This past week has been, without doubt, the worst week on the railways for months. Thousands of trains have been delayed, cancelled or disrupted, due to a multitude of failures, weather-related incidents, and pure bad luck. Between them, they show just how close to capacity our railway network is, and why we need more investment in it.
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We start last Tuesday (15th October), with no fewer than three separate derailments. At about 3am, a freight train, loaded with containers running from Birmingham (Lawley Street) to the port of Felixstowe, had one wagon derail near Primrose Hill in north London. One of the containers fell off the wagon and collided with the supports for the overhead wires, which thus fell down and dangled precariously over the railway and a nearby park. You can see the damage here in a photo from Network Rail.
The train came to a stand over Camden Road Junction, and the incident caused major disruption to London Overground services, which were suspended between Gospel Oak and Highbury and Islington. But more important were the ramifications for freight trains: almost every freight train that crosses London uses the North London Line to do so, and with a key part of that shut trains had to be diverted wherever possible, with trains in some cases going on a 100-mile detour via Peterborough and Leicester. The line finally reopened on Monday morning.
Later that Tuesday, in an uncannily similar incident, a freight train approaching Gloucester had a wagon derail, damaging over a mile of track. Thankfully there were no overhead wires to repair, but the damage to the track took four days to repair. The line between Gloucester and Lydney only reopened on Saturday morning, with traffic diverted via the Severn Tunnel in the meantime.
Indeed, the director for the Western region of Network Rail is reported to have demanded the line be reopened by Saturday morning, in order that the planned two-day engineering block of the Severn Tunnel could go ahead as scheduled over the weekend; if Gloucester had remain shut, South Wales would have been virtually cut off. Teams from all across the Westcountry, and some from as far away as London, were drafted in to ensure the line reopened just in time, thus avoiding the costly task of rescheduling the engineering work.
The third derailment happened in Neville Hill depot in Leeds, where a passenger train derailed while shunting around the depot. The train was back on the rails in a few hours, but the loss of one East Coast train from service meant East Coast were forced to hire a train in from CrossCountry for a couple of days to cover the shortfall - while it meant the trains could still run, it can't have been popular with East Coast passengers to have had two coaches fewer than normal.
I'm not an expert on derailments, and I wouldn't care to speculate as to what caused them. The most common cause of derailments in the past has been when a train encounters a set of points, which move slightly under the train; one axle goes one way, another axle goes the other way, and before you know it the train has effectively jack-knifed. They are, fortunately, a pretty rare event, so getting three in one day is really terrible luck.
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This Sunday (20th October), just as the disruption from those incidents was dying down, lightning struck some signalling cabins at Dolphin Junction, just east of Slough on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) between London Paddington and Reading, the main artery for trains to and from South Wales and the Westcountry. All power to the signalling in the area was lost for nearly seven hours, from just after 2pm to 9pm.
With no power to the signalling equipment, all the signals went blank, and the signallers lost the information of where trains were, so everything ground to a halt. Worse, though, the fourteen sets of points which make up the junction went "out of correspondence", meaning that signallers didn't know which way they were pointing.
To get trains moving while the equipment was fixed, engineers had to go out on track and manually wind the points into the correct position, before physically clipping them so they couldn't move. Once that had happened - and given all the points, that took well over an hour - trains could start to move under "temporary block working", with men essentially acting as signals, relaying instructions between drivers and signallers.
With a speed limit of 50mph imposed to protect the engineers out on site still trying to fix the equipment, a huge backlog of trains quickly built up, and the 30-minute journey between Paddington and Reading became, in some cases, a two-hour crawl. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that two of the four tracks in the area were already closed for engineering works.
Eventually, technicians managed to repair the extensive damage to the equipment: several transformers had effectively been fried by the lightning and had to be completely replaced. That the work was done in only seven hours was, frankly, a minor miracle; that the disruption caused over 6,000 minutes of delays to trains in the area was inevitable given the extent of the problem.
That places the disruption in the realm of incidents which don't happen every week, or even necessarily every month; but that's no comfort to the thousands of people heading home on a Sunday afternoon after a weekend in London or the Westcountry whose journeys were massively disrupted.
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There have been several further incidents today (21st October) that make it feel like the walls have come tumbling down. Probably the most serious problem as far as the wider network is concerned is a problem with the overhead wires just north of Peterborough. As a result, the East Coast Main Line (ECML) between London and Edinburgh is effectively shut between Peterborough and Grantham. Some trains are being diverted via Lincoln, but otherwise trains are simply being cancelled, with passengers forced to use alternative routes.
One of those alternative routes is the Midland Main Line between London and Sheffield, but unfortunately due to flooding at Chesterfield that was unavailable for passengers to use for much of the day, leaving Virgin Trains services out of Euston as the only reasonable way of getting north from London. (Fortunately the Midland Main Line has now reopened.)
Nearer London, over-running engineering works kept three of the six lines between New Cross and London Bridge closed for most of Monday, forcing hundreds of commuter trains from Kent to squeeze into just half the capacity they would normally use. Chaos ensued, with many commuter trains over an hour late and thousands of people late for work; even though it affects a smaller area and trains can be diverted to Victoria and Blackfriars, I would guess that many thousands more people were affected than the ECML problems.
The approaches to London Bridge, which feed Charing Cross and Cannon Street, are undoubtedly the busiest stretch of railway in the country, with at one point eleven parallel tracks feeding into London Bridge. During the morning peak they run at well over 95% capacity, and thus as soon as one tiny thing goes wrong the effect ripples through much of Kent within minutes.
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All these incidents - particularly the last - show just how badly we need more capacity on our railway network. When it works, the approaches to London Bridge are a sight to behold, being one of the most efficient railways in the world: just standing on the end of the platforms at London Bridge provides a view of dozens of trains wending their way into the capital, filled with commuters heading to work.
But it doesn't take much to go wrong to cause chaos, be it a lightning strike, a part falling from an overhead wire, a derailment, or some engineering works taking longer than planned. We simply don't have enough redundancy, enough spare capacity in our railway network to cope when things go wrong.
Yes, this is why we're building Thameslink and Crossrail, to free up spare capacity; but it's also why we need HS2, and many other projects big and small, to improve our railway and make it more resilient to the demands we place on it to get us from A to B as fast as possible. And with passenger numbers having nearly doubled since the 1990s, and continuing to increase apace, such investment can't come soon enough.
Monday, 21 October 2013
Sunday, 15 September 2013
How Railway Signalling is Replaced: Summer Engineering Works at Nottingham
Every so often, it is decided that a given station should be "resignalled" or "remodelled". This summer, it was Nottingham's turn, and as a result almost no trains ran to or from Nottingham for the six weeks from July 20th to August 25th. This meant buses, and lots of them - leading to inconvenience for thousands of passengers in the height of summer.
In this blog I'm going to try and explain why it was done, and how the railway companies got around it. (This is based in part on my experiences roving round the area over the weekend of Friday 9th-Monday 12th August.)
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First of all, what do I mean by "resignalling"? Well, the signals (which act like traffic lights on the railway) are like any other piece of mechanical equipment: they wear out, and must be replaced. All the signals at Nottingham were installed in 1969, and were thus to be replaced in 2013.
But it's not just the signals themselves that have to renewed, it's all the equipment that goes with it. The points - movable pieces of rail that allow trains to change between tracks, known as a switch or a turnout in North America - also had to be renewed, and so did the track circuits.
A track circuit is a device which measures the flow of current from one rail to another, along a given section of track; when there's no train in that section, (almost) no current will flow, but when a train passes through the section, the axles of the train complete the circuit and current flows. This is the simple yet ubiquitous mechanism by which a train's location is determined across the country.
(Incidentally, a "signalling failure" is unlikely to be a failure of the signal itself, although sometimes a bulb will blow. It is much more likely to be either a track circuit failure, usually when a track circuit registers as "occupied" even when there's no train in it; or a points failure, when a given set of points will fail to move into the correct position, perhaps due to an obstruction.)
Finally - and perhaps most importantly - the equipment that controls the signals, points and track circuits also has to be renewed. The 1969 installation in Trent Power Signal Box (PSB for short), controlling Nottingham and the surrounding area, was state-of-the-art at the time, consisting of a push-button panel at which the signallers stand, controlling the flow of trains. This was to be replaced with a computer system in the new East Midlands Control Centre (EMCC) in Derby, controlled by a keyboard and trackerball.
Behind the panel or computer screen lies the "interlocking", the fundamental system which prevents the signaller from crashing two trains into one another; a signal may only stop showing red if the route ahead is clear, and if the points are set in the correct position. Interlocking has been around since the middle of the 19th century, after a few disastrous consequences of signalmen failing to ensure the points were set correctly.
Trent PSB, in common with most installations at the time, used a complex system of mechanical relays to make up the interlocking: while this has the advantage of being very safe, it's also very cumbersome and takes up several rooms. Instead, the new installation at EMCC has a "solid-state interlocking", where relays are replaced by, essentially, software on the computer, which is just as safe but takes up much less room.
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So what's "remodelling"? Once the signalling for a particular area has been installed, the layout of tracks and signals tends not to change unless there's a reason to (a new platform here, a new depot access route there, a branch line closed down, etc.). But when the signalling does need to be renewed, it is usually a good opportunity to ensure the track layout is appropriate for the services that run; often service patterns have changed dramatically over the 40 or 50 years a signal installation might be used for.
For example, one of the fundamental differences in operation between the railway of 1969 and the railway of 2013 is the decline of locomotives and the rise of multiple units. In 1969, most services had a locomotive at one end, providing all the power for the train, hauling coaches which had no power to move of their own accord. Only a handful of services (outside the busy suburban networks around London) were run by multiple units, trains with engines under the floor distributed along the train.
Quite the opposite is true today: there are very few locomotive operations around, and those that are used (on East Coast and Greater Anglia) tend to be in fixed formations with a "driving van trailer" (DVT) on the other end so that the train can be driven from the opposite end without repositioning the locomotive. (Perhaps the only true locomotive operation left is on the overnight sleeper trains between London and Scotland and London and the Westcountry.)
At Nottingham in particular, though, there was one key part of the layout that was now constraining capacity, namely Mansfield Junction, just to the west of Nottingham where the lines to Mansfield and Sheffield diverge from the mainline towards London. Trains on the north side of the station had to cross over to the south side out of Nottingham station, before crossing back towards the north at Mansfield Junction.
This made sense when, in 1969, most trains at Nottingham were through trains, so few trains would want to get from the north side towards Mansfield; they'd already be on the south side. But these days almost all the services at Nottingham - in fact, everything but the Liverpool-Norwich trains - terminates at Nottingham and goes back in the direction it came from. For this reason, it was decided to rearrange the tracks out to Mansfield Junction so that trains could go in and out on any of the four tracks to the west of the station.
Furthermore, prior to the remodelling there were two "through roads" at Nottingham, between platforms 3 and 4: tracks without a platform, for trains to pass through without stopping. It was decided to split platform 4 in two, extending the eastern half outwards to meet one of the through roads, creating two platforms where once there was one (though the remainder of the old platform would only be accessible to the west).
The end result is a considerably simpler layout at Nottingham station, which should (in theory) be easier to maintain and, importantly, cause less "reactionary delay" - in other words, fewer knock-on effects once one train is delayed. At busy places like Birmingham New Street or Clapham Junction, once one train is running late, that will ripple through many other trains; ensuring a track layout that can be used flexibly is one good way of minimising such delays.
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Getting to that end result, however, meant completely ripping up all the points at the west end of Nottingham station and putting in new ones; with the new points and the new layout came 143 new signals. The track itself - six miles of it! - also needed to be replaced, and coupled with various improvements to the station itself, it was decided that the best way to accomplish the remodelling was to do it in one big hit.
In theory it would have been possible to do most of the work in a large number - perhaps up to a year - of weekend closures. But given the magnitude of the work, it was decided that a six-week blockade - not just on the weekends, but all week as well - was the best course of action. While there may be some who disagree with that, ultimately it's Network Rail's decision.
The high summer period was chosen because there is a notable downturn in commuter traffic - often as much as 20% - during the school holidays, and it would thus disrupt fewer people. However, while commuter traffic falls, seaside traffic rises dramatically - and for Nottingham that means the Lincolnshire resort of Skegness, just over two hours away by train.
