed the trio by taking the line towards Lincoln:
1621 Barnetby to Newark North Gate, arr 1725
Headcode: 2T56, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153374
Distance: 45.75 miles; walk-up price: £8.30
This line is another demonstration that none of the four lines radiating from Lincoln have a regular service. The service between Lincoln and Grimsby - a journey of under an hour between the two biggest towns in Lincolnshire - is approximately two hourly (but again fails to be nicely regular).
In this case, the train ran through Lincoln again to Newark North Gate. Newark has two stations: Newark North Gate on the ECML, with direct trains to London King's Cross, and Newark Castle, on the line between Nottingham and Lincoln. There is a curve to connect North Gate station to Lincoln, and we used that curve to get to Newark North Gate.
The service from Lincoln to Newark North Gate is, again, irregular, being sometimes two-hourly and sometimes hourly. Nonetheless, it provides the principal connection between Lincoln and London. There are not currently any through services, though there will be one service a day between Lincoln and London from the timetable change in May. The rest of the time, however, Lincoln has to put up with lousy connections, often being just too tight to be useful or else requiring a long wait at Newark.
We had been running about five minutes late all the way from Barnetby to Lincoln, but the usual padding time put us into Newark just half a minute late. I stepped off the platform, took a breath of fresh air, and got straight back on the same train:
1734 Newark North Gate to Collingham, arr 1742
Headcode: 2T53, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153374
Distance: 5 miles; walk-up price: £1.45
In this case, I wanted to make sure I'd been through both stations at Newark, so I headed back towards Lincoln, and changed trains at the first station, Collingham, to come back the other way and head through Newark Castle to Nottingham and on to Leicester.
This was probably the maddest moment of the whole weekend: I changed trains at a station in a sleepy village in the middle of nowhere in Nottinghamshire in order to have travelled on a bit of track that I hadn't been on before. Incidentally, I checked the statistics, and no-one is recorded as interchanging at Collingham in 2009/10, which shows just how mad this particular interchange was.
It was only a five minute connection, and indeed the line was so straight I could see my train coming the whole time, but I made the connection no problem, and settled down for a stopping train all the way back to Leicester.
1747 Collingham to Leicester, arr 1922
Headcode: 2L74, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153381+153379
Distance: 49.5 miles; walk-up price: £7.15
Aside from the Sheffield-Lincoln service, which is hourly, the Nottingham-Lincoln service is closest to being a "regular" timetable; there is about one train every hour, but because some of them have only three stops to Nottingham and others have twelve, the departures from Lincoln are a bit unevenly spaced.
Nonetheless, the timetable is considerably better than the other lines radiating from Lincoln, and indeed it was particularly well-used, even if I did chance upon one which did all twelve stops.
Most of the Lincoln-Nottingham services (including this one) continue on to Leicester as stopping trains; I could have gone home via Derby and Tamworth, but I decided that I'd had enough adventure for one weekend so I stayed on the train to head home via Leicester, an hour earlier than I did on Saturday, even if it did mean a full hour-and-a-half on a noisy class 153.
After nearly half an hour in Leicester, which I whiled away chatting on the phone, I boarded my penultimate train of the day:
1949 Leicester to Nuneaton, arr 2008
Headcode: 1N65, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170519
Distance: 18.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
Another Turbostar. Fortunately I wasn't on it for long; once again, I had a seven-minute connection at Nuneaton, though again both trains rather quieter than on Saturday night.
2015 Nuneaton to Coventry, arr 2034
Headcode: 2G60, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £1.45
My ninth and final train of the day was uneventful, and I headed home by bus to get some dinner and collapse in a heap. Monday's statistics, then:
Total time on trains: 8h 13m.
Total distance travelled: 338.25 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £77.45.
This was, by some distance, the longest day in both time and distance, largely thanks to the early start. It was an enjoyable and interesting day, not least for the hour stood at Barnetby watching freight go by. In my next blog post, I'll summarise the whole East Midlands Rover, and tell you what's next...
Thursday, 21 April 2011
East Midlands Rover, Day 2
After spending the night with Jonathan in Sheffield, on Saturday morning I headed to the station to set out for the second day of my East Midlands Rover: a tour of north Lincolnshire (or south Humberside, depending on your point of view).
1057 Sheffield to Doncaster, arr 1135
Headcode: 2R11, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 142087
Distance: 19 miles; walk-up price: £2.70
The lines around Sheffield are an example of where multiple lines have been "rationalised" to avoid duplication and save money. There were once two parallel routes out of Sheffield to the north-east, one built by the Midland Railway and one built by the Great Central. What is currently used is a complicated amalgam of the two, in order to best serve the various towns along the route.
This local train took us out of Sheffield on the Midland line through Meadowhall, before turning off and curving down onto the Great Central route at Rotherham Central, back up to the Midland route at Aldwarke, and finally turning right back onto the Grand Central route at Swinton to head for Doncaster.
While the whole Midland route remains, and is used by express trains between Sheffield and Leeds or Doncaster, only parts of the Great Central route survive; most notably, Sheffield used to have a second station (Victoria station) for Great Central trains, before they were re-routed onto the Midland route in the 1970s. Indeed, the lines were, originally, completely separate, and were only connected up in the 1960s.
On arrival at Doncaster - a few minutes late, awaiting a platform - I changed to the following train, and headed east:
1142 Doncaster to Grimsby Town, arr 1244
Headcode: 1B72, operated by Transpennine Express using Desiro 185133
Distance: 48.75 miles; walk-up price: £10.95
Transpennine Express have sometimes tried to portray themselves as an InterCity rail franchise; in reality, they operate regional express services in the north of England. The name is actually something of a misnomer, since only some of its services actually cross the Pennines. Originally, they operated solely trans-Pennine services, principally between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and York, and between Manchester, Sheffield and Cleethorpes; they later took over services between Manchester, Preston and Scotland which had previously been run by Virgin CrossCountry.
I used their south trans-Pennine route to head east from Doncaster to Grimsby via Scunthorpe. The line, which is limited to 60mph, is a rare example where passenger services are actually in a minority, and freight services actually form the majority on the line. There were even a sizeable number of freight trains running on a Saturday, which is pretty rare in the rest of the country.
There's a simple reason for this: the port of Immingham is the largest in the country (by tonnage), and there are a huge variety of freight trains running to and from the docks. Heavy industry dominates the area, and the vast majority of the freight traffic consists of movements of coal, oil and steel, from the docks to power stations and refineries.
When not running through heavy industry, however, the line runs through very nice Lincolnshire countryside - even if it is a bit flat for my taste. Between Doncaster and Scunthorpe, we more or less closely follow the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, before crossing it on a sliding bridge - when a large boat needs to pass down the canal, the railway line over the canal can be slid to one side to create the necessary space! A swing bridge would be more traditional, but this sliding solution was chosen because the railway crosses the canal at an angle.
The train was about ten minutes late due to a previous delay near Sheffield. On our eventual arrival at Grimsby, I crossed the footbridge to head back along a branch line to Barton-on-Humber:
1308 Grimsby Town to Barton-on-Humber, arr 1348
Headcode: 2F89, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 153304
Distance: 19.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.50
and
1358 Barton-on-Humber to Cleethorpes, arr 1449
Headcode: 2F90, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 153304
Distance: 22.75 miles; walk-up price: £3.90
The Barton-on-Humber branch is a short little branch which was cobbled together from a number of lines which used to lead to various docks at Immingham and New Holland, some of which still exist and some of which do not. The line has a very sleepy, rural feel, being as in-the-middle-of-nowhere while still being pretty close to the Humber Estuary. Indeed, having eaten lunch, the heat of the day made me quite sleepy and I dozed off on the way back to Cleethorpes.
