On Sunday 17th, we finally said goodbye to Scotland, and headed home. We travelled the length of the West Coast Main Line, from Glasgow Central to London Euston, before going our separate ways.
1034 Glasgow Central to London Euston, arr 1515 (actual 1525)
Headcode: 1M07, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390004
Distance: 401 miles; walk-up price to Carlisle: £13.15, our advance price (from Carlisle): £25.10, walk-up price Glasgow-London: £75.05
The West Coast Main Line is the backbone of Britain's railway network, linking London to Glasgow, with branches to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. It is for that reason that the WCML was the first inter-city line to be electrified, with the line south of Liverpool and Manchester being electrified by 1965, and the line north from there to Glasgow following by 1974.
The WCML itself actually avoids most of the big cities in the southern section of the route: the largest city on the WCML proper is Preston, whose urban area has just 264,000 people. (For comparison, London has 8.27 million; the West Midlands and Greater Manchester each have about 2.25 million, and Greater Glasgow has about 1.17 million.)
The route of the WCML takes us south-east from Glasgow, through Motherwell, our first call, before following the Clyde valley as far as Abington. From there we run parallel to the A74(M) (the motorway between Carlisle and Glasgow), to the first summit at Beattock, in the Southern Uplands, after which we follow Annandale down through Lockerbie, skirting Gretna, before crossing the border and arriving at Carlisle, our second stop.
Between Carlisle and Lancaster we have the small matter of the Lake District to navigate. The railway runs parallel to the M6 for most of the way, heading first for Penrith (our third stop) before going over the beautiful summit at Shap. On our way back down, we skirt past Kendal, stopping at the nearby station of Oxenholme, before continuing south to Lancaster (our fifth stop).
Just north of Lancaster, at Hest Bank, near Morecambe, there is a remarkable sight: the coast! The West Coast Main Line is completely mis-named, but was named as a counterpart to the East Coast Main Line (which itself doesn't hit the coast until Morpeth). On a journey from London to Mallaig, via Glasgow, you meet the coast just three times in 607 miles: once at Hest Bank, once at Arisaig - two stops south of Mallaig! - and finally at Mallaig itself.
South of Lancaster, the line starts to change character: from here, we hit the industrialised north-west of England, calling at Preston, Wigan and Warrington. From there we run non-stop to London Euston, running at a relatively slow 80mph through Crewe, before continuing through Stafford, Rugby, Milton Keynes and into London.
Unfortunately we didn't get to see very much of the scenery: it rained for most of the journey, sometimes quite heavily, particularly through the Lake District. While it was a little brighter south of Crewe, it remained overcast all day. That said, it's not like you can see much out of the Pendolino windows even on a bright day, with them being so small.
The whole of the WCML - and many of its branches - was subjected to a comprehensive upgrade between 2000 and 2008, with almost every rail, sleeper, overhead wire and signal replaced and upgraded. The net effect has been a considerable increase in speed, as well as capacity: our tilting Pendolino trains (introduced in 2002) can now run at 125mph, even though the WCML is much twistier than the ECML.
In 1999, just before the upgrade started, the fastest train between London Euston and Glasgow Central took 4 hours, 54 minutes, with just three stops at Preston, Oxenholme and Carlisle; there were eight trains per direction each weekday, with all but the fastest taking over five hours. By contrast, today's timetable has 14 trains in each direction, of which nine in each direction take 4 hours, 35 minutes or less, most with about six stops; today's fastest train takes just 4 hours and 8 minutes, stopping only at Preston.
For most of the upgrade period, weekend services were horrific: they would either be subjected to lengthy diversions, adding hours to journey times, or else they would often end up with bits of line completely closed and replaced with buses. Today, however, the Saturday timetable is nearly as full as the weekday timetable, as is the Sunday afternoon timetable.
However, to ensure sufficient time for maintenance and track inspections, Saturday night and Sunday morning services are much reduced; journey times are also a little longer on Sundays to account for any necessary engineering works. Thus, our Sunday morning train was booked at 4 hours, 41 minutes, with eight stops. Whereas on weekdays and Saturdays the corresponding train would be the seventh departure for London, our train was only the second departure out of Glasgow on Sunday morning.
As a result, it was a bit busy. Four of the five coaches in standard class were completely reserved, and the fifth coach was rapidly filled. We used the final day's validity of our Freedom of Scotland ticket to get us to Carlisle; from there, we had booked advance singles from Carlisle to London, with three seats round a table reserved. Unfortunately one of three seats had also been reserved by someone else as far as Carlisle, so Ian volunteered to stand for the first hour.
Unfortunately, the timetable - particularly the length of station stops - is planned around standard weekday loadings, and couldn't quite cope with the huge loadings this Sunday morning train was taking. We left Glasgow on time, but gradually got later: 2 late at Motherwell, 3 late at Carlisle, 4 late at Penrith, and 6 late at Oxenholme (though that last one may have been due to a temporary speed restriction).