To ensure the minimum disruption possible, for four of the six weeks an hourly train service between Nottingham and Skegness was maintained. This was made possible by carefully programming the (less substantial) modifications to the east end of the station, which also permitted a train service between Nottingham and Lincoln to run for the last two weeks of the blockade.
But with the old signals ripped out and the new ones not yet installed, to get even one train into and out of Nottingham station required a much more basic system of ensuring two trains couldn't crash into one another. This is done with "pilotman" working: one man, and one man alone, could give permission for a train to proceed, and a train wasn't allowed into Nottingham without that pilotman on board!
I saw this for myself on Saturday 10th August; while visiting Jonathan in Sheffield, I took a convoluted day trip to Skegness. From Sheffield, I went to Lincoln, and then into Nottingham. All was going well until we were a mile outside Nottingham; we sat for over 15 minutes without explanation, before moving forward half a mile to the next signal and sitting for another 20 minutes. While some of this had been allowed for in the timetable, it wasn't until 15 minutes after we should have arrived in Nottingham that the pilotman finally made it on to our train and we could proceed into the station.
It transpired that one of the earlier trains had been a bit late into Nottingham, and due to industrial action by the RMT union the guard had refused to take the train back out until he'd had his requisite 15-minute break. Eventually, the outward train was cancelled, but that meant the pilotman was in the wrong place - he was in Nottingham station, and all of a sudden needed to be half a mile to the east to get on the next train in!
The reason it took so long to cancel the train was because the controllers didn't really know what was going on; they didn't know which train was where, precisely because there was no signalling system! Only the pilotman did, and once he had talked to the controllers he was able to rectify the situation and make his way out to the next train, whereupon it was able to go in and come out, and then our train was able to go in.
But this lack of information meant that all the usual sources of information were useless: over the last few years, I've got used to using my phone to check the internet to find out when a train is delayed and why. But all that information is powered by the signalling system, and when the signalling system is one man and he's having to run around to get to the right place, there's not much else to do but sit and wait.
In the half an hour I had to change trains in Nottingham, I looked around the station, and boy, was it weird looking round what was basically a giant building site. Just one platform - the old platform 5, now renumbered 6 - was open for trains, the rest being in the process of being rebuilt or having their tracks replaced. The track layout was mostly complete, but the platforms themselves were being resurfaced, and that was clearly left to be finished.
With just one train allowed into Nottingham at a time, it took over 20 minutes to get each train in, unloaded, reloaded, and out again - and with little margin for recovery, my train back out to Skegness was thus also late. Fortunately, although it left 13 minutes late there was a bit of slack in the timetable and after a pleasant run through the countryside we arrived at Skegness just three minutes late.
Notably, though, while the train was not that busy from Nottingham, it got much busier from Grantham. Clearly anyone going to Skegness who hadn't come from Nottingham had been directed to Grantham, with its position on the East Coast Main Line affording links from Peterborough and London as well as the north.
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While pilotman operation permitted a basic service to Skegness and Lincoln, the complete block of the west end of the station necessitated a huge fleet of buses and coaches to ferry passengers between their trains and Nottingham itself. When train services couldn't be provided there were buses to Newark and Grantham for onward trains to Lincoln and Skegness respectively; and throughout the block, the line to Mansfield and Worksop was replaced by buses throughout, the opportunity being taken to replace some track on that line too.
Most importantly, however, five buses every hour ran to and from East Midlands Parkway station. East Midlands Parkway opened in January 2009, ostensibly to serve the nearby East Midlands Airport, but it feels more like it's there to serve Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which towers over the station.
With the airport still a shuttle bus away most passengers continued to get a bus from Nottingham or Derby. But with Nottingham closed, people were encouraged to drive to East Midlands Parkway - with a large car-park - where they could get their train, with buses provided to ferry those who needed to get to the city centre.
As a result, East Midlands Parkway came into its own during the blockade, all of a sudden being one of the most-used stations in the Midlands, with trains diverted to mainly use it in place of Nottingham. The London-Nottingham services were mostly curtailed to just run between London and East Midlands Parkway (with some extending to Beeston, just three miles west of Nottingham), and many of the London-Sheffield trains which usually pass through without stopping were re-timetabled to call and provide connections.
In the morning and evening rush hours, there are a few London-Leeds trains which usually run via Nottingham and reverse there before continuing on via Sheffield; these were mostly diverted to use the Erewash Valley, avoiding both Derby and Nottingham but permitting a call at East Midlands Parkway. (It's fairly rare for trains to use the Erewash Valley route in daylight, and I made sure to use one of these trains on the way to Sheffield on the Friday night!)
More importantly, though, the Liverpool-Norwich services were diverted from Nottingham and instead served East Midlands Parkway. This meant they couldn't call at Grantham, but instead ran non-stop between Peterborough and East Midlands Parkway via Melton Mowbray.
These had an added complication, in that the Liverpool-Norwich trains are usually scheduled to be four carriages west of Nottingham but just two carriages east of Nottingham. With Nottingham closed, the dividing and joining of the units had to be done elsewhere. Due to the signalling arrangements, it wasn't possible to join trains at East Midlands Parkway, or at Chesterfield; the obvious solution of joining the units at Sheffield was precluded by the timetable and the lack of capacity there.
Instead, the Liverpool-Norwich trains dropped two of their four carriages in the platform at Chesterfield, and continued via the Erewash Valley to East Midlands Parkway and on to Peterborough and Norwich. The two carriages left in Chesterfield were then taken empty to Derby. Meanwhile the Norwich-Liverpool services, having called at East Midlands Parkway, were sent via Derby to pick up the extra two carriages, before proceeding on to Chesterfield.
To avoid too much confusion, the call at Derby was not advertised, so that passengers would think they were running non-stop between East Midlands Parkway and Chesterfield. However, while on board a Norwich-Liverpool train on the Monday afternoon, I was getting ready to alight at East Midlands Parkway in order to get onto a train that actually was calling at Derby, only to hear an announcement that "passengers for Derby should remain on the train"!
And indeed, while the Derby stop had not been advertised at Peterborough, where I'd boarded the train, at East Midlands Parkway the displays announced that the train was indeed calling at Derby. And so it did; the doors were released on arrival at Derby, before the train was joined to the other two carriages and it proceeded on its merry way to Chesterfield. The displays at Derby, however, simply said the train was "not for passenger use"!
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By far the oddest diversion, though, was that I took on my way back from Skegness that Saturday afternoon. On summer Saturdays, to provide additional capacity, an eight-carriage HST is provided to run between Derby and Skegness via Nottingham. But with Nottingham closed to the west, it would have to take a rather different route to get from Skegness to Derby...
While Nottingham-Skegness trains routinely run via Grantham, the summer HST usually avoids Grantham because trains have to reverse there to run between Nottingham and Skegness. But with Nottingham closed, we proceeded into Grantham, and after waiting our turn proceeded up the East Coast Main Line to Peterborough. This provided the very incongruous sight of an East Midlands Trains HST on what would normally be completely the wrong line!
After waiting fifteen minutes outside Peterborough for a platform (as we were timetabled to do), we reversed at Peterborough before heading via Melton Mowbray and through East Midlands Parkway (oddly without stopping) to Derby.
All in all it took over three and a half hours from Skegness to Derby, and without the call at Nottingham the train was fairly lightly loaded. As usual, though, for an HST run to Skegness, first class was "declassified": in other words, while there were three coaches marked as "first class" and having very much nicer seats, there was no difference in price between those and the cheap seats further back!
So I sat back and enjoyed a relaxing ride through Lincolnshire and the East Midlands. On three occasions, the train went round sharp curves (at Firsby, Allington and Syston); being at one end of the train meant I could see all the way along the train and made the tightness of the curves easily appreciable.
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All in all, then, East Midlands Trains and Network Rail went out of their way to ensure that the disruption from closing Nottingham station was kept to a minimum, with most trains diverted, and buses to replace trains where that wasn't possible.
I was particularly impressed with the pilotman operation for the Skegness and Lincoln trains. While it didn't work all that smoothly on the day I happened to be there, it's impressive that they bothered at all. It would have been much easier to say "sorry, no trains, go get a bus". But to have to bus holidaymakers to Skegness (or at least Grantham) - many of whom had a fair amount of luggage, to say nothing of many people with small children in pushchairs and prams - would have needed an awful lot of buses to make sure people weren't left behind.
Early in September I returned to Nottingham station to see the finished article. The tracks to the west end now permit much higher speeds - allowing trains into and out of the station at up to 50mph - and all the track and signals look new and shiny. The station itself is still in the middle of a much longer rebuilding programme - set to be finished in 2014 - but the really hard work of rearranging the tracks is done.
There was one final reason why a blockade was chosen. To facilitate an extension of the Nottingham Express Transit, the hugely successful tram system opened in 2004, a bridge right over the middle of the station was required. With this having been slid into place during the six-week blockade, the bridge can be kitted out and trams will be running by the end of 2014.
Once a new tram stop has been provided on this bridge, from next year passengers will be able to look forward to a seamless interchange between train and tram, with trams running not just north to Hucknall and Pheonix Park, but south to Clifton, and west to the University of Nottingham, Beeston, and a new park-and-ride side at Toton Lane.
Although effectively closing Nottingham station for six weeks was disruptive, it also paves the way for the next major upgrade of Nottingham's railway: electrification. With the signalling now ready for the electric wires due to be strung up on the Midland Main Line between London and Nottingham by 2019, Nottingham can now look forward to having the kind of transport network the city deserves.
In this blog I'm going to try and explain why it was done, and how the railway companies got around it. (This is based in part on my experiences roving round the area over the weekend of Friday 9th-Monday 12th August.)
---
First of all, what do I mean by "resignalling"? Well, the signals (which act like traffic lights on the railway) are like any other piece of mechanical equipment: they wear out, and must be replaced. All the signals at Nottingham were installed in 1969, and were thus to be replaced in 2013.
But it's not just the signals themselves that have to renewed, it's all the equipment that goes with it. The points - movable pieces of rail that allow trains to change between tracks, known as a switch or a turnout in North America - also had to be renewed, and so did the track circuits.
A track circuit is a device which measures the flow of current from one rail to another, along a given section of track; when there's no train in that section, (almost) no current will flow, but when a train passes through the section, the axles of the train complete the circuit and current flows. This is the simple yet ubiquitous mechanism by which a train's location is determined across the country.
(Incidentally, a "signalling failure" is unlikely to be a failure of the signal itself, although sometimes a bulb will blow. It is much more likely to be either a track circuit failure, usually when a track circuit registers as "occupied" even when there's no train in it; or a points failure, when a given set of points will fail to move into the correct position, perhaps due to an obstruction.)
Finally - and perhaps most importantly - the equipment that controls the signals, points and track circuits also has to be renewed. The 1969 installation in Trent Power Signal Box (PSB for short), controlling Nottingham and the surrounding area, was state-of-the-art at the time, consisting of a push-button panel at which the signallers stand, controlling the flow of trains. This was to be replaced with a computer system in the new East Midlands Control Centre (EMCC) in Derby, controlled by a keyboard and trackerball.
Behind the panel or computer screen lies the "interlocking", the fundamental system which prevents the signaller from crashing two trains into one another; a signal may only stop showing red if the route ahead is clear, and if the points are set in the correct position. Interlocking has been around since the middle of the 19th century, after a few disastrous consequences of signalmen failing to ensure the points were set correctly.
Trent PSB, in common with most installations at the time, used a complex system of mechanical relays to make up the interlocking: while this has the advantage of being very safe, it's also very cumbersome and takes up several rooms. Instead, the new installation at EMCC has a "solid-state interlocking", where relays are replaced by, essentially, software on the computer, which is just as safe but takes up much less room.
---
So what's "remodelling"? Once the signalling for a particular area has been installed, the layout of tracks and signals tends not to change unless there's a reason to (a new platform here, a new depot access route there, a branch line closed down, etc.). But when the signalling does need to be renewed, it is usually a good opportunity to ensure the track layout is appropriate for the services that run; often service patterns have changed dramatically over the 40 or 50 years a signal installation might be used for.