The ends of the line, however, are not quite so rural. Barton-on-Humber is within spitting distance of the south end of the Humber Bridge, connecting north Lincolnshire to Hull. At the other end, the line between Grimsby and Cleethorpes runs right through the town and the docks, and feels at times more like a tram due to the sharp curves.
On arriving at Cleethorpes, I witnessed a rare moment where there were three trains in Cleethorpes station at once (that should give you an idea of how busy the place is). After a very short walk to the seafront - literally yards from the station - I had an ice-cream, before heading back to catch my next train:
1521 Cleethorpes to Sheffield, arr 1723
Headcode: 2H01, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 142088
Distance: 71.5 miles; walk-up price: £12.00
The Great Central Railway was something of a latecomer to the railways; it was originally named the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, before building an "extension" from Sheffield to London Marylebone, the now-closed route running via Nottingham, Leicester, Rugby and Aylesbury. Its original mainline ran, as its name suggested, from Manchester to Cleethorpes. However, the original route between Sheffield and Cleethorpes avoided Doncaster and the heavy industry at Scunthorpe, instead running via Worksop, Retford, Gainsborough and Brigg.
The Great Central's second line via Doncaster and Scunthorpe has supplanted this one as the main line to Grimsby, and the route via Brigg has been run down considerably in recent years; while there is still some freight on the line, the passenger service has been reduced to just three trains each way every Saturday, and nothing during the week. This fulfills the obligation to provide some service on the line, while neither reducing weekday freight capacity nor removing passenger trains from other, busier lines during the week.
The line was a nice run through the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire countryside, but was little-used until we got to Retford (where there are regular hourly Sheffield-Lincoln services in addition). I don't know whether this is because there aren't many services, or if this is the reason there aren't many services; I suppose it's a bit of a chicken-and egg problem, but I doubt there's much demand for such services.
Unfortunately, while it was a nice run, it did entail spending two hours in a Pacer.
The Pacer was a cost-cutting exercise, with a simple brief: build a train using almost nothing but parts from buses, thus saving money on making bespoke parts. Undoubtedly the cost-cutting helped to save a number of rural routes from closure, but at the price of a horrible ride, unsuitable seats, and a distinct lack of speed. What's more, they are frequently deployed on busy commuter routes, like this one, and are almost universally loathed throughout the industry.
As with the HSTs, however, they are not compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act, and thus must be withdrawn by 2019. Fortunately, the Department for Transport has a plan.
There are two major infrastructure projects underway in London which will revolutionise commuting to the capital: the building of Crossrail, and the upgrade of Thameslink. Both have a simple principle: since the main constraint on running more services into London is platform capacity in London, connect the services into opposite sides of London and run services through the city instead of terminating them in the centre.
Thameslink was created on a shoestring budget in the 1980s to connect north and south London via Farringdon and Blackfriars, and was such a good idea that it was quickly a victim of its own success, and so a huge £6 billion upgrade will vastly increase capacity. Its success also spawned Crossrail, a similar project to connect Paddington and Liverpool Street on an east-west axis. Unlike Thameslink, which used a tunnel between King's Cross and Blackfriars that was disused in the early 20th century, Crossrail will be completely new-build, and comes with a whopping £15 billion price tag.
Both Thameslink and Crossrail are due for completion in 2018, and will require lots of new trains, but they will take over services currently run by existing trains. That will leave a lot of trains (principally class 165s and class 319s) displaced, with nothing to do.
So, at the same time, two projects will see lines electrified in order that the electric trains currently running on the Thameslink network can be put to good use elsewhere. The Great Western Main Line will be electrified from London to Oxford, Newbury, Bristol and Cardiff by 2017, and a triangle of lines in the north-west of England, connecting Liverpool, Manchester and Preston, plus the line from Preston to Blackpool, will be electrified by 2016.
Of course, there are already diesel trains running these services, so what will happen to those? They will be moved to other services, in a huge cascade effect. The net effect will be to permit the withdrawal from service of Britain's oldest DMUs, the Pacers!
The ultimate credit for this plan must go to Andrew Adonis, the last Secretary of State for Transport under Labour. It was so intricate and well put-together that, when Philip Hammond came along having pledged not to cancel Crossrail, they were compelled to follow the plan through in its entirety, to avoid the ridiculous situation of having perfectly good trains from Thameslink which no-one could use because there weren't enough wires.
Anyway, having endured two hours on a Pacer (as well as the journey from Sheffield to Doncaster in the morning), we sat waiting for a platform at Sheffield for a few minutes, and then, glutton for punishment, I joined a third Pacer to head back to Worksop:
1744 Sheffield to Worksop, arr 1813
Headcode: 2P79, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 144013
Distance: 15.75 miles; walk-up price: £3.35
This Pacer, unlike the others, had been refurbished, and the seats actually felt like train seats, and not bus seats. Nonetheless, it displayed the reliability typical of a Pacer, and we were stopped for a few minutes at one of the intermediate stations while the driver and conductor sorted out a problem with one of the doors not closing properly.
After the short trip back to Worksop, I changed to head to Nottingham on the Robin Hood Line:
1841 Worksop to Nottingham, arr 1947
Headcode: 2D23, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 158773
Distance: 31.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.75
Mansfield was, for about thirty years, one of the largest towns in England with no railway station, the line having been closed in the 1960s. The Robin Hood Line, linking Nottingham to Worksop via Mansfield, re-opened in the mid-1990s (albeit on a slightly different route than the original line). The line runs west of Sherwood Forest (hence the name), and provides a useful commuter route into Nottingham and connections for points beyond.
By this stage I was quite tired and heading for home via Nottingham and Leicester, but I'd seen in checking disruptions that there was a signalling problem at Leicester. I inquired to the guard when he checked my ticket, and he very kindly phoned ahead to Nottingham station, who were able to advise him that the earlier problems had now been fixed, and trains were running relatively normally.
On arrival at Nottingham I grabbed a panini and a muffin for tea, before heading to Leicester for my connection.
2002 Nottingham to Leicester, arr 2034
Headcode: 1B81, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222008
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
An uneventful journey led to a nervous fifteen-minute wait for my next train to Nuneaton, where I had a tight connection to get to Coventry:
2049 Leicester to Nuneaton, arr 2108
Headcode: 1N67, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170116
Distance: 18.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
Before the remodelling of the West Coast Main Line in 2004 or so, there were direct trains between Coventry and Leicester, which reversed at Nuneaton; unfortunately the upgrade works at Nuneaton made this impossible, so now passengers are forced to change. On this Saturday night there were a considerable number doing just that, and it is a pity that there is no longer a through service.
While the Leicester-Nuneaton-Birmingham service is half-hourly, the Coventry-Nuneaton service has been reduced to a shuttle, which runs approximately hourly. In this case I had approximately seven minutes to make the connection, and while my train was a couple of minutes late (not bad given the earlier disruption) I made the connection comfortably.
That said, Nuneaton station has become a ghost of its former self, with no fast trains stopping except in the peaks, and just an hourly service on the main line between Rugby and Crewe. I was quite glad I only had to spend a few minutes there; connections in the other direction tend to involve waiting for at least 25 minutes (or even 55 minutes), since the Coventry shuttle often arrives just after the train to Leicester leaves.
2115 Nuneaton to Coventry, arr 2134
Headcode: 2G60, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £2.85
The East Midlands Rover is only valid from Coventry towards Rugby and Nuneaton, and not towards Birmingham; so had I missed this train I would have had to wait an hour for the next one, rather than being able to go via Birmingham (and probably get home quicker!). That said, it felt rather odd doing an entire weekend on trains in the midlands without going near Birmingham New Street.
