Saturday 9 July 2011

Freedom of Scotland, Day 1

Day 1 of our adventure started with the three of us meeting up in London on Friday evening to head north to Scotland. Given that Matt was coming from London, and Ian from Milton Keynes, the "logical" (well, at least, the shortest) route would have been to meet up in Birmingham and head north on the West Coast Main Line. However, that would have necessitated sitting on a Virgin Voyager - only five cars long - from Birmingham to Edinburgh in the evening peak on a Friday in the summer.

We decided, instead, to meet up in London, in order to head north from London to Edinburgh on the East Coast Main Line, to spend four hours on an East Coast mark 4 set, a much more enjoyable experience. I started in Coventry:

1551 Coventry to London Euston, arr 1654
Headcode: 1B62, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390043
Distance: 94 miles; walk-up return: £27.15

I headed south on the West Coast Main Line from Coventry to London, a route I've done many times before. We called at Milton Keynes, where Ian joined the train, and we met up with Matt at Euston. From there we walked to King's Cross station, walking through the concourse at St Pancras.

King's Cross is in the midst of a major reconstruction: a new concourse is being built at the west end of the platforms, adjacent to the new St Pancras station, and on top of the new northern ticket hall for King's Cross St Pancras. In addition, the platforms are being resurfaced, the station roof is being thoroughly cleaned, and a new footbridge to connect the new concourse to all the platforms is being installed. All that should be done in time for the Olympics; the old concourse at the south end of the station will then be demolished in 2013 and a large new public square will be created.

Currently, platform 8 is closed for works, so we entered the station via a temporary access route past platforms 9, 10 and 11, and then walked on a temporary walkway placed over the trackbed of platform 8. It was quite surreal walking effectively on top of the track, and underneath the (presumably deactived) overhead electric wires!

There were a few delayed trains this Friday evening, so we had to wait until ten minutes before departure to board the train. However, since we had reserved seats we didn't have to worry. In fact, we'd decided that, given we were going to be on a train on a Friday evening for four hours, we might as well splash out and travel first class; the advance tickets in first class were only £75 each, which is pretty good value for four-and-a-half hours covering 393 miles.

Somehow, however, this ended up being not just my first time using first class, but also my first time using an advance ticket (and, indeed, my first time with a seat reservation, though I have had a sleeper berth reservation before). For most of the journeys I've taken, I've never seen fit to use advance tickets: the inflexibility has never seemed worth the relatively small savings. On long-distance journeys, however, it can be well worth it, and in this case it certainly was in this case:

1800 London King's Cross to Edinburgh Waverley, arr 2235
Headcode: 1S28, operated by East Coast using 91125 + Mark 4 rake BN01
Distance: 393 miles; our advance price: £74.60, walk-up standard class: £96.35, walk-up first class: £195.00

We left bang on time, running non-stop to York, then calling just at Darlington, Newcastle, Berwick, Dunbar, and Edinburgh Waverley, on one of the most-used trains on the network: the 1800 London to Edinburgh on a Friday evening. The East Coast Main Line is probably the most scenic of the long main lines, passing through the cathedral city of Durham (at speed, unfortunately), the many bridges over the Tyne at Newcastle, and hugging the coast between Newcastle and Edinburgh, crossing Robert Stephenson's Royal Border Bridge at Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Unlike the West Coast Main Line, however, the East Coast Main Line has never undergone the same level of complete reconstruction, the improvements (such as they are) having been made piecemeal over the years. Most often mentioned as a bottleneck is the Welwyn tunnels and viaduct, a two-track constraint on an otherwise four-track line; while this is true, the two-track section is relatively short (at just three miles) and in reality the biggest constraint is the longer two- and three-track sections further north, most notably Huntingdon-Peterborough.

In a classic example of the cost-cutting short-sighted nature of the ECML upgrades, however, when the line was electrified in the late 1980s the electrification masts for the three track section between Huntingdon and Peterborough were anchored firmly in the middle of the old trackbed for the fourth track - any upgrade works would thus necessitate completely rebuilding the electrification masts.