For example, one of the fundamental differences in operation between the railway of 1969 and the railway of 2013 is the decline of locomotives and the rise of multiple units. In 1969, most services had a locomotive at one end, providing all the power for the train, hauling coaches which had no power to move of their own accord. Only a handful of services (outside the busy suburban networks around London) were run by multiple units, trains with engines under the floor distributed along the train.
Quite the opposite is true today: there are very few locomotive operations around, and those that are used (on East Coast and Greater Anglia) tend to be in fixed formations with a "driving van trailer" (DVT) on the other end so that the train can be driven from the opposite end without repositioning the locomotive. (Perhaps the only true locomotive operation left is on the overnight sleeper trains between London and Scotland and London and the Westcountry.)
At Nottingham in particular, though, there was one key part of the layout that was now constraining capacity, namely Mansfield Junction, just to the west of Nottingham where the lines to Mansfield and Sheffield diverge from the mainline towards London. Trains on the north side of the station had to cross over to the south side out of Nottingham station, before crossing back towards the north at Mansfield Junction.
This made sense when, in 1969, most trains at Nottingham were through trains, so few trains would want to get from the north side towards Mansfield; they'd already be on the south side. But these days almost all the services at Nottingham - in fact, everything but the Liverpool-Norwich trains - terminates at Nottingham and goes back in the direction it came from. For this reason, it was decided to rearrange the tracks out to Mansfield Junction so that trains could go in and out on any of the four tracks to the west of the station.
Furthermore, prior to the remodelling there were two "through roads" at Nottingham, between platforms 3 and 4: tracks without a platform, for trains to pass through without stopping. It was decided to split platform 4 in two, extending the eastern half outwards to meet one of the through roads, creating two platforms where once there was one (though the remainder of the old platform would only be accessible to the west).
The end result is a considerably simpler layout at Nottingham station, which should (in theory) be easier to maintain and, importantly, cause less "reactionary delay" - in other words, fewer knock-on effects once one train is delayed. At busy places like Birmingham New Street or Clapham Junction, once one train is running late, that will ripple through many other trains; ensuring a track layout that can be used flexibly is one good way of minimising such delays.
---
Getting to that end result, however, meant completely ripping up all the points at the west end of Nottingham station and putting in new ones; with the new points and the new layout came 143 new signals. The track itself - six miles of it! - also needed to be replaced, and coupled with various improvements to the station itself, it was decided that the best way to accomplish the remodelling was to do it in one big hit.
In theory it would have been possible to do most of the work in a large number - perhaps up to a year - of weekend closures. But given the magnitude of the work, it was decided that a six-week blockade - not just on the weekends, but all week as well - was the best course of action. While there may be some who disagree with that, ultimately it's Network Rail's decision.
The high summer period was chosen because there is a notable downturn in commuter traffic - often as much as 20% - during the school holidays, and it would thus disrupt fewer people. However, while commuter traffic falls, seaside traffic rises dramatically - and for Nottingham that means the Lincolnshire resort of Skegness, just over two hours away by train.
To ensure the minimum disruption possible, for four of the six weeks an hourly train service between Nottingham and Skegness was maintained. This was made possible by carefully programming the (less substantial) modifications to the east end of the station, which also permitted a train service between Nottingham and Lincoln to run for the last two weeks of the blockade.
But with the old signals ripped out and the new ones not yet installed, to get even one train into and out of Nottingham station required a much more basic system of ensuring two trains couldn't crash into one another. This is done with "pilotman" working: one man, and one man alone, could give permission for a train to proceed, and a train wasn't allowed into Nottingham without that pilotman on board!
I saw this for myself on Saturday 10th August; while visiting Jonathan in Sheffield, I took a convoluted day trip to Skegness. From Sheffield, I went to Lincoln, and then into Nottingham. All was going well until we were a mile outside Nottingham; we sat for over 15 minutes without explanation, before moving forward half a mile to the next signal and sitting for another 20 minutes. While some of this had been allowed for in the timetable, it wasn't until 15 minutes after we should have arrived in Nottingham that the pilotman finally made it on to our train and we could proceed into the station.
It transpired that one of the earlier trains had been a bit late into Nottingham, and due to industrial action by the RMT union the guard had refused to take the train back out until he'd had his requisite 15-minute break. Eventually, the outward train was cancelled, but that meant the pilotman was in the wrong place - he was in Nottingham station, and all of a sudden needed to be half a mile to the east to get on the next train in!
The reason it took so long to cancel the train was because the controllers didn't really know what was going on; they didn't know which train was where, precisely because there was no signalling system! Only the pilotman did, and once he had talked to the controllers he was able to rectify the situation and make his way out to the next train, whereupon it was able to go in and come out, and then our train was able to go in.
But this lack of information meant that all the usual sources of information were useless: over the last few years, I've got used to using my phone to check the internet to find out when a train is delayed and why. But all that information is powered by the signalling system, and when the signalling system is one man and he's having to run around to get to the right place, there's not much else to do but sit and wait.
In the half an hour I had to change trains in Nottingham, I looked around the station, and boy, was it weird looking round what was basically a giant building site. Just one platform - the old platform 5, now renumbered 6 - was open for trains, the rest being in the process of being rebuilt or having their tracks replaced. The track layout was mostly complete, but the platforms themselves were being resurfaced, and that was clearly left to be finished.
With just one train allowed into Nottingham at a time, it took over 20 minutes to get each train in, unloaded, reloaded, and out again - and with little margin for recovery, my train back out to Skegness was thus also late. Fortunately, although it left 13 minutes late there was a bit of slack in the timetable and after a pleasant run through the countryside we arrived at Skegness just three minutes late.
Notably, though, while the train was not that busy from Nottingham, it got much busier from Grantham. Clearly anyone going to Skegness who hadn't come from Nottingham had been directed to Grantham, with its position on the East Coast Main Line affording links from Peterborough and London as well as the north.
---
While pilotman operation permitted a basic service to Skegness and Lincoln, the complete block of the west end of the station necessitated a huge fleet of buses and coaches to ferry passengers between their trains and Nottingham itself. When train services couldn't be provided there were buses to Newark and Grantham for onward trains to Lincoln and Skegness respectively; and throughout the block, the line to Mansfield and Worksop was replaced by buses throughout, the opportunity being taken to replace some track on that line too.
Most importantly, however, five buses every hour ran to and from East Midlands Parkway station. East Midlands Parkway opened in January 2009, ostensibly to serve the nearby East Midlands Airport, but it feels more like it's there to serve Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which towers over the station.
With the airport still a shuttle bus away most passengers continued to get a bus from Nottingham or Derby. But with Nottingham closed, people were encouraged to drive to East Midlands Parkway - with a large car-park - where they could get their train, with buses provided to ferry those who needed to get to the city centre.
As a result, East Midlands Parkway came into its own during the blockade, all of a sudden being one of the most-used stations in the Midlands, with trains diverted to mainly use it in place of Nottingham. The London-Nottingham services were mostly curtailed to just run between London and East Midlands Parkway (with some extending to Beeston, just three miles west of Nottingham), and many of the London-Sheffield trains which usually pass through without stopping were re-timetabled to call and provide connections.
In the morning and evening rush hours, there are a few London-Leeds trains which usually run via Nottingham and reverse there before continuing on via Sheffield; these were mostly diverted to use the Erewash Valley, avoiding both Derby and Nottingham but permitting a call at East Midlands Parkway. (It's fairly rare for trains to use the Erewash Valley route in daylight, and I made sure to use one of these trains on the way to Sheffield on the Friday night!)
More importantly, though, the Liverpool-Norwich services were diverted from Nottingham and instead served East Midlands Parkway. This meant they couldn't call at Grantham, but instead ran non-stop between Peterborough and East Midlands Parkway via Melton Mowbray.
These had an added complication, in that the Liverpool-Norwich trains are usually scheduled to be four carriages west of Nottingham but just two carriages east of Nottingham. With Nottingham closed, the dividing and joining of the units had to be done elsewhere. Due to the signalling arrangements, it wasn't possible to join trains at East Midlands Parkway, or at Chesterfield; the obvious solution of joining the units at Sheffield was precluded by the timetable and the lack of capacity there.
Instead, the Liverpool-Norwich trains dropped two of their four carriages in the platform at Chesterfield, and continued via the Erewash Valley to East Midlands Parkway and on to Peterborough and Norwich. The two carriages left in Chesterfield were then taken empty to Derby. Meanwhile the Norwich-Liverpool services, having called at East Midlands Parkway, were sent via Derby to pick up the extra two carriages, before proceeding on to Chesterfield.
To avoid too much confusion, the call at Derby was not advertised, so that passengers would think they were running non-stop between East Midlands Parkway and Chesterfield. However, while on board a Norwich-Liverpool train on the Monday afternoon, I was getting ready to alight at East Midlands Parkway in order to get onto a train that actually was calling at Derby, only to hear an announcement that "passengers for Derby should remain on the train"!
And indeed, while the Derby stop had not been advertised at Peterborough, where I'd boarded the train, at East Midlands Parkway the displays announced that the train was indeed calling at Derby. And so it did; the doors were released on arrival at Derby, before the train was joined to the other two carriages and it proceeded on its merry way to Chesterfield. The displays at Derby, however, simply said the train was "not for passenger use"!
---
By far the oddest diversion, though, was that I took on my way back from Skegness that Saturday afternoon. On summer Saturdays, to provide additional capacity, an eight-carriage HST is provided to run between Derby and Skegness via Nottingham. But with Nottingham closed to the west, it would have to take a rather different route to get from Skegness to Derby...
While Nottingham-Skegness trains routinely run via Grantham, the summer HST usually avoids Grantham because trains have to reverse there to run between Nottingham and Skegness. But with Nottingham closed, we proceeded into Grantham, and after waiting our turn proceeded up the East Coast Main Line to Peterborough. This provided the very incongruous sight of an East Midlands Trains HST on what would normally be completely the wrong line!
After waiting fifteen minutes outside Peterborough for a platform (as we were timetabled to do), we reversed at Peterborough before heading via Melton Mowbray and through East Midlands Parkway (oddly without stopping) to Derby.
All in all it took over three and a half hours from Skegness to Derby, and without the call at Nottingham the train was fairly lightly loaded. As usual, though, for an HST run to Skegness, first class was "declassified": in other words, while there were three coaches marked as "first class" and having very much nicer seats, there was no difference in price between those and the cheap seats further back!
So I sat back and enjoyed a relaxing ride through Lincolnshire and the East Midlands. On three occasions, the train went round sharp curves (at Firsby, Allington and Syston); being at one end of the train meant I could see all the way along the train and made the tightness of the curves easily appreciable.
---
All in all, then, East Midlands Trains and Network Rail went out of their way to ensure that the disruption from closing Nottingham station was kept to a minimum, with most trains diverted, and buses to replace trains where that wasn't possible.
I was particularly impressed with the pilotman operation for the Skegness and Lincoln trains. While it didn't work all that smoothly on the day I happened to be there, it's impressive that they bothered at all. It would have been much easier to say "sorry, no trains, go get a bus". But to have to bus holidaymakers to Skegness (or at least Grantham) - many of whom had a fair amount of luggage, to say nothing of many people with small children in pushchairs and prams - would have needed an awful lot of buses to make sure people weren't left behind.
Early in September I returned to Nottingham station to see the finished article. The tracks to the west end now permit much higher speeds - allowing trains into and out of the station at up to 50mph - and all the track and signals look new and shiny. The station itself is still in the middle of a much longer rebuilding programme - set to be finished in 2014 - but the really hard work of rearranging the tracks is done.
There was one final reason why a blockade was chosen. To facilitate an extension of the Nottingham Express Transit, the hugely successful tram system opened in 2004, a bridge right over the middle of the station was required. With this having been slid into place during the six-week blockade, the bridge can be kitted out and trams will be running by the end of 2014.
Once a new tram stop has been provided on this bridge, from next year passengers will be able to look forward to a seamless interchange between train and tram, with trams running not just north to Hucknall and Pheonix Park, but south to Clifton, and west to the University of Nottingham, Beeston, and a new park-and-ride side at Toton Lane.
Although effectively closing Nottingham station for six weeks was disruptive, it also paves the way for the next major upgrade of Nottingham's railway: electrification. With the signalling now ready for the electric wires due to be strung up on the Midland Main Line between London and Nottingham by 2019, Nottingham can now look forward to having the kind of transport network the city deserves.