At this point, however, Preston signal box clearly had it in for us, because they put an on-time local service from Leeds out in front of us at Carnforth, when we were booked in front. Because that could only manage 75mph, we were 9 minutes late at Lancaster, while the local train had 17 minutes to reverse at Lancaster before heading to Morecambe. We made up a minute on the run to Preston, but by long stops at Wigan and Warrington put us back at about 10 minutes late.
For the purposes of punctuality statistics, most trains are counted as "late" when they arrive 5 or more minutes after their booked arrival at their final destination; for inter-city trains, they are allowed 10 minutes instead of 5. Note that this only counts the time at the final destination: thus, as we saw on the ECML, trains are subject to "public adjustment", so the public arrival time is advertised as being five minutes after the working timetable. In our case, the working timetable said we were due at Euston at 15:12, but the public arrival time is 15:15.
Unfortunately, this Public Performance Measure, or PPM, has led to particular methods of regulating trains - that is, deciding what order to run them in once one or more is running late, which is where signallers earn their money. The prevailing attitude is that, once a train is more than 5 (or 10) minutes late, it is considered as a "PPM failure" - that is, it will fail to be on time and is thus late - it is shunned in priority to anything and everything which is on time, and shoved to the back of the queue.
In other words, once we had fallen outside PPM - by being 10 minutes late out of Warrington - we were not given any kind of priority to get us back on time, because that would risk more trains being late and Virgin Trains' PPM percentage being worse. Thus, the three-minute delay due to following the local train at Carnforth may seem insignificant, but it drastically changed the way signallers treated us.
As such, we followed the 13:15 from Manchester Piccadilly - due into London Euston a full 12 minutes after us - all the way from Colwich Junction, just south of Stafford. Both trains had to slow down in order to let a train from Birmingham out in front at Rugby, meaning we crawled through Rugby instead of taking it at the full 125mph, which was disappointing.
More disappointing still, though, was that because the Manchester train was due to call at Milton Keynes, we stood for a full three minutes outside Milton Keynes to wait for it to clear the platform instead of taking that at 125mph. This was in spite of the fact that the signallers could have diverted the Manchester train into the adjacent empty platform, and given us a clear run in an attempt to get back on time; however, that would have risked the Manchester train being late.
As such, the Manchester train arrived four minutes early into Euston, at 15:23, while we followed it in, arriving at 15:25. Given that we were due in at 15:15, we were thus exactly 10 minutes late; if we had been given a clear run through Milton Keynes, it would have meant the Manchester train was at most 3 minutes late (and probably on time), and we would probably have been only 7 minutes late, and thus not counted as late by PPM.
It thus felt, in hindsight, like the it's-failed-PPM-so-shove-it-to-the-back-of-the-queue approach actually led to a worse PPM than if we'd been swapped at Milton Keynes; however, we did not have the full picture and it would be wrong of us to try and apportion blame for our delay without more information. Nonetheless, being deprived of a full 125mph pedal-to-the-metal non-stop dash from Warrington to London was rather disappointing.
In being late, the signallers swapped us from our booked arrival into platform 13, and instead we arrived in platform 1. This was rather convenient for Ian and I, since our train to Milton Keynes and Coventry was sitting in platform 2. Ian and I said our goodbyes to Matt, who was heading home to south London, and boarded our final train:
1538 London Euston to Coventry, arr 1640
Headcode: 1G32, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390021
Distance: 94 miles; walk-up return: £27.15 (price included in Day 1)
While they say that familiarity breeds indifference, the WCML at full speed never ceases to put a smile on my face, even on this, my seventh return trip from Coventry to London in a year.
Aside from the unnerving sensation of turning left at Rugby at 125mph, something impossible until the upgrade a few years ago, one of my favourite sections is the patch through Leighton Buzzard, in Buckinghamshire. Going north, the line curves right through Leighton Buzzard station, before immediately curving left, and slamming into Linslade tunnel.
The effect is magnified by the arrangement of the tunnels: when the line was widened from two-track to four-track in the 1880s, the middle two lines shared the old tunnel, while two new single-track tunnels were bored on either side. Northbound trains on the fast lines use the westernmost single-bore tunnel, so trains tilt one way, then the other, and then slam into the tight tunnel at Linslade, which is almost ear-popping.
All this is done at the full 125mph, and I rarely get to do it in broad daylight, since I'm usually heading home from London late in the evening; on this occasion, even though it was overcast, it still made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Ian headed off at Milton Keynes, and half an hour later I arrived in Coventry, and caught a bus home, after 5 hours, 43 minutes and 495 miles on trains, beating by eight miles my first day going from Coventry to Edinburgh via London. Stay tuned for one final blog post summarising what we did, and looking back at the highs and lows of our ten days in Scotland.
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