Further north, the line between Peterborough and Doncaster is two track north of Grantham, with relatively few passing loops, thus severely limiting the number of freight trains which can run on this route. Indeed, an upgrade of the GN & GE Joint Line between Peterborough and Doncaster via Lincoln, away from the ECML, is under active consideration.

Another curious constraint on the route is Newark Flat Crossing: the Nottingham-Lincoln line crosses the ECML at Newark nearly at right angles, so trains running between Nottingham and Lincoln block trains on the ECML, sometimes for as much as five minutes at a time. Currently the Nottingham-Lincoln service is (approximately) hourly, meaning that, twice an hour, the ECML is interrupted for five minutes at a time.

In an attempt to make better use of the capacity currently available, the ECML underwent a timetable recast this May 2011. This was originally billed as "Eureka!", with huge expectations of improved journey times and a more consistent pattern. However, very little was actually changed: in the end, the calling pattern of the East Coast trains between London and Leeds, and London and Edinburgh, was tweaked and revised, and a few extra trains shoved in.

The net effect has been, frankly, a deterioration in service; while a few headline trains have slightly faster journey times, most of the journey times have got longer, even though trains call less frequently. Retford in particular has been left with just a two-hourly service to and from London. The one upside, however, is a net increase in the number of trains.

In addition to recasting the timetable, East Coast have changed their first class provision from May. Before May, the busiest business trains had restaurant cars, where both standard and first class passengers could come and have a sit-down meal, with an à la carte menu, while first class passengers got an at-seat service of drinks and snacks. Now, however, the restauarant car is only a buffet, and full sit-down meals are now served at-seat in first class, inclusive in the ticket price.

While the change has led to standard class passengers only having a buffet and not being able to get a full meal - thus ending a long tradition of restaurant cars on trains - first class passengers now get a full meal included in the ticket price. That said, not all the people on the train took the full meal.

We, however, did, choosing the roast chicken with sherry vinegar, orange and smoked paprika, served with new potatoes and vegetables, followed by Yorkshire curd cheesecake served with natural yoghurt, both of which were quite nice, though perhaps a slightly smaller portion than our rather voracious appetites had hoped for. In addition, we were plied with drinks and snacks no fewer than three times between London and Edinburgh, so we availed ourselves of free alcohol, crisps and biscuits.

The four-and-a-half hour journey was thus quite relaxing in first class, although we were delayed somewhat due to a rather curious incident north of Thirsk: the CrossCountry train running in front of us was asked by the signalman to stop at a level crossing providing access to a farm in order to close the gate. By the time he had safely closed the gate, we ended up about twenty minutes late arriving at Darlington station.

In spite of that, we arrived in Edinburgh just two minutes late, thanks to the timetable having been padded. There are various ways in which timetables can be padded: allowance is usually made for temporary speed restrictions, and some trains have to be booked to wait at a junction in order for another train to cross its path.

However, some more dubious methods of padding timetables exist: on many trains on main lines, so-called "performance time" is added, simply to allow for possible late running, giving trains some slack which can be taken up to recover from delays of a few minutes. Some lines, like the WCML, seem to have just about the right amount of padding, in order that delays of just a few minutes don't have a huge ripple effect. On the ECML, however, there is probably too much padding: trains regularly arrive early, and thus they can cause more problems than if the timetable were written with a little less slack.

What I find completely dishonest, however, is when the timetable announced to the public is massaged compared to the actual working timetable: in our case, our train was timetabled to arrive at Edinburgh at 22:30, but five minutes "public adjustment" means that the announced arrival time at Edinburgh is 22:35. So, in reality, we were actually seven minutes late, having been 20 minutes late at Darlington. (In either case, however, as an InterCity train we are allowed to be up to ten minutes late before being counted as "late" for the purposes of the Public Performance Measure, the standard quoted punctuality statistics.)

Nonetheless, the journey itself was wonderful, with the food and extra legroom in first class more than making up for a few patchy showers which, thankfully, failed to spoil the views. Today's statistics:

Total time spent on trains: 5 hours, 38 minutes.
Distance travelled: 487 miles.

Having arrived in Edinburgh, we headed for the nearby Travelodge, our hotel for the next three nights, ready for our first full day travelling in Scotland.

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