Thursday, 1 August 2013
Devon and Cornwall: The Best of the West
Before I look back over my week in the Westcountry, here are the links to the various blogposts about each day, should you have missed anything:
Day 1: the long journey to Bodmin
Day 2: family barbecue
Day 3: the Lizard, St Michael's Mount, Land's End and St Ives
Day 4: Tintagel Castle
Day 5: family meal and Dormer Point
Day 6: Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway
Day 7: Land's End (again), St Ives and Falmouth branches
Day 8: Part 1 for the Looe branch, Part 2 for Gunnislake and Newquay
Day 9: Barnstaple, Okehampton and the long journey home
Over the course of the week, I travelled 1200 miles (well, 1202½ to be exact), spending over 29 hours on trains. I did so using a Freedom of Devon and Cornwall 8 in 15 Day Rover, which cost all of £45.55. That covers everything west of Tiverton and Axminster.
To get there I thus just needed a return to Tiverton, which cost £55.45. On top of that, I spent £20 on the first-class upgrade on the way down, £18.10 on the first class ticket to Newquay, and £11 on the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway. Finally, I spent £3.95 to excess my ticket from Tiverton so I could come back via Axminster and Basingstoke, for a grand total of £154.05. Even with the first class upgrades that was still 13p a mile - not bad, all told.
On my travels I used a total of 36 trains. They all had one thing in common: they were all diesel trains. The "far south west", as Devon and Cornwall are sometimes known to distinguish them from the area around Bristol, will not see electrification for a long time, I suspect. One reason is that the Dawlish sea wall, the only currently open route between Exeter and Plymouth, seems incapable of taking electric wires, given the number of times the waves crash right over the trains when it's stormy.
Most of the trains also had something else in common: they were old, with nearly every one of the First Great Western trains we used being older than me (and I'll be 26 this August). Never mind electrification, it has been a long time since Devon and Cornwall has seen any real investment in the railway network; almost all their trains are hand-me-downs, first used for "better" lines but cast off and given to the backwater of the little branches of Cornwall.
This, frankly, is rather unfair, especially given the recent upward trends in branch line traffic: all five Cornish branches have seen passenger numbers swelling by 10%, year on year (see this Telegraph article). Anyone who has ever driven to Cornwall on holiday will be able to tell you that the road network can barely cope in the high summer, and without the railways to carry some of the traffic Cornwall would simply be strangled by its own tourism.
If only that upward trajectory could be propelled into some new trains, or heaven forbid some reopened branch lines: let's start with Bere Alston to Tavistock, a quick and obvious win in Devon, and perhaps reopening the St Austell to Newquay line, making Newquay accessible from the rest of Cornwall and not just from Plymouth.
Over the course of the weekend, we went on every surviving branch line in Cornwall, and all but one in Devon (namely the Exmouth branch, which I'd been on before). As if to prove how well they can be used, every one was busy, and some were standing room only. But each one also had their weird little charms:
They all undoubtedly had something to recommend them, but I think the Looe Valley Line has to take the crown as the best branch line: its quirky layout combined with the beautiful scenery make it unbeatable. Don't make me choose which one comes second, it's too difficult...
The Looe Valley Line undoubtedly contributed to making sure that Saturday on which we went to Looe, Gunnislake and Newquay was the best day of the week: it just somehow had everything, both fraught connections to a ridiculous branch line, and the luxury of a first-class trip to Newquay.
Everywhere we went, the staff were friendly, and only too willing to help. It seemed a world away from the urgency of the railways around London; indeed, the whole of Devon and Cornwall seemed to operate at a slower pace of life, much more relaxing, with all the more time to stand and stare.
All in all, it was a wonderful week in the Westcountry, even if it was a bit rushed. But when the journey takes so long, it seems natural to try and do as much as you can while you're down there. It's stupid really; I'm sure I'll be back there within a few years, but trying to be "efficient" and tick off all the track in Devon and Cornwall means that I didn't get as much time to actually appreciate the place as much, which is, after all, half the point.
I'd love to go back to Cornwall in particular, to get some more time to look round Looe, and Truro; maybe go on the Bodmin and Wenford Railway, a heritage railway along an old branch line; but definitely to see my aunt and uncle down in Cornwall once again. Until next time, then...
Day 1: the long journey to Bodmin
Day 2: family barbecue
Day 3: the Lizard, St Michael's Mount, Land's End and St Ives
Day 4: Tintagel Castle
Day 5: family meal and Dormer Point
Day 6: Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway
Day 7: Land's End (again), St Ives and Falmouth branches
Day 8: Part 1 for the Looe branch, Part 2 for Gunnislake and Newquay
Day 9: Barnstaple, Okehampton and the long journey home
Over the course of the week, I travelled 1200 miles (well, 1202½ to be exact), spending over 29 hours on trains. I did so using a Freedom of Devon and Cornwall 8 in 15 Day Rover, which cost all of £45.55. That covers everything west of Tiverton and Axminster.
To get there I thus just needed a return to Tiverton, which cost £55.45. On top of that, I spent £20 on the first-class upgrade on the way down, £18.10 on the first class ticket to Newquay, and £11 on the Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway. Finally, I spent £3.95 to excess my ticket from Tiverton so I could come back via Axminster and Basingstoke, for a grand total of £154.05. Even with the first class upgrades that was still 13p a mile - not bad, all told.
On my travels I used a total of 36 trains. They all had one thing in common: they were all diesel trains. The "far south west", as Devon and Cornwall are sometimes known to distinguish them from the area around Bristol, will not see electrification for a long time, I suspect. One reason is that the Dawlish sea wall, the only currently open route between Exeter and Plymouth, seems incapable of taking electric wires, given the number of times the waves crash right over the trains when it's stormy.
Most of the trains also had something else in common: they were old, with nearly every one of the First Great Western trains we used being older than me (and I'll be 26 this August). Never mind electrification, it has been a long time since Devon and Cornwall has seen any real investment in the railway network; almost all their trains are hand-me-downs, first used for "better" lines but cast off and given to the backwater of the little branches of Cornwall.
This, frankly, is rather unfair, especially given the recent upward trends in branch line traffic: all five Cornish branches have seen passenger numbers swelling by 10%, year on year (see this Telegraph article). Anyone who has ever driven to Cornwall on holiday will be able to tell you that the road network can barely cope in the high summer, and without the railways to carry some of the traffic Cornwall would simply be strangled by its own tourism.
If only that upward trajectory could be propelled into some new trains, or heaven forbid some reopened branch lines: let's start with Bere Alston to Tavistock, a quick and obvious win in Devon, and perhaps reopening the St Austell to Newquay line, making Newquay accessible from the rest of Cornwall and not just from Plymouth.
Over the course of the weekend, we went on every surviving branch line in Cornwall, and all but one in Devon (namely the Exmouth branch, which I'd been on before). As if to prove how well they can be used, every one was busy, and some were standing room only. But each one also had their weird little charms:
- St Ives was the last place I'd have expected a train to have two drivers, just to ensure the very swift turnarounds required to operate a half-hourly service.
- Falmouth (the Maritime Line) has the weirdest passing loop arrangement, at Penryn, that I've ever seen.
- Newquay (the Atlantic Coast Line) is a ridiculously long branch with surprisingly long trains, though justified by the high summer traffic.
- Looe (the Looe Valley Line) is both geographically weirdest and scenically prettiest: nowhere else would you go under yourself just to lose height, but equally nowhere else do you get such nice views of a wonderful river valley.
- Gunnislake (the Tamar Valley Line) is probably the slowest railway line I can remember being on: at just 14mph for the last section from Bere Alston to Gunnislake, it's a wonder it still survives at all.
- Okehampton is very rare in only getting a Sunday service (and only in the summer), and rarer still in getting through trains even though it's not owned by Network Rail.
- Barnstaple (the Tarka Line) is also a ridiculously long branch, so much so it almost feels like a main line to North Devon (I suppose it once was, before the branches were closed).
- Paignton (the Riviera Line) is the only double-track branch line, getting a much more frequent service than the rest.
They all undoubtedly had something to recommend them, but I think the Looe Valley Line has to take the crown as the best branch line: its quirky layout combined with the beautiful scenery make it unbeatable. Don't make me choose which one comes second, it's too difficult...
The Looe Valley Line undoubtedly contributed to making sure that Saturday on which we went to Looe, Gunnislake and Newquay was the best day of the week: it just somehow had everything, both fraught connections to a ridiculous branch line, and the luxury of a first-class trip to Newquay.
Everywhere we went, the staff were friendly, and only too willing to help. It seemed a world away from the urgency of the railways around London; indeed, the whole of Devon and Cornwall seemed to operate at a slower pace of life, much more relaxing, with all the more time to stand and stare.
All in all, it was a wonderful week in the Westcountry, even if it was a bit rushed. But when the journey takes so long, it seems natural to try and do as much as you can while you're down there. It's stupid really; I'm sure I'll be back there within a few years, but trying to be "efficient" and tick off all the track in Devon and Cornwall means that I didn't get as much time to actually appreciate the place as much, which is, after all, half the point.
I'd love to go back to Cornwall in particular, to get some more time to look round Looe, and Truro; maybe go on the Bodmin and Wenford Railway, a heritage railway along an old branch line; but definitely to see my aunt and uncle down in Cornwall once again. Until next time, then...
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
Devon and Cornwall, Day 9
Sunday 9th June
Bidding farewell to Plymouth, we embarked on Sunday morning for a trip on two rather long branch lines in Devon, to Barnstaple and Okehampton. As last days of holidays tend to be, it was a little more fraught, a little more rushed than we'd have liked it to be, not least because we were on our way home and had to cart our luggage around with us all day.
1040 Plymouth to Exeter St Davids, arr 1141
Headcode: 1A81, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA62 with 43012+43172
Distance: 52 miles; walk-up price: £10.05
We started with our last run over the Devon banks, back from Plymouth as far as Exeter. The HST to London, the first one of the morning from Penzance, was fairly busy, and we ended up sat in various parts of the quiet coach at the rear of the train.
After an hour, the five of us arrived in St David's station in Exeter, where we met up with Paul, who'd come down from Reading for the day to join us in our exploits around Devon. Nearly as soon as we'd met Paul, we said goodbye to one of the Jameses, who wanted to get back to Liverpool relatively early; he'd been to Barnstaple but not Exmouth, so he headed to Exmouth. The four of us plus Paul wished him farewell, before boarding the train to Barnstaple:
1203 Exeter St Davids to Barnstaple, arr 1314
and
1324 Barnstaple to Exeter St Davids, arr 1433
Headcode: 2B75 and 2R33 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153382* + Pacer 143612
Distance: 39 miles each way; walk-up return: £6.20
Barnstaple is easily the longest of the Westcountry branch lines, at nearly 40 miles long and over an hour from Exeter. Even though this Sunday train was calling at all the intermediate stations (relatively unusual for a weekday), we still got some fairly decent speeds up in between the stations. The unlikely combination of a one-car Sprinter and a two-car Pacer was our chariot; we decided to avoid the Pacer and go for the Sprinter, if for no reason other than it had tables.
The line runs across the centre of Devon, from Exeter on the south coast to Barnstaple on the north coast. Well, nearly anyway; both Exeter and Barnstaple sit at the top of an estuary. The line used to continue north to Ilfracombe, which is actually on the coast, but the line was cut back in the 1960s.
While the last section between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe was surprisingly hilly, what remains of the line is reasonably flat (at least as Westcountry branches go). The views of the gently rolling Devon countryside were thus comforting, rather than spectacular; the kind of views that bring a contented smile to your face on a warm Sunday lunchtime as you lean back and watch the world go by.
Our train was a little late into Barnstaple, so we had no time to stand and stare before coming straight back. The way out had been relatively quiet, but the train was a little busier on the way back; nonetheless, after two-and-a-half hours out in the far reaches of rural Devon we were suddenly thrust back into the urban reality of Exeter.
Upon arriving back in Exeter, we bumped into James who, in the time we had been to Barnstaple had gone to Exmouth and Okehampton, and was now waiting for a train to take him north. After bidding him farewell for the second (and final) time, we grabbed some supplies and headed to our final branch of the weekend, to Okehampton.