After the short trip back to Coventry, and a bus home, I retired for a good night's sleep. Saturday's statistics:
Total time on trains: 7h 58m.
Total distance travelled: 284.75 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £55.00.
Intriguingly I spent longer on trains on Saturday than on Friday, but covered less distance - which says something about the speed of the trains I was on! Next time I'll tell you about Monday, with more exploits in Lincolnshire.
1057 Sheffield to Doncaster, arr 1135
Headcode: 2R11, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 142087
Distance: 19 miles; walk-up price: £2.70
The lines around Sheffield are an example of where multiple lines have been "rationalised" to avoid duplication and save money. There were once two parallel routes out of Sheffield to the north-east, one built by the Midland Railway and one built by the Great Central. What is currently used is a complicated amalgam of the two, in order to best serve the various towns along the route.
This local train took us out of Sheffield on the Midland line through Meadowhall, before turning off and curving down onto the Great Central route at Rotherham Central, back up to the Midland route at Aldwarke, and finally turning right back onto the Grand Central route at Swinton to head for Doncaster.
While the whole Midland route remains, and is used by express trains between Sheffield and Leeds or Doncaster, only parts of the Great Central route survive; most notably, Sheffield used to have a second station (Victoria station) for Great Central trains, before they were re-routed onto the Midland route in the 1970s. Indeed, the lines were, originally, completely separate, and were only connected up in the 1960s.
On arrival at Doncaster - a few minutes late, awaiting a platform - I changed to the following train, and headed east:
1142 Doncaster to Grimsby Town, arr 1244
Headcode: 1B72, operated by Transpennine Express using Desiro 185133
Distance: 48.75 miles; walk-up price: £10.95
Transpennine Express have sometimes tried to portray themselves as an InterCity rail franchise; in reality, they operate regional express services in the north of England. The name is actually something of a misnomer, since only some of its services actually cross the Pennines. Originally, they operated solely trans-Pennine services, principally between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and York, and between Manchester, Sheffield and Cleethorpes; they later took over services between Manchester, Preston and Scotland which had previously been run by Virgin CrossCountry.
I used their south trans-Pennine route to head east from Doncaster to Grimsby via Scunthorpe. The line, which is limited to 60mph, is a rare example where passenger services are actually in a minority, and freight services actually form the majority on the line. There were even a sizeable number of freight trains running on a Saturday, which is pretty rare in the rest of the country.
There's a simple reason for this: the port of Immingham is the largest in the country (by tonnage), and there are a huge variety of freight trains running to and from the docks. Heavy industry dominates the area, and the vast majority of the freight traffic consists of movements of coal, oil and steel, from the docks to power stations and refineries.
When not running through heavy industry, however, the line runs through very nice Lincolnshire countryside - even if it is a bit flat for my taste. Between Doncaster and Scunthorpe, we more or less closely follow the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, before crossing it on a sliding bridge - when a large boat needs to pass down the canal, the railway line over the canal can be slid to one side to create the necessary space! A swing bridge would be more traditional, but this sliding solution was chosen because the railway crosses the canal at an angle.
The train was about ten minutes late due to a previous delay near Sheffield. On our eventual arrival at Grimsby, I crossed the footbridge to head back along a branch line to Barton-on-Humber:
1308 Grimsby Town to Barton-on-Humber, arr 1348
Headcode: 2F89, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 153304
Distance: 19.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.50
and
1358 Barton-on-Humber to Cleethorpes, arr 1449
Headcode: 2F90, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 153304
Distance: 22.75 miles; walk-up price: £3.90
The Barton-on-Humber branch is a short little branch which was cobbled together from a number of lines which used to lead to various docks at Immingham and New Holland, some of which still exist and some of which do not. The line has a very sleepy, rural feel, being as in-the-middle-of-nowhere while still being pretty close to the Humber Estuary. Indeed, having eaten lunch, the heat of the day made me quite sleepy and I dozed off on the way back to Cleethorpes.
The ends of the line, however, are not quite so rural. Barton-on-Humber is within spitting distance of the south end of the Humber Bridge, connecting north Lincolnshire to Hull. At the other end, the line between Grimsby and Cleethorpes runs right through the town and the docks, and feels at times more like a tram due to the sharp curves.
On arriving at Cleethorpes, I witnessed a rare moment where there were three trains in Cleethorpes station at once (that should give you an idea of how busy the place is). After a very short walk to the seafront - literally yards from the station - I had an ice-cream, before heading back to catch my next train:
1521 Cleethorpes to Sheffield, arr 1723
Headcode: 2H01, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 142088
Distance: 71.5 miles; walk-up price: £12.00
The Great Central Railway was something of a latecomer to the railways; it was originally named the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, before building an "extension" from Sheffield to London Marylebone, the now-closed route running via Nottingham, Leicester, Rugby and Aylesbury. Its original mainline ran, as its name suggested, from Manchester to Cleethorpes. However, the original route between Sheffield and Cleethorpes avoided Doncaster and the heavy industry at Scunthorpe, instead running via Worksop, Retford, Gainsborough and Brigg.
The Great Central's second line via Doncaster and Scunthorpe has supplanted this one as the main line to Grimsby, and the route via Brigg has been run down considerably in recent years; while there is still some freight on the line, the passenger service has been reduced to just three trains each way every Saturday, and nothing during the week. This fulfills the obligation to provide some service on the line, while neither reducing weekday freight capacity nor removing passenger trains from other, busier lines during the week.
The line was a nice run through the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire countryside, but was little-used until we got to Retford (where there are regular hourly Sheffield-Lincoln services in addition). I don't know whether this is because there aren't many services, or if this is the reason there aren't many services; I suppose it's a bit of a chicken-and egg problem, but I doubt there's much demand for such services.
Unfortunately, while it was a nice run, it did entail spending two hours in a Pacer.
The Pacer was a cost-cutting exercise, with a simple brief: build a train using almost nothing but parts from buses, thus saving money on making bespoke parts. Undoubtedly the cost-cutting helped to save a number of rural routes from closure, but at the price of a horrible ride, unsuitable seats, and a distinct lack of speed. What's more, they are frequently deployed on busy commuter routes, like this one, and are almost universally loathed throughout the industry.
As with the HSTs, however, they are not compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act, and thus must be withdrawn by 2019. Fortunately, the Department for Transport has a plan.
There are two major infrastructure projects underway in London which will revolutionise commuting to the capital: the building of Crossrail, and the upgrade of Thameslink. Both have a simple principle: since the main constraint on running more services into London is platform capacity in London, connect the services into opposite sides of London and run services through the city instead of terminating them in the centre.
Thameslink was created on a shoestring budget in the 1980s to connect north and south London via Farringdon and Blackfriars, and was such a good idea that it was quickly a victim of its own success, and so a huge £6 billion upgrade will vastly increase capacity. Its success also spawned Crossrail, a similar project to connect Paddington and Liverpool Street on an east-west axis. Unlike Thameslink, which used a tunnel between King's Cross and Blackfriars that was disused in the early 20th century, Crossrail will be completely new-build, and comes with a whopping £15 billion price tag.
Both Thameslink and Crossrail are due for completion in 2018, and will require lots of new trains, but they will take over services currently run by existing trains. That will leave a lot of trains (principally class 165s and class 319s) displaced, with nothing to do.
So, at the same time, two projects will see lines electrified in order that the electric trains currently running on the Thameslink network can be put to good use elsewhere. The Great Western Main Line will be electrified from London to Oxford, Newbury, Bristol and Cardiff by 2017, and a triangle of lines in the north-west of England, connecting Liverpool, Manchester and Preston, plus the line from Preston to Blackpool, will be electrified by 2016.
