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.