1509 Exeter St Davids to Okehampton, arr 1551
and
1556 Okehampton to Exeter Central, arr 1640
Headcode: 2K08 and 2K09 resp., operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143620
Distance: 25 miles and 25.75 miles resp.; walk-up return: £3.30
The branch to Okehampton is not like any other line in Britain, for many reasons. For one, it's privately owned by the Dartmoor Railway, not by Network Rail. There are just five services in each direction on summer Sundays, with one train shuttling back and forth between Exeter and Okehampton. And it's not as if there are many more trains on weekdays: the Okehampton branch only runs on Sundays.
Let's start at the beginning. First of all, here's a map showing the Okehampton, Barnstaple and Gunnislake lines, together with the now-closed section between Okehampton and Bere Alston (in brown):
The line was first built as the London and South Western Railway main line between Exeter and Plymouth via Crediton, Okehampton, Tavistock and Bere Alston. The section between Bere Alston and Plymouth remains as part of the Gunnislake branch, which we traversed the previous day. At the other end, between Exeter and the former Coleford Junction the line remains as part of the Barnstaple branch. Put another way, the Barnstaple branch used to leave the mainline at Coleford Junction. That's actually no longer a junction, with the two branches now having parallel single tracks for the three miles until they join at Crediton.
The line between Meldon Quarry and Bere Alston was closed in 1968, and passenger services between Exeter and Okehampton were withdrawn in 1972. Until 1997, though, the line soldiered on with ballast traffic to and from Meldon Quarry. With the ballast traffic winding down, and the branch now owned the quarry owners, they decided to reinvent the line between Exeter and Okehampton as a heritage railway line, with passenger services.
Aside from the Dartmoor Railway's own trains, which are now rather infrequent, the main such service is the FGW-provided summer Sunday service, which is funded by Devon County Council. Dartmoor Railway still run the stations of Okehampton and Sampford Courtenay, both of which have a well-kept feel of the Southern Railway to them - this was never GWR territory, and thus it shall remain!
While the LSWR managed to avoid gradients as bad as the 1 in 36 on the GWR main line between Exeter and Plymouth, they didn't manage to avoid them completely: after all, Devon is a rather hilly county. But rather than several steep hills, the 60-mile LSWR route between Exeter and Plymouth was simply one big hill, with 30 miles up at 1 in 75, and 30 miles down at 1 in 75, the summit pretty much dead in the middle at Meldon Quarry.
As such, our ride in this Pacer along a rather overgrown line to Okehampton was rather entertaining. On the way to Okehampton, the engine struggled constantly up the hill. But on the way down, we were treated to one of the most hair-raising rides on a train I've been on for years: the track, while sound, was not as precisely aligned as, say, the 125mph West Coast Main Line; and with a 1 in 75 downhill gradient to take us most of the way back to Crediton, once the driver got it up to speed we barelled down the hill like we were almost out of control, practically clinging on for dear life. It was great fun.
All too soon, we left the wonderful backwater of the Okehampton branch, and returned to normality at Exeter. Rather than disembark at St David's - the GWR station - we continued on up the 1 in 37 bank to Exeter Central - the LSWR station, much more conveniently located for the city centre - and headed off to buy some food for the long trip home.
In keeping with the LSWR theme for the day, we decided that getting a FGW service back to Reading would be hell on a Sunday afternoon, with most of the trains probably ending up full and standing. Having said goodbye to Ian, who was heading back via Birmingham, the four of us decided to go back via Basingstoke instead:
1730 Exeter Central to Basingstoke, arr 2002
Headcode: 1L62, operated by South West Trains using Sprinter 159001*+159007
Distance: 124 miles
It's been a good few years since I'd been on the South West Trains route between Exeter and Basingstoke - also part of the LSWR mainline to London - and it made a nice change from FGW. With a full two-and-a-half hours' journey to Basingstoke ahead of us, the four of us sat round a table and played our last game of Fluxx, a remarkably addictive card game.
The two and a half hours passed fairly quickly, and before we knew it we'd arrived at Basingstoke. Ben stayed on the train to head home via Clapham Junction; Paul, James and I alighted for our connection to Reading:
2007 Basingstoke to Reading, arr 2030
Headcode: 2J62, operated by First Great Western using Turbo 165104
Distance: 15.5 miles
Our five-minute connection at Basingstoke was easily made, and we duly joined our last FGW train of the weekend. But it wasn't a sleepy Westcountry branch, it was a slightly more busy Thames Valley commuter line, which the next morning would be rammed once again with commuters to London. It just didn't feel the same, and it brought home that, slowly but surely, the long holiday was ending.
Once in Reading, I bade farewell to Paul, a Reading local, and James, who was heading to west London, and joined my final train, the familiar CrossCountry run back to Coventry:
2041 Reading to Coventry, arr 2152
Headcode: 1M96, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221132
Distance: 79.75 miles
Somehow, the very same train we'd been on three days previously from Newton Abbot to Plymouth had made its way to Reading to take me home to Coventry; a little digging suggests it did so via a night in Aberdeen. It's easy to forget just how big CrossCountry's network is.
Once I was finally home, I collapsed into a chair, and said plaintively to my housemate, "too many trains!". It had been a long week, and a very good one; but perhaps a little too intense, in retrospect...
Bidding farewell to Plymouth, we embarked on Sunday morning for a trip on two rather long branch lines in Devon, to Barnstaple and Okehampton. As last days of holidays tend to be, it was a little more fraught, a little more rushed than we'd have liked it to be, not least because we were on our way home and had to cart our luggage around with us all day.
1040 Plymouth to Exeter St Davids, arr 1141
Headcode: 1A81, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA62 with 43012+43172
Distance: 52 miles; walk-up price: £10.05
We started with our last run over the Devon banks, back from Plymouth as far as Exeter. The HST to London, the first one of the morning from Penzance, was fairly busy, and we ended up sat in various parts of the quiet coach at the rear of the train.
After an hour, the five of us arrived in St David's station in Exeter, where we met up with Paul, who'd come down from Reading for the day to join us in our exploits around Devon. Nearly as soon as we'd met Paul, we said goodbye to one of the Jameses, who wanted to get back to Liverpool relatively early; he'd been to Barnstaple but not Exmouth, so he headed to Exmouth. The four of us plus Paul wished him farewell, before boarding the train to Barnstaple:
1203 Exeter St Davids to Barnstaple, arr 1314
and
1324 Barnstaple to Exeter St Davids, arr 1433
Headcode: 2B75 and 2R33 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153382* + Pacer 143612
Distance: 39 miles each way; walk-up return: £6.20
Barnstaple is easily the longest of the Westcountry branch lines, at nearly 40 miles long and over an hour from Exeter. Even though this Sunday train was calling at all the intermediate stations (relatively unusual for a weekday), we still got some fairly decent speeds up in between the stations. The unlikely combination of a one-car Sprinter and a two-car Pacer was our chariot; we decided to avoid the Pacer and go for the Sprinter, if for no reason other than it had tables.
The line runs across the centre of Devon, from Exeter on the south coast to Barnstaple on the north coast. Well, nearly anyway; both Exeter and Barnstaple sit at the top of an estuary. The line used to continue north to Ilfracombe, which is actually on the coast, but the line was cut back in the 1960s.
While the last section between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe was surprisingly hilly, what remains of the line is reasonably flat (at least as Westcountry branches go). The views of the gently rolling Devon countryside were thus comforting, rather than spectacular; the kind of views that bring a contented smile to your face on a warm Sunday lunchtime as you lean back and watch the world go by.
Our train was a little late into Barnstaple, so we had no time to stand and stare before coming straight back. The way out had been relatively quiet, but the train was a little busier on the way back; nonetheless, after two-and-a-half hours out in the far reaches of rural Devon we were suddenly thrust back into the urban reality of Exeter.
Upon arriving back in Exeter, we bumped into James who, in the time we had been to Barnstaple had gone to Exmouth and Okehampton, and was now waiting for a train to take him north. After bidding him farewell for the second (and final) time, we grabbed some supplies and headed to our final branch of the weekend, to Okehampton.
1509 Exeter St Davids to Okehampton, arr 1551
and
1556 Okehampton to Exeter Central, arr 1640
Headcode: 2K08 and 2K09 resp., operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143620
Distance: 25 miles and 25.75 miles resp.; walk-up return: £3.30
The branch to Okehampton is not like any other line in Britain, for many reasons. For one, it's privately owned by the Dartmoor Railway, not by Network Rail. There are just five services in each direction on summer Sundays, with one train shuttling back and forth between Exeter and Okehampton. And it's not as if there are many more trains on weekdays: the Okehampton branch only runs on Sundays.
Let's start at the beginning. First of all, here's a map showing the Okehampton, Barnstaple and Gunnislake lines, together with the now-closed section between Okehampton and Bere Alston (in brown):
 |
| (Map based on OpenStreetMap; © OpenStreetMap contributors) |
The line was first built as the London and South Western Railway main line between Exeter and Plymouth via Crediton, Okehampton, Tavistock and Bere Alston. The section between Bere Alston and Plymouth remains as part of the Gunnislake branch, which we traversed the previous day. At the other end, between Exeter and the former Coleford Junction the line remains as part of the Barnstaple branch. Put another way, the Barnstaple branch used to leave the mainline at Coleford Junction. That's actually no longer a junction, with the two branches now having parallel single tracks for the three miles until they join at Crediton.
The line between Meldon Quarry and Bere Alston was closed in 1968, and passenger services between Exeter and Okehampton were withdrawn in 1972. Until 1997, though, the line soldiered on with ballast traffic to and from Meldon Quarry. With the ballast traffic winding down, and the branch now owned the quarry owners, they decided to reinvent the line between Exeter and Okehampton as a heritage railway line, with passenger services.
Aside from the Dartmoor Railway's own trains, which are now rather infrequent, the main such service is the FGW-provided summer Sunday service, which is funded by Devon County Council. Dartmoor Railway still run the stations of Okehampton and Sampford Courtenay, both of which have a well-kept feel of the Southern Railway to them - this was never GWR territory, and thus it shall remain!
While the LSWR managed to avoid gradients as bad as the 1 in 36 on the GWR main line between Exeter and Plymouth, they didn't manage to avoid them completely: after all, Devon is a rather hilly county. But rather than several steep hills, the 60-mile LSWR route between Exeter and Plymouth was simply one big hill, with 30 miles up at 1 in 75, and 30 miles down at 1 in 75, the summit pretty much dead in the middle at Meldon Quarry.
As such, our ride in this Pacer along a rather overgrown line to Okehampton was rather entertaining. On the way to Okehampton, the engine struggled constantly up the hill. But on the way down, we were treated to one of the most hair-raising rides on a train I've been on for years: the track, while sound, was not as precisely aligned as, say, the 125mph West Coast Main Line; and with a 1 in 75 downhill gradient to take us most of the way back to Crediton, once the driver got it up to speed we barelled down the hill like we were almost out of control, practically clinging on for dear life. It was great fun.
All too soon, we left the wonderful backwater of the Okehampton branch, and returned to normality at Exeter. Rather than disembark at St David's - the GWR station - we continued on up the 1 in 37 bank to Exeter Central - the LSWR station, much more conveniently located for the city centre - and headed off to buy some food for the long trip home.
In keeping with the LSWR theme for the day, we decided that getting a FGW service back to Reading would be hell on a Sunday afternoon, with most of the trains probably ending up full and standing. Having said goodbye to Ian, who was heading back via Birmingham, the four of us decided to go back via Basingstoke instead:
1730 Exeter Central to Basingstoke, arr 2002
Headcode: 1L62, operated by South West Trains using Sprinter 159001*+159007
Distance: 124 miles
It's been a good few years since I'd been on the South West Trains route between Exeter and Basingstoke - also part of the LSWR mainline to London - and it made a nice change from FGW. With a full two-and-a-half hours' journey to Basingstoke ahead of us, the four of us sat round a table and played our last game of Fluxx, a remarkably addictive card game.