Of course, there are already diesel trains running these services, so what will happen to those? They will be moved to other services, in a huge cascade effect. The net effect will be to permit the withdrawal from service of Britain's oldest DMUs, the Pacers!
The ultimate credit for this plan must go to Andrew Adonis, the last Secretary of State for Transport under Labour. It was so intricate and well put-together that, when Philip Hammond came along having pledged not to cancel Crossrail, they were compelled to follow the plan through in its entirety, to avoid the ridiculous situation of having perfectly good trains from Thameslink which no-one could use because there weren't enough wires.
Anyway, having endured two hours on a Pacer (as well as the journey from Sheffield to Doncaster in the morning), we sat waiting for a platform at Sheffield for a few minutes, and then, glutton for punishment, I joined a third Pacer to head back to Worksop:
1744 Sheffield to Worksop, arr 1813
Headcode: 2P79, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 144013
Distance: 15.75 miles; walk-up price: £3.35
This Pacer, unlike the others, had been refurbished, and the seats actually felt like train seats, and not bus seats. Nonetheless, it displayed the reliability typical of a Pacer, and we were stopped for a few minutes at one of the intermediate stations while the driver and conductor sorted out a problem with one of the doors not closing properly.
After the short trip back to Worksop, I changed to head to Nottingham on the Robin Hood Line:
1841 Worksop to Nottingham, arr 1947
Headcode: 2D23, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 158773
Distance: 31.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.75
Mansfield was, for about thirty years, one of the largest towns in England with no railway station, the line having been closed in the 1960s. The Robin Hood Line, linking Nottingham to Worksop via Mansfield, re-opened in the mid-1990s (albeit on a slightly different route than the original line). The line runs west of Sherwood Forest (hence the name), and provides a useful commuter route into Nottingham and connections for points beyond.
By this stage I was quite tired and heading for home via Nottingham and Leicester, but I'd seen in checking disruptions that there was a signalling problem at Leicester. I inquired to the guard when he checked my ticket, and he very kindly phoned ahead to Nottingham station, who were able to advise him that the earlier problems had now been fixed, and trains were running relatively normally.
On arrival at Nottingham I grabbed a panini and a muffin for tea, before heading to Leicester for my connection.
2002 Nottingham to Leicester, arr 2034
Headcode: 1B81, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222008
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
An uneventful journey led to a nervous fifteen-minute wait for my next train to Nuneaton, where I had a tight connection to get to Coventry:
2049 Leicester to Nuneaton, arr 2108
Headcode: 1N67, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170116
Distance: 18.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
Before the remodelling of the West Coast Main Line in 2004 or so, there were direct trains between Coventry and Leicester, which reversed at Nuneaton; unfortunately the upgrade works at Nuneaton made this impossible, so now passengers are forced to change. On this Saturday night there were a considerable number doing just that, and it is a pity that there is no longer a through service.
While the Leicester-Nuneaton-Birmingham service is half-hourly, the Coventry-Nuneaton service has been reduced to a shuttle, which runs approximately hourly. In this case I had approximately seven minutes to make the connection, and while my train was a couple of minutes late (not bad given the earlier disruption) I made the connection comfortably.
That said, Nuneaton station has become a ghost of its former self, with no fast trains stopping except in the peaks, and just an hourly service on the main line between Rugby and Crewe. I was quite glad I only had to spend a few minutes there; connections in the other direction tend to involve waiting for at least 25 minutes (or even 55 minutes), since the Coventry shuttle often arrives just after the train to Leicester leaves.
2115 Nuneaton to Coventry, arr 2134
Headcode: 2G60, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £2.85
The East Midlands Rover is only valid from Coventry towards Rugby and Nuneaton, and not towards Birmingham; so had I missed this train I would have had to wait an hour for the next one, rather than being able to go via Birmingham (and probably get home quicker!). That said, it felt rather odd doing an entire weekend on trains in the midlands without going near Birmingham New Street.
After the short trip back to Coventry, and a bus home, I retired for a good night's sleep. Saturday's statistics:
Total time on trains: 7h 58m.
Total distance travelled: 284.75 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £55.00.
Intriguingly I spent longer on trains on Saturday than on Friday, but covered less distance - which says something about the speed of the trains I was on! Next time I'll tell you about Monday, with more exploits in Lincolnshire.
Sunday, 17 April 2011
East Midlands Rover, Day 1
From the outset of the East Midlands Rover, I had three fairly full days planned; however, the night before I was due to start I was so excited that I couldn't sleep. As a result, I decided to swap my plans for Friday and Monday, so that I could start a little later on the Friday. This necessitated a little alteration, as I had planned to spend Friday night in Sheffield with Jonathan (who I stayed with for two nights on the All Line Rover, see my sixth and seventh blog posts).
1101 Coventry to Rugby, arr 1113
Headcode: 2Y58, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350122
Distance: 13.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.15
I began with the short trip to Rugby on a pretty empty Desiro; this was a journey I had done many times before on the way to and from London Euston, but I had never spent any significant amount of time at Rugby. The journey took just nine minutes, at an average speed of 90mph.
Rugby is the nerve centre of the West Coast Main Line: aside from commuter trains closer to London, pretty much everything on the West Coast Main Line will pass through Rugby at some point. It is home to the signalbox which will very soon control the line all the way from Watford Junction to Lichfield. And until you stand at Rugby and see just how close the trains run together, it is difficult to comprehend just how busy the WCML is.
As it is, trains can run on green signals on plain track at less than two minutes apart, though they are only timetabled three minutes apart to allow for some slack. Nonetheless, if one is running a minute late, they can and do run closer together than on any other 125mph main line in the country.
Aside from a plethora of fast Virgin Trains Pendolinos running to and from London Euston, there are a number of London Midland services, and a large amount of freight. The WCML handles a disproportionately large amount of freight compared with the rest of the railway network, not least because it has been recently upgraded to cope with more freight, but also because the rest of the network is still lacking in capacity. From Rugby, freight trains run from as far away as the ports at Southampton and Felixstowe to the container yards at Coatbridge in Scotland, and beyond.
I spent 45 minutes at Rugby this Friday morning watching various freight trains go by; I saw a number of container trains, most notably a Freightliner service (double-headed by 86638/86637) which stopped in platform 6 for what appeared to be a driver comfort break, or possibly a driver change.
In an unusual move, I saw two new Stansted Express units (379014/015) using platform 2 at Rugby. National Express East Anglia are buying 30 new four-car sets for use on the Stansted Express and the other West Anglia lines into and out of London Liverpool Street; this will release older stock for use elsewhere. Before being brought into service, however, they have to be tested and run-in to shake down any faults; it would appear that this testing is happening on the WCML between Rugby and Crewe, where there is some off-peak capacity.
Anyway, while nine Virgin Trains services an hour in each direction pass through Rugby off-peak (that rises to as much as 14 an hour at peak times), only one an hour stops at Rugby; what's more, this extends only to Birmingham. As such, since 2008 Rugby has lost out on stops on services to Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow, prolonging journey times in the mad dash for speedy services to and from London. Indeed, Rugby is in the perverse situation where sometimes the fastest way to go north is via Milton Keynes - which is in exactly the wrong direction!