The two and a half hours passed fairly quickly, and before we knew it we'd arrived at Basingstoke. Ben stayed on the train to head home via Clapham Junction; Paul, James and I alighted for our connection to Reading:
2007 Basingstoke to Reading, arr 2030
Headcode: 2J62, operated by First Great Western using Turbo 165104
Distance: 15.5 miles
Our five-minute connection at Basingstoke was easily made, and we duly joined our last FGW train of the weekend. But it wasn't a sleepy Westcountry branch, it was a slightly more busy Thames Valley commuter line, which the next morning would be rammed once again with commuters to London. It just didn't feel the same, and it brought home that, slowly but surely, the long holiday was ending.
Once in Reading, I bade farewell to Paul, a Reading local, and James, who was heading to west London, and joined my final train, the familiar CrossCountry run back to Coventry:
2041 Reading to Coventry, arr 2152
Headcode: 1M96, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221132
Distance: 79.75 miles
Somehow, the very same train we'd been on three days previously from Newton Abbot to Plymouth had made its way to Reading to take me home to Coventry; a little digging suggests it did so via a night in Aberdeen. It's easy to forget just how big CrossCountry's network is.
Once I was finally home, I collapsed into a chair, and said plaintively to my housemate, "too many trains!". It had been a long week, and a very good one; but perhaps a little too intense, in retrospect...
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
Devon and Cornwall, Day 8 (Part 2)
Saturday 8th June, afternoon
After a fine morning on the Looe branch, in the afternoon we headed to Gunnislake and Newquay. With an hour's break in Plymouth, we headed to Sainsbury's and grab some lunch. Once done, we boarded our next branch line train, the only one to actually terminate in Plymouth itself:
1254 Plymouth to Gunnislake, arr 1340
and
1345 Gunnislake to Plymouth, arr 1430
Headcode: 2G75 and 2P89 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150247
Distance: 14.5 miles each way; walk-up return: £3.45
The Gunnislake branch is another slightly odd branch. For one, it's partly in Devon and partly in Cornwall: instead of crossing the Royal Albert Bridge, we curve off the mainline and go under it, hugging the eastern bank of the River Tamar. We then cross the River Tavy on a wide, curving viaduct, before a solid four-mile 1-in-73 climb up to Bere Alston.
At Bere Alston, we reverse in order to continue towards Gunnislake. Just before the station at Calstock we cross the fairly narrow Tamar, thus finally entering Cornwall, before a torturously twisty climb up to Gunnislake. The ten miles from Plymouth to Bere Alston took us 24 minutes; by contrast, the 4½ miles from Bere Alston to Gunnislake took a full 20 minutes.
The reason for the reversal is that while Bere Alston to Gunnislake has always been a branch line, the line from Plymouth to Bere Alston once continued on via Tavistock, Okehampton and Crediton to Exeter. This was the old London and South Western Railway mainline, built in competition to the GWR, but the section between Bere Alston and Okehampton was shut in the 1960s.
The line between Okehampton and Bere Alston has long been talked about for reopening, and hopefully at least the section from Bere Alston to Tavistock is being actively campaigned for. Reopening the whole line, though, would provide a useful diversionary route for mainline trains between Exeter and Plymouth. Indeed, if the Dawlish sea wall cannot be shored up in the long term, we may have no option but to reopen this if we don't wish to sever Plymouth and Cornwall from the railway network entirely.
After just a few minutes in Gunnislake, we journeyed back at the same glacial pace as we'd climbed up to Gunnislake; clearly the sinuous curves, rather than the steep gradients, were the limiting factor in the speed of the train. But any quicker and it would have spoiled the views: not many lines over the variety of views of a single river, from perched high atop a steep valley looking down to a small stream, to a wide flowing estuary crossed by huge viaducts. Just a perfect little branch line for a Saturday afternoon.
1454 Plymouth to Newquay, arr 1652
and
1726 Newquay to Plymouth, arr 1914
Headcode: 1C80 and 1A97 resp., operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA13 with 43177+43005
Distance: 55.5 miles each way; first class walk-up return: £18.10
Our final excursion of the day was to the coastal town of Newquay, deep in north Cornwall, and surfing capital of the UK. The town's population can swell from 20,000 to 100,000 in summer months thanks to a long-established tourist trade. While weekdays see a simple shuttle service to and from the junction with the mainline at Par, summer Saturdays see this replaced with a series of long-distance trains from as far away as London, Manchester and Dundee (yes, Dundee!) to cater for holidaymakers.
We caught one of the FGW services, an HST through from London Paddington. Knowing it would be busy, and fed up not having any comfort or tables in standard class on an HST, we had decided to upgrade to first class. We could have just paid £10 each way for the upgrade, but we discovered that a first class day return fare from Plymouth was just £18.10, so we went for that. (We actually bought the tickets off the guard on the Gunnislake train, who was only too happy to earn the commission!)
You may think that first class was a bit extravagant for a little branch line in Cornwall. But Newquay is no little branch line: from Plymouth, even with only two stops at Lostwithiel and Par, the journey was scheduled at a full two hours. And it was well worth it, for the peace and quiet, for the comfortable seats, for the fact that a bay of six seats suited five of us perfectly, for the unobstructed views from the window, for the tables to play games on, for the free drinks and snacks we got (yes, there was even a full buffet open all the way to Newquay); most of all, being in first class just made it more of an occasion, somehow.
The branch line itself leaves the main line at Par, rather inconveniently sited just a few miles east of the much bigger town of St Austell. Indeed, Par itself barely merits a station but for the junction (much like St Erth). The branch line remains controlled from two old-fashioned signalboxes (as, indeed, does much of the Cornish mainline): the first is at St Blazey, just round the corner from Par, where DBS have a major depot and yard to serve the freight trains in Cornwall (principally carrying china clay).
Five miles further on is Goonbarrow Junction, no longer a junction but rather a passing loop with two tracks, for trains to pass on this otherwise single-track line. This is the last signalbox before the 15-mile dead end to Newquay. On Saturdays the line runs to full capacity, with trains waiting for each other at Goonbarrow in order to continue on the single line.
However, with the track on the branch not being maintained to the highest possible standard, the branch is pretty slow, and each train is allowed about two hours to do a round-trip from Goonbarrow Junction to Newquay and back, meaning just seven trains on the branch all day. To maximise capacity, almost all are at least seven carriages long on a Saturday.
That said, our driver clearly took a fairly liberal interpretation of the speed limits, because we arrived in Newquay at 16:37, a full 15 minutes early! This gave us nearly an hour to look round the town of Newquay, and we took a walk over to the cliffs above the beach, enjoying an ice cream, and marvelling at the beautiful blue sea below.
While the coastline was very pretty, the town itself was less so, with an hour being more than enough time to take in the facilities clearly aimed at the party-going nightclub clientele for which Newquay is, sadly, now nearly as (in)famous as it is for surfing. Once we'd finished our ice creams we didn't linger, and returned to the train back to Plymouth.
The journey back was rather more sedate, but it gave us another look at the countryside we passed through: no deep river valleys here, this was rolling china clay country, with some views south towards the pits in St Dennis. We played some more Fluxx, but stopped to take a proper look (and some photographs) of the Royal Albert Bridge as we passed over it and left Cornwall for the last time.
Nearly two hours after leaving Newquay - and four and a half since we'd left Plymouth - we were back in Plymouth. In the bright evening sunlight, we took a walk over the Hoe, the hill overlooking the Sound and the naval installations. We paused at the huge war memorial in the centre, which bears the names of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen who gave their lives in both world wars and since.
After a walk around the coastal path, we found the docks humming with people, locals and tourists alike enjoying the fine summer's evening. We found a restaurant away from the hubbub and enjoyed our last dinner out, before heading back for our final night in the south-west.
After a fine morning on the Looe branch, in the afternoon we headed to Gunnislake and Newquay. With an hour's break in Plymouth, we headed to Sainsbury's and grab some lunch. Once done, we boarded our next branch line train, the only one to actually terminate in Plymouth itself:
1254 Plymouth to Gunnislake, arr 1340
and
1345 Gunnislake to Plymouth, arr 1430
Headcode: 2G75 and 2P89 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150247
Distance: 14.5 miles each way; walk-up return: £3.45
The Gunnislake branch is another slightly odd branch. For one, it's partly in Devon and partly in Cornwall: instead of crossing the Royal Albert Bridge, we curve off the mainline and go under it, hugging the eastern bank of the River Tamar. We then cross the River Tavy on a wide, curving viaduct, before a solid four-mile 1-in-73 climb up to Bere Alston.
At Bere Alston, we reverse in order to continue towards Gunnislake. Just before the station at Calstock we cross the fairly narrow Tamar, thus finally entering Cornwall, before a torturously twisty climb up to Gunnislake. The ten miles from Plymouth to Bere Alston took us 24 minutes; by contrast, the 4½ miles from Bere Alston to Gunnislake took a full 20 minutes.
The reason for the reversal is that while Bere Alston to Gunnislake has always been a branch line, the line from Plymouth to Bere Alston once continued on via Tavistock, Okehampton and Crediton to Exeter. This was the old London and South Western Railway mainline, built in competition to the GWR, but the section between Bere Alston and Okehampton was shut in the 1960s.
The line between Okehampton and Bere Alston has long been talked about for reopening, and hopefully at least the section from Bere Alston to Tavistock is being actively campaigned for. Reopening the whole line, though, would provide a useful diversionary route for mainline trains between Exeter and Plymouth. Indeed, if the Dawlish sea wall cannot be shored up in the long term, we may have no option but to reopen this if we don't wish to sever Plymouth and Cornwall from the railway network entirely.
After just a few minutes in Gunnislake, we journeyed back at the same glacial pace as we'd climbed up to Gunnislake; clearly the sinuous curves, rather than the steep gradients, were the limiting factor in the speed of the train. But any quicker and it would have spoiled the views: not many lines over the variety of views of a single river, from perched high atop a steep valley looking down to a small stream, to a wide flowing estuary crossed by huge viaducts. Just a perfect little branch line for a Saturday afternoon.
1454 Plymouth to Newquay, arr 1652
and
1726 Newquay to Plymouth, arr 1914
Headcode: 1C80 and 1A97 resp., operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA13 with 43177+43005
Distance: 55.5 miles each way; first class walk-up return: £18.10
Our final excursion of the day was to the coastal town of Newquay, deep in north Cornwall, and surfing capital of the UK. The town's population can swell from 20,000 to 100,000 in summer months thanks to a long-established tourist trade. While weekdays see a simple shuttle service to and from the junction with the mainline at Par, summer Saturdays see this replaced with a series of long-distance trains from as far away as London, Manchester and Dundee (yes, Dundee!) to cater for holidaymakers.
We caught one of the FGW services, an HST through from London Paddington. Knowing it would be busy, and fed up not having any comfort or tables in standard class on an HST, we had decided to upgrade to first class. We could have just paid £10 each way for the upgrade, but we discovered that a first class day return fare from Plymouth was just £18.10, so we went for that. (We actually bought the tickets off the guard on the Gunnislake train, who was only too happy to earn the commission!)
You may think that first class was a bit extravagant for a little branch line in Cornwall. But Newquay is no little branch line: from Plymouth, even with only two stops at Lostwithiel and Par, the journey was scheduled at a full two hours. And it was well worth it, for the peace and quiet, for the comfortable seats, for the fact that a bay of six seats suited five of us perfectly, for the unobstructed views from the window, for the tables to play games on, for the free drinks and snacks we got (yes, there was even a full buffet open all the way to Newquay); most of all, being in first class just made it more of an occasion, somehow.
The branch line itself leaves the main line at Par, rather inconveniently sited just a few miles east of the much bigger town of St Austell. Indeed, Par itself barely merits a station but for the junction (much like St Erth). The branch line remains controlled from two old-fashioned signalboxes (as, indeed, does much of the Cornish mainline): the first is at St Blazey, just round the corner from Par, where DBS have a major depot and yard to serve the freight trains in Cornwall (principally carrying china clay).
Five miles further on is Goonbarrow Junction, no longer a junction but rather a passing loop with two tracks, for trains to pass on this otherwise single-track line. This is the last signalbox before the 15-mile dead end to Newquay. On Saturdays the line runs to full capacity, with trains waiting for each other at Goonbarrow in order to continue on the single line.
However, with the track on the branch not being maintained to the highest possible standard, the branch is pretty slow, and each train is allowed about two hours to do a round-trip from Goonbarrow Junction to Newquay and back, meaning just seven trains on the branch all day. To maximise capacity, almost all are at least seven carriages long on a Saturday.