However, at least Rugby still has an hourly fast off-peak service to London; Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield all have no off-peak fast trains, and only a handful of irregular stops in fast trains in the peaks. An hourly London Midland stopping service makes up the shortfall, which I took from Rugby to Stoke-on-Trent:
1204 Rugby to Stoke-on-Trent, arr 1313
Headcode: 1U31, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350241
Distance: 67.25 miles; walk-up price: £8.50
This hourly service is very well-used, and it proved difficult to get a seat, though it gradually thinned out as we got further north. The service in fact stretches all the way from London to Crewe, providing the only (off-peak) direct trains from London to Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield.
However, it goes via Northampton, not the fast route via Weedon, and then gets sent from Stafford to Stoke-on-Trent and then back to Crewe, rather than running direct. End-to-end journey times are not, therefore, spectacular, but the run via Northampton permits it to be overtaken by the one Virgin Trains service which calls at Rugby; as such, it provides a connection from that train to places like Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield.
The best illustration of the lack of speed with which these London Midland stopping trains serve the line is that faster Pendolinos running on the adjacent fast lines passed us not once, not twice, but three times just between Rugby and Stafford. Granted the Desiros are capable of 100mph (which is, in fairness, pretty fast), not the 125mph of the Pendolinos, but it seems a little odd to consign all the stops to just one service, and not provide even Nuneaton (by far the largest of the towns on the Trent Valley) with at least one train an hour to and from London.
There are two types of Desiros operated by London Midland: the 350/1s, which have 2+2 seating for longer-distance services, and the 350/2s, which have 2+3 seating for busy commuter services into London. As is inevitable, though, the two types get exchanged freely between the services, so this fairly long-distance service was unfortunately operated by a 350/2, which had noticeably less width to the seats and slightly less legroom.
The journey to Stoke-on-Trent took just over an hour, where I alighted and bought some lunch, as well as taking a few photographs of the station. My next train was a one-carriage local train to Derby:
1333 Stoke-on-Trent to Derby, arr 1424
Headcode: 1K14, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153381
Distance: 35 miles; walk-up price: £5.10
The North Staffordshire line is something of a railway backwater: it retains jointed track, semaphore signals operated by lever frames, manually worked level crossing gates, and just an hourly passenger service in each direction between Crewe and Derby, via Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter.
Only a few years ago, services on the line extended from Crewe to Skegness via Derby and Nottingham; in 2005 the service was split into two parts at Nottingham, to improve punctuality; soon after, the residual service on the western half was curtailed to just run between Crewe and Derby, thus necessitating two changes to make the journey from Crewe to Skegness today.
This service was provided by a single-carriage Class 153 Sprinter, of which I have talked at length before. They are not the most wonderful trains, but in this case it was perfectly adequate for this local service, which was actually quite well-used.
We arrived in Derby on time, a station with which I'm fairly familiar after a number of visits over the years. Derby is a key hub of the Midland Main Line, having been the original headquarters of the Midland Railway. While not all the trains pass through Derby (for example, the London-Nottingham services), almost all the maintenance is done at Etches Park Depot just outside Derby.
Derby is also the point at which the principal Cross-Country route, the north-east to south-west axis, starts: the Derby-Birmingham-Bristol line, while today operated by CrossCountry, was originally built by the Midland Railway, and so the mileposts count from zero at Derby. Most of the other lines that CrossCountry uses are in fact bits of other main lines; the Derby-Bristol route is possibly the only track on which CrossCountry can claim to be the "main" operator.
On this visit, I caught a rare sight of the Network Rail Measurement Train stopped in platform 3. This train is, essentially, a big yellow HST (in this case it was 43013+43062) fitted with cameras, sensors, and lots of computers to record and monitor the state of the track it's running over. This is used as a means of tracking the state of the rails, looking for breaks and other defects. It runs over most of the mainlines in the UK on a two-week rotating pattern, and is based in Derby.
After half an hour in Derby, where I bought a snack and took a few photographs, I headed for the Derwent Valley line to Matlock:
1454 Derby to Matlock, arr 1528
Headcode: 2A42, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153376+153313
and
1536 Matlock to Derby, arr 1610
Headcode: 2A51, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153313+153376
Distance: 17.25 miles each way; walk-up return: £3.50
The Matlock branch was, many decades ago, the Midland Railway's main line to Manchester. Trains ran from London St Pancras, through Leicester, Derby, Ambergate, Matlock, over the Peak District to Buxton, New Mills and Manchester. All except the 20-mile stretch in the middle, between Matlock and Buxton, remains open.
Unfortunately, that closure in 1968 turned the through line into two branches, Manchester-Buxton and Derby-Matlock. Indeed, it is fairly remarkable that both branch lines have survived. Nevertheless, the lack of connections across the Peak District is palpable, and the A6 road has struggled to take the strain imposed on it since the trains ceased to run.
Reopening the Matlock-Buxton line would provide a very useful second route to Manchester. When upgrade works on the WCML in 2003-04 prohibited a through service on the usual route from London Euston to Manchester, an hourly London-Leicester-Manchester service was run, but that used the curve at Dore, near Sheffield, to run between Chesterfield and the Hope Valley, and is quite full already. Such a reopening might also take some of the strain off the WCML, which is liable to be full to bursting within a decade.
Nonetheless, the line that remains is a beautiful (if somewhat slow) line that climbs up the valley of the River Derwent to Matlock. We were in two class 153 Sprinters coupled together, and at Ambergate (where the branch leaves the main Derby-Sheffield line) I heard the train in rear start its engine; while one engine suffices on the flat, the branch is pretty hilly and needed the power to get up the hills.
I hadn't quite appreciated how hilly Derbyshire is until this journey; the line weaves its way up through the valley, crossing the River Derwent a number of times, and passing through a number of tunnels, to Matlock, a small town of 20,000 people or so in north-west Derbyshire. Upon arriving at the terminus, there is little to do in the way of trains but go back whence you came, so after just eight minutes I got back on the train and headed back down the valley to Derby.
After a brief wait for my next train to come out of the sidings, I boarded:
1634 Derby to Kettering (via Corby), arr 1801
Headcode: 1P69, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222102
Distance: 67 miles; walk-up price: £11.50
Almost all services on the Midland Main Line (MML) pass through Leicester. However, there is another route between Kettering and Loughborough, which avoids Leicester but instead passes through Corby, Oakham and Melton Mowbray, and this was the route taken by this train.
Corby was, for many years, the largest town in England without a railway station. It re-opened in 2009, with an hourly service to and from London St Pancras. Melton Mowbray and Oakham are served by the Birmingham-Stansted CrossCountry service, but until recently had no through trains to London, instead requiring a change at Leicester.
However, the track on this line from Kettering to Manton Junction (south of Oakham) was never closed in the first place; it remained in place throughout, used mainly by freight, and occasionally passenger trains diverted due to engineering works. Once Corby station reopened, a few trains a day were extended through Corby to Oakham and Melton Mowbray, with one in each direction extending to Derby, and it is this train that I got.
So consistent is the calling pattern that the conductor, having carefully announced that this train was not calling at Leicester, on departure announced "welcome to the 1634 to London St Pancras, calling at East Midlands Parkway, Loughborough, Leicester--- CORRECTION: calling at East Midlands Parkway, Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Corby, Kettering...". That goes some way to showing that this service is, indeed, something of an oddity.
But a very nice oddity it is: the line provides a much more interesting view of the Leicestershire and Northamptonshire countryside than the usual route through Leicester and Market Harborough, including the spectacular Welland Viaduct, an 82-arch masonry viaduct crossing the River Welland on the Northamptonshire-Rutland border.
Now, my original plan at this point called for continuing to Bedford, heading across to Bletchley and back up the WCML to Coventry. However, in moving the plan to Friday I had to fit in a night halt at Sheffield, in order to be in position for Saturday, so I turned back on myself and headed north, on the conventional MML route to Leicester:
1804 Kettering to Leicester, arr 1830
Headcode: 1F56, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222016
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £7.00
This train is a rare example (well, rare at least north of London) of portion-working: two Meridians are coupled up and run from London to Kettering, where they split in two; the front portion goes forward to Leicester, Derby and Sheffield, and the rear portion continues to Corby. I had a pretty tight connection to make at Kettering, with just three minutes to charge across the footbridge; I was very glad of the platform staff, one of whom saw me coming and guided me to the correct portion of the train. I thanked her quickly and jumped on the train with a minute or so to spare.
As I say, this train was going to Sheffield; however, there are a number of different routes to get to Sheffield, even on the MML. The trunk of the line runs to Trent Junction, just north of East Midlands Parkway, where the line splits in three. There is the line to Derby, the line to Nottingham, and the Erewash Valley line which heads due north to Alfreton. All three lines join up again just south of Chesterfield.
Few trains use the Erewash Valley line in full, but in its heyday it was the Midland Main Line to Sheffield, being the fastest way there. However, Sheffield on its own wasn't quite enough of a basis to sustain a fast service, especially when it bypasses both Derby and Nottingham, and so except for a few crack expresses in the peaks most trains, then and now, run via either Derby or Nottingham.
Running from London to Sheffield via Nottingham entails a reversal at Nottingham, but running via Derby does not, so almost trains to and from Sheffield today run via Derby; the only exceptions are a few peak London-Nottingham services which are extended to Leeds via Sheffield, in order to access the depot at Neville Hill in Leeds. That said, the best journey time today from Sheffield to London via Derby - two hours, seven minutes - is only one minute slower than when they last ran express services via the Erewash Valley.
I decided that I'd seen Derby enough times for one day, so I decided to change off the train going to Sheffield via Derby, and head via Nottingham instead. This necessitated changing onto the following train at Leicester:
1837 Leicester to Nottingham, arr 1910
Headcode: 1D57, operated by East Midlands Trains using HST 43058+43082
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
Ah, at last, a proper train with locomotives and coaches. The High Speed Train has been on our network since 1976, and very rapidly became the icon of the railway network. The Transport Secretary Philip Hammond recently announced that they would be refurbished in order to work on the Great Western Main Line down to Penzance for another decade or two yet. This will be no mean feat, since they do not comply with the Disability Discrimination Act, because they have manual doors, something the refurbishment will have to correct.
Slam-door trains were, until just a couple of decades ago, the backbone of our network. However, while those of us who know where the handle is (lean out of the window) love them, they aren't so easy to work with for people who are small or even not very strong, and so automatic-door trains are becoming the norm.
One of the reasons people like me love slam-door trains was that, in the days before central locking, they made the whole experience more efficient, because you could be on the platform before the train was fully at a stand, which could easily gain you ten or twenty seconds.
It doesn't sound like much, but the added time it takes for automatic-door trains to have the doors released, open the doors, check there's no-one left in the way, sound the beeper, close the doors and drive off adds 15-30 seconds to every station stop; for instance, when South West Trains revised their timetable in 2004 they added sometimes as much as five or ten minutes to commuter journeys into London. And five or ten minutes is definitely a big deal, especially in train timetabling.
I was expecting a mad dash at Nottingham from platform 4 to platform 3 to catch a five-minute connection; however, our train was redirected into platform 1, meaning that I just had to walk across the island to catch my final train of the day:
1915 Nottingham to Sheffield, arr 2015
Headcode: 1Y56, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158910
Distance: 40.75 miles; walk-up price: £7.45
My last train for Friday was run by Northern Rail, who introduced an hourly service between Nottingham and Leeds in December 2008. While there were already hourly services between Nottingham and Sheffield, and many more between Sheffield and Leeds, this was the first direct service between these two locations for over 25 years.
The journey was largely uneventful, though we were slightly delayed at Dore Junction due to a late-running Transpennine Express service coming from Manchester, which we followed into Sheffield.
By this stage the sun was setting on a long day, and I arrived in Sheffield to meet Jonathan, with whom I went for dinner in Zizzi's in Leopold Square in Sheffield, before retiring to his flat in one of the University of Sheffield halls of residence, where he's now doing a PhD. Friday's statistics, then:
Total time on trains: 6h 46m.
Total distance travelled: 312.5 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £52.20.
For a ticket that cost £44.20, it's impressively good value - though admittedly I had carefully planned my activities to get the maximum value out of it. In my next post, I'll tell you all about Saturday - to Cleethorpes and back!
1101 Coventry to Rugby, arr 1113
Headcode: 2Y58, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350122
Distance: 13.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.15
I began with the short trip to Rugby on a pretty empty Desiro; this was a journey I had done many times before on the way to and from London Euston, but I had never spent any significant amount of time at Rugby. The journey took just nine minutes, at an average speed of 90mph.
Rugby is the nerve centre of the West Coast Main Line: aside from commuter trains closer to London, pretty much everything on the West Coast Main Line will pass through Rugby at some point. It is home to the signalbox which will very soon control the line all the way from Watford Junction to Lichfield. And until you stand at Rugby and see just how close the trains run together, it is difficult to comprehend just how busy the WCML is.
As it is, trains can run on green signals on plain track at less than two minutes apart, though they are only timetabled three minutes apart to allow for some slack. Nonetheless, if one is running a minute late, they can and do run closer together than on any other 125mph main line in the country.
Aside from a plethora of fast Virgin Trains Pendolinos running to and from London Euston, there are a number of London Midland services, and a large amount of freight. The WCML handles a disproportionately large amount of freight compared with the rest of the railway network, not least because it has been recently upgraded to cope with more freight, but also because the rest of the network is still lacking in capacity. From Rugby, freight trains run from as far away as the ports at Southampton and Felixstowe to the container yards at Coatbridge in Scotland, and beyond.
I spent 45 minutes at Rugby this Friday morning watching various freight trains go by; I saw a number of container trains, most notably a Freightliner service (double-headed by 86638/86637) which stopped in platform 6 for what appeared to be a driver comfort break, or possibly a driver change.
In an unusual move, I saw two new Stansted Express units (379014/015) using platform 2 at Rugby. National Express East Anglia are buying 30 new four-car sets for use on the Stansted Express and the other West Anglia lines into and out of London Liverpool Street; this will release older stock for use elsewhere. Before being brought into service, however, they have to be tested and run-in to shake down any faults; it would appear that this testing is happening on the WCML between Rugby and Crewe, where there is some off-peak capacity.
Anyway, while nine Virgin Trains services an hour in each direction pass through Rugby off-peak (that rises to as much as 14 an hour at peak times), only one an hour stops at Rugby; what's more, this extends only to Birmingham. As such, since 2008 Rugby has lost out on stops on services to Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow, prolonging journey times in the mad dash for speedy services to and from London. Indeed, Rugby is in the perverse situation where sometimes the fastest way to go north is via Milton Keynes - which is in exactly the wrong direction!
However, at least Rugby still has an hourly fast off-peak service to London; Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield all have no off-peak fast trains, and only a handful of irregular stops in fast trains in the peaks. An hourly London Midland stopping service makes up the shortfall, which I took from Rugby to Stoke-on-Trent:
1204 Rugby to Stoke-on-Trent, arr 1313
Headcode: 1U31, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350241
Distance: 67.25 miles; walk-up price: £8.50
This hourly service is very well-used, and it proved difficult to get a seat, though it gradually thinned out as we got further north. The service in fact stretches all the way from London to Crewe, providing the only (off-peak) direct trains from London to Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield.