That said, our driver clearly took a fairly liberal interpretation of the speed limits, because we arrived in Newquay at 16:37, a full 15 minutes early! This gave us nearly an hour to look round the town of Newquay, and we took a walk over to the cliffs above the beach, enjoying an ice cream, and marvelling at the beautiful blue sea below.
While the coastline was very pretty, the town itself was less so, with an hour being more than enough time to take in the facilities clearly aimed at the party-going nightclub clientele for which Newquay is, sadly, now nearly as (in)famous as it is for surfing. Once we'd finished our ice creams we didn't linger, and returned to the train back to Plymouth.
The journey back was rather more sedate, but it gave us another look at the countryside we passed through: no deep river valleys here, this was rolling china clay country, with some views south towards the pits in St Dennis. We played some more Fluxx, but stopped to take a proper look (and some photographs) of the Royal Albert Bridge as we passed over it and left Cornwall for the last time.
Nearly two hours after leaving Newquay - and four and a half since we'd left Plymouth - we were back in Plymouth. In the bright evening sunlight, we took a walk over the Hoe, the hill overlooking the Sound and the naval installations. We paused at the huge war memorial in the centre, which bears the names of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen who gave their lives in both world wars and since.
After a walk around the coastal path, we found the docks humming with people, locals and tourists alike enjoying the fine summer's evening. We found a restaurant away from the hubbub and enjoyed our last dinner out, before heading back for our final night in the south-west.
Monday, 29 July 2013
Devon and Cornwall, Day 8 (Part 1)
Saturday 8th June, morning
Having done the Cornish mainline and the St Ives and Falmouth branches on Friday, on Saturday we sampled the other three Cornish branches, to Looe, Gunnislake and Newquay, each with a very different charm about them. First, to Looe, on one of the weirdest railway lines in the country...
0924 Plymouth to Liskeard, arr 0949 (actual 0954)
Headcode: 1C72, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA62 with 43172+43012
Distance: 17.75 miles; walk-up return: £3.55
We started much as we had the previous day by heading west over the magnificent Royal Albert Bridge. Unlike the previous day's train at almost exactly the same time, this was not a two-car train that started from Bristol Parkway; it was instead an HST that started at Plymouth, and thus was already sat in the station when we got there.
On arriving at Saltash, the guard announced that there were some bikes blocking the guard's van which needed to be moved; after a seven-minute stand they had evidently been moved and we went on our way. This turned our nice nine-minute connection at Liskeard to a slightly more risky four minutes; we were fairly sure they'd hold the train but not certain.
Fortunately when we arrived in Liskeard we ended up pretty much dead in front of the steps up to the footbridge to cross over to the branch platform, and we alighted smartly and were the first people over the bridge and onto the waiting branch line train to Looe.
However, we weren't the only ones. The world and his wife seemed to want to go to Looe on this fine Saturday morning, and all that waited to shuttle people back and forth was a one-carriage Sprinter (a "dogbox" class 153).
Worse, it was already half-full by the time we got there thanks to - among many others - a bunch of young girl guides off on a trip to Looe. We made it on the train, but many were not so lucky, and we left nearly a whole trainload of people behind on the platform! Eventually, having crammed as many people on as possible, and decided that cancelling the train would have made a bad situation even worse, the train left seven minutes late.
0958 (actual 1005) Liskeard to Looe, arr 1029
and
1032 Looe to Liskeard, arr 1103
Headcode: 2L77 and 2L78 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153325
Distance: 8.75 miles; walk-up return: £2.65
The Looe branch is, without doubt, the most insane railway line in Britain. Period.
The trouble all starts in Liskeard itself. Now, the mainline runs east-west, and Looe is south of Liskeard. So you'd expect the bay platform to be on the south side. Wrong! It's on the north side. Furthermore, the bay platform for the branch is at right angles to the mainline. Literally at a right angle.
So, we started off from Liskeard heading north-east. After all of about 500 metres, we start screeching to the right in what turns out to be a tiny horseshoe curve. Before we know it, we've done a 180 degree turn and we're heading south-west, and we go under the great big viaduct carrying the mainline.
We then turn right a bit more to point north-west, and then another line joins from our left at Coombe Junction ground frame (a ground frame is a set of levers for controlling points placed at ground level, like a miniature old-fashioned signalbox without the good view). After another 200 metres we arrive at Coombe Junction Halt, the fifth least-used passenger station in Britain with just 60 people using it in 2011/12.
When we leave Coombe Junction Halt, we find ourselves going backwards! And then we stop again at the ground frame, and the guard swings the points, and we head down the other mysterious line, which turns out to be the Looe branch, and we are finally heading south.
Here's a diagram to help you figure out where on earth we've been:
So why all this shenanigans? Well, the line to Looe originally continued north to Moorswater, and the connection between Coombe Junction and Liskeard was added much later. Why? Because of the vast difference in height; between leaving Liskeard and arriving at Coombe Junction we have dropped nearly 200 feet. In order to make the gradient manageable, they had to make do with this ridiculous arrangement.
Most trains, in fact, don't bother to go all the way to Coombe Junction Halt station, reversing instead at the ground frame. We deliberately chose one of the two trains a day - both early in the morning - which go via the halt itself, to ensure we'd been on the whole line.
Once we were actually on the branch itself, we could stop worrying about where the train was going and instead focus on the wonderful scenery. The Looe branch is one of the prettiest, most beautiful lines in all of Britain; it skirts the valley of the East Looe River all the way down to the small town of Looe on the coast, where the river becomes quite wide. The river was remarkably still, even where it joined the West Looe River for the last kilometre or so out to Looe Bay.
Being a few minutes late, we barely had time to even set foot on the platform - I didn't bother in the end - before the train back. I would have liked to have some time in Looe, but we didn't have time to look round the end of every branch line. Fortunately the train back was rather less crowded, and we got good seats from which to admire the beautiful view.
Of course, on the way back we had to do the whole rigmarole of reversing and heading round the ridiculous curve all over again. Once we eventually arrived back in Liskeard, the people who were waiting for the train back to Looe - many of whom had been on our train from Plymouth and hadn't made it on the first time - had swelled in number even more, such that I doubt they'd have all fitted in two carriages.
The train left full once more, leaving more people (hopefully not the same people) to wait an hour or so for the next train. We crossed over the road - yes, there's a road between the mainline and the bay platform! - to wait for our train back to Plymouth.
1131 Liskeard to Plymouth, arr 1156
Headcode: 1A83, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA12 with 43037+43129
Distance: 17.75 miles; walk-up price included above
This train to Paddington was fairly busy, and we couldn't find a table, so the five of us strung out to various bits of the carriage. In order to cram as many commuters from Reading into one train as possible, there are generally just two tables per carriage, with the rest of the seats being airline seats; so it didn't have to be that busy to make it difficult to find a table. At least in this instance it was just a short half-hour run back to Plymouth.
After lunch, we were headed for Gunnislake and then Newquay... but that will have to wait for part two!
Having done the Cornish mainline and the St Ives and Falmouth branches on Friday, on Saturday we sampled the other three Cornish branches, to Looe, Gunnislake and Newquay, each with a very different charm about them. First, to Looe, on one of the weirdest railway lines in the country...
0924 Plymouth to Liskeard, arr 0949 (actual 0954)
Headcode: 1C72, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA62 with 43172+43012
Distance: 17.75 miles; walk-up return: £3.55
We started much as we had the previous day by heading west over the magnificent Royal Albert Bridge. Unlike the previous day's train at almost exactly the same time, this was not a two-car train that started from Bristol Parkway; it was instead an HST that started at Plymouth, and thus was already sat in the station when we got there.
On arriving at Saltash, the guard announced that there were some bikes blocking the guard's van which needed to be moved; after a seven-minute stand they had evidently been moved and we went on our way. This turned our nice nine-minute connection at Liskeard to a slightly more risky four minutes; we were fairly sure they'd hold the train but not certain.
Fortunately when we arrived in Liskeard we ended up pretty much dead in front of the steps up to the footbridge to cross over to the branch platform, and we alighted smartly and were the first people over the bridge and onto the waiting branch line train to Looe.
However, we weren't the only ones. The world and his wife seemed to want to go to Looe on this fine Saturday morning, and all that waited to shuttle people back and forth was a one-carriage Sprinter (a "dogbox" class 153).
Worse, it was already half-full by the time we got there thanks to - among many others - a bunch of young girl guides off on a trip to Looe. We made it on the train, but many were not so lucky, and we left nearly a whole trainload of people behind on the platform! Eventually, having crammed as many people on as possible, and decided that cancelling the train would have made a bad situation even worse, the train left seven minutes late.
0958 (actual 1005) Liskeard to Looe, arr 1029
and
1032 Looe to Liskeard, arr 1103
Headcode: 2L77 and 2L78 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153325
Distance: 8.75 miles; walk-up return: £2.65
The Looe branch is, without doubt, the most insane railway line in Britain. Period.
The trouble all starts in Liskeard itself. Now, the mainline runs east-west, and Looe is south of Liskeard. So you'd expect the bay platform to be on the south side. Wrong! It's on the north side. Furthermore, the bay platform for the branch is at right angles to the mainline. Literally at a right angle.
So, we started off from Liskeard heading north-east. After all of about 500 metres, we start screeching to the right in what turns out to be a tiny horseshoe curve. Before we know it, we've done a 180 degree turn and we're heading south-west, and we go under the great big viaduct carrying the mainline.
We then turn right a bit more to point north-west, and then another line joins from our left at Coombe Junction ground frame (a ground frame is a set of levers for controlling points placed at ground level, like a miniature old-fashioned signalbox without the good view). After another 200 metres we arrive at Coombe Junction Halt, the fifth least-used passenger station in Britain with just 60 people using it in 2011/12.
When we leave Coombe Junction Halt, we find ourselves going backwards! And then we stop again at the ground frame, and the guard swings the points, and we head down the other mysterious line, which turns out to be the Looe branch, and we are finally heading south.
Here's a diagram to help you figure out where on earth we've been:
 |
| (Map based on OpenStreetMap; © OpenStreetMap contributors) |
Most trains, in fact, don't bother to go all the way to Coombe Junction Halt station, reversing instead at the ground frame. We deliberately chose one of the two trains a day - both early in the morning - which go via the halt itself, to ensure we'd been on the whole line.
Once we were actually on the branch itself, we could stop worrying about where the train was going and instead focus on the wonderful scenery. The Looe branch is one of the prettiest, most beautiful lines in all of Britain; it skirts the valley of the East Looe River all the way down to the small town of Looe on the coast, where the river becomes quite wide. The river was remarkably still, even where it joined the West Looe River for the last kilometre or so out to Looe Bay.
Being a few minutes late, we barely had time to even set foot on the platform - I didn't bother in the end - before the train back. I would have liked to have some time in Looe, but we didn't have time to look round the end of every branch line. Fortunately the train back was rather less crowded, and we got good seats from which to admire the beautiful view.
Of course, on the way back we had to do the whole rigmarole of reversing and heading round the ridiculous curve all over again. Once we eventually arrived back in Liskeard, the people who were waiting for the train back to Looe - many of whom had been on our train from Plymouth and hadn't made it on the first time - had swelled in number even more, such that I doubt they'd have all fitted in two carriages.
The train left full once more, leaving more people (hopefully not the same people) to wait an hour or so for the next train. We crossed over the road - yes, there's a road between the mainline and the bay platform! - to wait for our train back to Plymouth.
1131 Liskeard to Plymouth, arr 1156
Headcode: 1A83, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA12 with 43037+43129
Distance: 17.75 miles; walk-up price included above
This train to Paddington was fairly busy, and we couldn't find a table, so the five of us strung out to various bits of the carriage. In order to cram as many commuters from Reading into one train as possible, there are generally just two tables per carriage, with the rest of the seats being airline seats; so it didn't have to be that busy to make it difficult to find a table. At least in this instance it was just a short half-hour run back to Plymouth.
After lunch, we were headed for Gunnislake and then Newquay... but that will have to wait for part two!