However, it goes via Northampton, not the fast route via Weedon, and then gets sent from Stafford to Stoke-on-Trent and then back to Crewe, rather than running direct. End-to-end journey times are not, therefore, spectacular, but the run via Northampton permits it to be overtaken by the one Virgin Trains service which calls at Rugby; as such, it provides a connection from that train to places like Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield.
The best illustration of the lack of speed with which these London Midland stopping trains serve the line is that faster Pendolinos running on the adjacent fast lines passed us not once, not twice, but three times just between Rugby and Stafford. Granted the Desiros are capable of 100mph (which is, in fairness, pretty fast), not the 125mph of the Pendolinos, but it seems a little odd to consign all the stops to just one service, and not provide even Nuneaton (by far the largest of the towns on the Trent Valley) with at least one train an hour to and from London.
There are two types of Desiros operated by London Midland: the 350/1s, which have 2+2 seating for longer-distance services, and the 350/2s, which have 2+3 seating for busy commuter services into London. As is inevitable, though, the two types get exchanged freely between the services, so this fairly long-distance service was unfortunately operated by a 350/2, which had noticeably less width to the seats and slightly less legroom.
The journey to Stoke-on-Trent took just over an hour, where I alighted and bought some lunch, as well as taking a few photographs of the station. My next train was a one-carriage local train to Derby:
1333 Stoke-on-Trent to Derby, arr 1424
Headcode: 1K14, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153381
Distance: 35 miles; walk-up price: £5.10
The North Staffordshire line is something of a railway backwater: it retains jointed track, semaphore signals operated by lever frames, manually worked level crossing gates, and just an hourly passenger service in each direction between Crewe and Derby, via Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter.
Only a few years ago, services on the line extended from Crewe to Skegness via Derby and Nottingham; in 2005 the service was split into two parts at Nottingham, to improve punctuality; soon after, the residual service on the western half was curtailed to just run between Crewe and Derby, thus necessitating two changes to make the journey from Crewe to Skegness today.
This service was provided by a single-carriage Class 153 Sprinter, of which I have talked at length before. They are not the most wonderful trains, but in this case it was perfectly adequate for this local service, which was actually quite well-used.
We arrived in Derby on time, a station with which I'm fairly familiar after a number of visits over the years. Derby is a key hub of the Midland Main Line, having been the original headquarters of the Midland Railway. While not all the trains pass through Derby (for example, the London-Nottingham services), almost all the maintenance is done at Etches Park Depot just outside Derby.
Derby is also the point at which the principal Cross-Country route, the north-east to south-west axis, starts: the Derby-Birmingham-Bristol line, while today operated by CrossCountry, was originally built by the Midland Railway, and so the mileposts count from zero at Derby. Most of the other lines that CrossCountry uses are in fact bits of other main lines; the Derby-Bristol route is possibly the only track on which CrossCountry can claim to be the "main" operator.
On this visit, I caught a rare sight of the Network Rail Measurement Train stopped in platform 3. This train is, essentially, a big yellow HST (in this case it was 43013+43062) fitted with cameras, sensors, and lots of computers to record and monitor the state of the track it's running over. This is used as a means of tracking the state of the rails, looking for breaks and other defects. It runs over most of the mainlines in the UK on a two-week rotating pattern, and is based in Derby.
After half an hour in Derby, where I bought a snack and took a few photographs, I headed for the Derwent Valley line to Matlock:
1454 Derby to Matlock, arr 1528
Headcode: 2A42, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153376+153313
and
1536 Matlock to Derby, arr 1610
Headcode: 2A51, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153313+153376
Distance: 17.25 miles each way; walk-up return: £3.50
The Matlock branch was, many decades ago, the Midland Railway's main line to Manchester. Trains ran from London St Pancras, through Leicester, Derby, Ambergate, Matlock, over the Peak District to Buxton, New Mills and Manchester. All except the 20-mile stretch in the middle, between Matlock and Buxton, remains open.
Unfortunately, that closure in 1968 turned the through line into two branches, Manchester-Buxton and Derby-Matlock. Indeed, it is fairly remarkable that both branch lines have survived. Nevertheless, the lack of connections across the Peak District is palpable, and the A6 road has struggled to take the strain imposed on it since the trains ceased to run.
Reopening the Matlock-Buxton line would provide a very useful second route to Manchester. When upgrade works on the WCML in 2003-04 prohibited a through service on the usual route from London Euston to Manchester, an hourly London-Leicester-Manchester service was run, but that used the curve at Dore, near Sheffield, to run between Chesterfield and the Hope Valley, and is quite full already. Such a reopening might also take some of the strain off the WCML, which is liable to be full to bursting within a decade.
Nonetheless, the line that remains is a beautiful (if somewhat slow) line that climbs up the valley of the River Derwent to Matlock. We were in two class 153 Sprinters coupled together, and at Ambergate (where the branch leaves the main Derby-Sheffield line) I heard the train in rear start its engine; while one engine suffices on the flat, the branch is pretty hilly and needed the power to get up the hills.
I hadn't quite appreciated how hilly Derbyshire is until this journey; the line weaves its way up through the valley, crossing the River Derwent a number of times, and passing through a number of tunnels, to Matlock, a small town of 20,000 people or so in north-west Derbyshire. Upon arriving at the terminus, there is little to do in the way of trains but go back whence you came, so after just eight minutes I got back on the train and headed back down the valley to Derby.
After a brief wait for my next train to come out of the sidings, I boarded:
1634 Derby to Kettering (via Corby), arr 1801
Headcode: 1P69, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222102
Distance: 67 miles; walk-up price: £11.50
Almost all services on the Midland Main Line (MML) pass through Leicester. However, there is another route between Kettering and Loughborough, which avoids Leicester but instead passes through Corby, Oakham and Melton Mowbray, and this was the route taken by this train.
Corby was, for many years, the largest town in England without a railway station. It re-opened in 2009, with an hourly service to and from London St Pancras. Melton Mowbray and Oakham are served by the Birmingham-Stansted CrossCountry service, but until recently had no through trains to London, instead requiring a change at Leicester.
However, the track on this line from Kettering to Manton Junction (south of Oakham) was never closed in the first place; it remained in place throughout, used mainly by freight, and occasionally passenger trains diverted due to engineering works. Once Corby station reopened, a few trains a day were extended through Corby to Oakham and Melton Mowbray, with one in each direction extending to Derby, and it is this train that I got.
So consistent is the calling pattern that the conductor, having carefully announced that this train was not calling at Leicester, on departure announced "welcome to the 1634 to London St Pancras, calling at East Midlands Parkway, Loughborough, Leicester--- CORRECTION: calling at East Midlands Parkway, Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Corby, Kettering...". That goes some way to showing that this service is, indeed, something of an oddity.
But a very nice oddity it is: the line provides a much more interesting view of the Leicestershire and Northamptonshire countryside than the usual route through Leicester and Market Harborough, including the spectacular Welland Viaduct, an 82-arch masonry viaduct crossing the River Welland on the Northamptonshire-Rutland border.
Now, my original plan at this point called for continuing to Bedford, heading across to Bletchley and back up the WCML to Coventry. However, in moving the plan to Friday I had to fit in a night halt at Sheffield, in order to be in position for Saturday, so I turned back on myself and headed north, on the conventional MML route to Leicester:
1804 Kettering to Leicester, arr 1830
Headcode: 1F56, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222016
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £7.00
This train is a rare example (well, rare at least north of London) of portion-working: two Meridians are coupled up and run from London to Kettering, where they split in two; the front portion goes forward to Leicester, Derby and Sheffield, and the rear portion continues to Corby. I had a pretty tight connection to make at Kettering, with just three minutes to charge across the footbridge; I was very glad of the platform staff, one of whom saw me coming and guided me to the correct portion of the train. I thanked her quickly and jumped on the train with a minute or so to spare.
As I say, this train was going to Sheffield; however, there are a number of different routes to get to Sheffield, even on the MML. The trunk of the line runs to Trent Junction, just north of East Midlands Parkway, where the line splits in three. There is the line to Derby, the line to Nottingham, and the Erewash Valley line which heads due north to Alfreton. All three lines join up again just south of Chesterfield.
Few trains use the Erewash Valley line in full, but in its heyday it was the Midland Main Line to Sheffield, being the fastest way there. However, Sheffield on its own wasn't quite enough of a basis to sustain a fast service, especially when it bypasses both Derby and Nottingham, and so except for a few crack expresses in the peaks most trains, then and now, run via either Derby or Nottingham.
Running from London to Sheffield via Nottingham entails a reversal at Nottingham, but running via Derby does not, so almost trains to and from Sheffield today run via Derby; the only exceptions are a few peak London-Nottingham services which are extended to Leeds via Sheffield, in order to access the depot at Neville Hill in Leeds. That said, the best journey time today from Sheffield to London via Derby - two hours, seven minutes - is only one minute slower than when they last ran express services via the Erewash Valley.
I decided that I'd seen Derby enough times for one day, so I decided to change off the train going to Sheffield via Derby, and head via Nottingham instead. This necessitated changing onto the following train at Leicester:
1837 Leicester to Nottingham, arr 1910
Headcode: 1D57, operated by East Midlands Trains using HST 43058+43082
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £6.00
Ah, at last, a proper train with locomotives and coaches. The High Speed Train has been on our network since 1976, and very rapidly became the icon of the railway network. The Transport Secretary Philip Hammond recently announced that they would be refurbished in order to work on the Great Western Main Line down to Penzance for another decade or two yet. This will be no mean feat, since they do not comply with the Disability Discrimination Act, because they have manual doors, something the refurbishment will have to correct.
Slam-door trains were, until just a couple of decades ago, the backbone of our network. However, while those of us who know where the handle is (lean out of the window) love them, they aren't so easy to work with for people who are small or even not very strong, and so automatic-door trains are becoming the norm.
One of the reasons people like me love slam-door trains was that, in the days before central locking, they made the whole experience more efficient, because you could be on the platform before the train was fully at a stand, which could easily gain you ten or twenty seconds.
It doesn't sound like much, but the added time it takes for automatic-door trains to have the doors released, open the doors, check there's no-one left in the way, sound the beeper, close the doors and drive off adds 15-30 seconds to every station stop; for instance, when South West Trains revised their timetable in 2004 they added sometimes as much as five or ten minutes to commuter journeys into London. And five or ten minutes is definitely a big deal, especially in train timetabling.
I was expecting a mad dash at Nottingham from platform 4 to platform 3 to catch a five-minute connection; however, our train was redirected into platform 1, meaning that I just had to walk across the island to catch my final train of the day:
1915 Nottingham to Sheffield, arr 2015
Headcode: 1Y56, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158910
Distance: 40.75 miles; walk-up price: £7.45
My last train for Friday was run by Northern Rail, who introduced an hourly service between Nottingham and Leeds in December 2008. While there were already hourly services between Nottingham and Sheffield, and many more between Sheffield and Leeds, this was the first direct service between these two locations for over 25 years.
The journey was largely uneventful, though we were slightly delayed at Dore Junction due to a late-running Transpennine Express service coming from Manchester, which we followed into Sheffield.
By this stage the sun was setting on a long day, and I arrived in Sheffield to meet Jonathan, with whom I went for dinner in Zizzi's in Leopold Square in Sheffield, before retiring to his flat in one of the University of Sheffield halls of residence, where he's now doing a PhD. Friday's statistics, then:
Total time on trains: 6h 46m.
Total distance travelled: 312.5 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £52.20.
For a ticket that cost £44.20, it's impressively good value - though admittedly I had carefully planned my activities to get the maximum value out of it. In my next post, I'll tell you all about Saturday - to Cleethorpes and back!
East Midlands Rover
Having been rather too busy to do anything much at all - let alone actually go out on some trains and blog - for the last six months, I thought it high time that I rectify this situation.
This weekend (15th-18th April), I'm doing an East Midlands Rover, and in the style of my posts on the All-Line Rover - though perhaps not in quite as much detail - I will be blogging over the next few days about my travels.
The East Midlands Rover permits unlimited travel (after 0900 on weekdays, any time at weekends) with "the East Midlands", which is actually given a very generous definition. The area covered stretches from Coventry to Cleethorpes and from Stoke-on-Trent to Peterborough, including everything in between and much besides; a full map is shown here.
There are two variants of East Midlands Rover: the full seven-day pass, which is valid for seven consecutive days, costs £57.70 with a railcard (£87.40 without), while the "flexi" 3-in-7 pass, which is valid for any choice of three days in a period of seven days, costs £44.20 with a railcard (£67 without). In my case, I'm using a flexi-rover, which is valid for a week from the 15th to the 21st of April, on Friday 15th, Saturday 16th and Monday 18th.
I decided to avoid the Sunday for three reasons: firstly, I wanted a rest, and secondly, Sunday services are pretty sparse and it would have felt like "wasting" a day; most importantly, though, London Midland have had an industrial dispute recently with their drivers which has led to almost no trains on a Sunday, and although the dispute was, in fact, resolved on Wednesday 13th I decided not to change my plans.
Why an East Midlands Rover? Well, it's one of the rovers that's valid to and from Coventry (albeit only towards Nuneaton and Rugby, and not via Birmingham), where I'm now living, and I felt like a long weekend on trains. In many ways these regional rovers (of which there are quite a few, though not very many in the south-east of England) are even better value than the All-Line Rover; they allow you to explore a particular area in depth.
Stay tuned over the next few days as I blog about my travels this weekend.
This weekend (15th-18th April), I'm doing an East Midlands Rover, and in the style of my posts on the All-Line Rover - though perhaps not in quite as much detail - I will be blogging over the next few days about my travels.
The East Midlands Rover permits unlimited travel (after 0900 on weekdays, any time at weekends) with "the East Midlands", which is actually given a very generous definition. The area covered stretches from Coventry to Cleethorpes and from Stoke-on-Trent to Peterborough, including everything in between and much besides; a full map is shown here.
There are two variants of East Midlands Rover: the full seven-day pass, which is valid for seven consecutive days, costs £57.70 with a railcard (£87.40 without), while the "flexi" 3-in-7 pass, which is valid for any choice of three days in a period of seven days, costs £44.20 with a railcard (£67 without). In my case, I'm using a flexi-rover, which is valid for a week from the 15th to the 21st of April, on Friday 15th, Saturday 16th and Monday 18th.
I decided to avoid the Sunday for three reasons: firstly, I wanted a rest, and secondly, Sunday services are pretty sparse and it would have felt like "wasting" a day; most importantly, though, London Midland have had an industrial dispute recently with their drivers which has led to almost no trains on a Sunday, and although the dispute was, in fact, resolved on Wednesday 13th I decided not to change my plans.
Why an East Midlands Rover? Well, it's one of the rovers that's valid to and from Coventry (albeit only towards Nuneaton and Rugby, and not via Birmingham), where I'm now living, and I felt like a long weekend on trains. In many ways these regional rovers (of which there are quite a few, though not very many in the south-east of England) are even better value than the All-Line Rover; they allow you to explore a particular area in depth.
Stay tuned over the next few days as I blog about my travels this weekend.
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