Sunday, 28 July 2013
Devon and Cornwall, Day 7
Friday 7th June
For our first full day of track-bashing in Cornwall, we headed west. As west as you can go in England. While there's no train to Land's End, there's a bus from Penzance. But first, we had to get to Penzance:
0921 Plymouth to Penzance, arr 1123
Headcode: 2C43, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150101
Distance: 79.5 miles; walk-up price: £6.20
Oh goody, two hours on a 150 with 2+3 airline seating. In other words, the carriage had five seats per row, all facing the same direction; to get to one of the window seats, you had to clamber over two other seats to get there. To be fair, the train wasn't quite full, and two carriages was about right for the number of people. (Nonetheless, I pity anyone who got on the train earlier: it started from Bristol Parkway at 0624. It's hard to imagine a worse train journey than *five* hours on one of these things.)
Train aside, the journey was lovely. The ride on the mainline through Cornwall serves to emphasise how hilly a county it manages to be; there are at least 37 viaducts between Plymouth and Penzance, averaging one every two miles or so. The line always seems to be going up or down a hill, with gradients frequently as high as 1 in 60 - except for the final couple of miles along the coast into Penzance.
Once in Penzance, we just had to cross the road to get to the bus station, to wait for the number 1A bus to Land's End. It runs every two hours or so, with a three-hour gap in the afternoon; as Ian said, "it's not quite the frequency of the Victoria line"!
1140 Penzance bus station to Land's End, arr 1234 (actual 1244)
and
1435 (actual 1447) Land's End to Penzance bus station, arr 1532 (actual 1548)
Bus number #1A, operated by First
The bus to Land's End was by far the best bus ride I've been on since at least the X99 journey to John O'Groats. Unlike that journey, which was mostly on main roads, the bus to Land's End winds through more back roads than I thought possible. Imagine narrow country lanes with barely enough room for two cars to pass; and then put double-decker buses down them...
The roads led us through rolling countryside, with various hairpin bends and 1 in 5 gradients that would have been tricky enough in a car. The bus drivers, fortunately, were experienced enough to deal with the roads; though on one occasion we did have to pass another double-decker bus at a snail's pace, carefully inching forward trying not to hit the other bus. We arrived in Land's End about ten minutes late, the timings proving a bit optimistic.
To be honest, the bus ride was more fun than Land's End itself. Unlike my earlier visit to Land's End on Monday we actually spent a couple of hours in the complex, with time for lunch and an ice cream, but once you've seen the views once there's not much else to be done. The same bus took us back on the same torturous route to Penzance; the bus was again late, and we arrived in Penzance about fifteen minutes late, giving us just enough time to get the train to St Erth:
1600 Penzance to St Erth, arr 1609
Headcode: 1A94, operated by First Great Western using HST rake OC30 (reverse formation) with 43031+43145
Distance: 5.75 miles; walk-up price: £1.65
A slightly surreal experience, this one: we boarded a train that would have, had we stayed on it for more than five hours, taken us all the way back to London Paddington; but we got off after just eight minutes after going the one stop to St Erth, junction for the St Ives branch.
1618 St Erth to St Ives, arr 1631
and
1633 St Ives to St Erth, arr 1647
Headcode: 2A35 and 2A36 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150249+150234*
Distance: 4.25 miles each way; walk-up return: £2.65
Our first Cornish branch line was that to St Ives. The line is rather busy, not least because getting to St Ives by car is quite tricky (as we discovered on Monday): it is the only branch line to run with four-car trains for most of the day. The line gets a half-hourly service, but only just: there is just one train shuttling back and forth, with two drivers, one at each end, so that they don't have to waste time changing ends!
The journey takes just under 15 minutes each way, but it packs some beautiful scenery in in that time: out of St Erth the line heads north, along the west side of the estuary across from Hayle, before turning west to follow the coast. To follow the coast the line has to hug the cliffside above the sea, with glimpses down to beautiful beaches below. After just half an hour there and back on this beautiful branch, we were back in St Erth, waiting for the next train back towards Plymouth, as far as Truro:
1653 St Erth to Truro, arr 1722
Headcode: 2M88, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150216
Distance: 20 miles; walk-up price: £4.10
This was a pretty busy train, ideally timed for commuters heading home from Penzance and St Ives. The five of us spent most of the half-hour journey playing games, mainly trying to name the next station on a given line. We felt slightly sorry for the guy who happened to end up stuck in the middle of us...
1727 Truro to Falmouth Docks, arr 1751
Headcode: 2F87, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150126
Distance: 12.25 miles; walk-up return: £2.65
A quick five-minute connection at Truro put us on the single-track branch to Falmouth. The line isn't nearly as busy as the St Ives branch, with two trains shuttling back and forth every hour, crossing at Penryn to provide a half-hourly service.
The loop at Penryn was reinstated in 2008 thanks to some EU funding, and gave rise to a unique track arrangement. To avoid the cost of a footbridge, the loop only extends half-way down the platform: northbound trains pull into one track of the loop, with southbound trains then going around them onto the single line and stopping further down the same platform.
We arrived at the end of the line, Falmouth Docks, which is a bit less convenient for the town centre as Falmouth Town station: the town itself is located about 20 minutes walk from Docks, or about 10 minutes walk from Town. With an hourly service even late into the evening, we were in no hurry home, and looked round the very pretty town of Falmouth.
I made a point of finding the memorial to Operation Chariot (probably worth a blog on its own!). After looking round the pier, which offered great views over the harbour with its Royal Navy vessels, we headed back through and ate in a fish-and-chip restaurant. Somehow fish and chips always tastes better right at the coast; something about the salt air, perhaps... Once we'd had dinner and grabbed a few supplies in Tesco, we headed back to Falmouth Town station.
2026 Falmouth Town to Falmouth Docks, arr 2028
and
2031 Falmouth Docks to Truro, arr 2057
Headcode: 2F91 and 2T91 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153368
Distance: 0.5 miles and 12.25 miles, resp.; walk-up return included above
We were there with time to spare, time enough to catch the train as it was on its way to Falmouth Docks rather than the way back. With flexible rover tickets, we decided to head to Docks and back if only to get good seats; this was the smaller one-carriage train on the branch. Even though we only had half an hour we managed to play some Fluxx, a mildly ridiculous card game with ever-changing rules.
2102 Truro to Plymouth, arr 2225
Headcode: 2P96, operated by First Great Western using HST rake OC38 with 43182+43151
Distance: 53.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.20
Another swift change at Truro put us on a very quiet HST back to Plymouth; for whatever reason they need to get an HST back to Plymouth for the evening, and so it runs in service (at least on Fridays). We continued playing Fluxx, with the sun by now more or less below the horizon. Once back in Plymouth, we headed back to our hotel to do it all again on Saturday.
For our first full day of track-bashing in Cornwall, we headed west. As west as you can go in England. While there's no train to Land's End, there's a bus from Penzance. But first, we had to get to Penzance:
0921 Plymouth to Penzance, arr 1123
Headcode: 2C43, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150101
Distance: 79.5 miles; walk-up price: £6.20
Oh goody, two hours on a 150 with 2+3 airline seating. In other words, the carriage had five seats per row, all facing the same direction; to get to one of the window seats, you had to clamber over two other seats to get there. To be fair, the train wasn't quite full, and two carriages was about right for the number of people. (Nonetheless, I pity anyone who got on the train earlier: it started from Bristol Parkway at 0624. It's hard to imagine a worse train journey than *five* hours on one of these things.)
Train aside, the journey was lovely. The ride on the mainline through Cornwall serves to emphasise how hilly a county it manages to be; there are at least 37 viaducts between Plymouth and Penzance, averaging one every two miles or so. The line always seems to be going up or down a hill, with gradients frequently as high as 1 in 60 - except for the final couple of miles along the coast into Penzance.
Once in Penzance, we just had to cross the road to get to the bus station, to wait for the number 1A bus to Land's End. It runs every two hours or so, with a three-hour gap in the afternoon; as Ian said, "it's not quite the frequency of the Victoria line"!
1140 Penzance bus station to Land's End, arr 1234 (actual 1244)
and
1435 (actual 1447) Land's End to Penzance bus station, arr 1532 (actual 1548)
Bus number #1A, operated by First
The bus to Land's End was by far the best bus ride I've been on since at least the X99 journey to John O'Groats. Unlike that journey, which was mostly on main roads, the bus to Land's End winds through more back roads than I thought possible. Imagine narrow country lanes with barely enough room for two cars to pass; and then put double-decker buses down them...
The roads led us through rolling countryside, with various hairpin bends and 1 in 5 gradients that would have been tricky enough in a car. The bus drivers, fortunately, were experienced enough to deal with the roads; though on one occasion we did have to pass another double-decker bus at a snail's pace, carefully inching forward trying not to hit the other bus. We arrived in Land's End about ten minutes late, the timings proving a bit optimistic.
To be honest, the bus ride was more fun than Land's End itself. Unlike my earlier visit to Land's End on Monday we actually spent a couple of hours in the complex, with time for lunch and an ice cream, but once you've seen the views once there's not much else to be done. The same bus took us back on the same torturous route to Penzance; the bus was again late, and we arrived in Penzance about fifteen minutes late, giving us just enough time to get the train to St Erth:
1600 Penzance to St Erth, arr 1609
Headcode: 1A94, operated by First Great Western using HST rake OC30 (reverse formation) with 43031+43145
Distance: 5.75 miles; walk-up price: £1.65
A slightly surreal experience, this one: we boarded a train that would have, had we stayed on it for more than five hours, taken us all the way back to London Paddington; but we got off after just eight minutes after going the one stop to St Erth, junction for the St Ives branch.
1618 St Erth to St Ives, arr 1631
and
1633 St Ives to St Erth, arr 1647
Headcode: 2A35 and 2A36 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150249+150234*
Distance: 4.25 miles each way; walk-up return: £2.65
Our first Cornish branch line was that to St Ives. The line is rather busy, not least because getting to St Ives by car is quite tricky (as we discovered on Monday): it is the only branch line to run with four-car trains for most of the day. The line gets a half-hourly service, but only just: there is just one train shuttling back and forth, with two drivers, one at each end, so that they don't have to waste time changing ends!
The journey takes just under 15 minutes each way, but it packs some beautiful scenery in in that time: out of St Erth the line heads north, along the west side of the estuary across from Hayle, before turning west to follow the coast. To follow the coast the line has to hug the cliffside above the sea, with glimpses down to beautiful beaches below. After just half an hour there and back on this beautiful branch, we were back in St Erth, waiting for the next train back towards Plymouth, as far as Truro:
1653 St Erth to Truro, arr 1722
Headcode: 2M88, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150216
Distance: 20 miles; walk-up price: £4.10
This was a pretty busy train, ideally timed for commuters heading home from Penzance and St Ives. The five of us spent most of the half-hour journey playing games, mainly trying to name the next station on a given line. We felt slightly sorry for the guy who happened to end up stuck in the middle of us...
1727 Truro to Falmouth Docks, arr 1751
Headcode: 2F87, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150126
Distance: 12.25 miles; walk-up return: £2.65
A quick five-minute connection at Truro put us on the single-track branch to Falmouth. The line isn't nearly as busy as the St Ives branch, with two trains shuttling back and forth every hour, crossing at Penryn to provide a half-hourly service.
The loop at Penryn was reinstated in 2008 thanks to some EU funding, and gave rise to a unique track arrangement. To avoid the cost of a footbridge, the loop only extends half-way down the platform: northbound trains pull into one track of the loop, with southbound trains then going around them onto the single line and stopping further down the same platform.
We arrived at the end of the line, Falmouth Docks, which is a bit less convenient for the town centre as Falmouth Town station: the town itself is located about 20 minutes walk from Docks, or about 10 minutes walk from Town. With an hourly service even late into the evening, we were in no hurry home, and looked round the very pretty town of Falmouth.
I made a point of finding the memorial to Operation Chariot (probably worth a blog on its own!). After looking round the pier, which offered great views over the harbour with its Royal Navy vessels, we headed back through and ate in a fish-and-chip restaurant. Somehow fish and chips always tastes better right at the coast; something about the salt air, perhaps... Once we'd had dinner and grabbed a few supplies in Tesco, we headed back to Falmouth Town station.
2026 Falmouth Town to Falmouth Docks, arr 2028
and
2031 Falmouth Docks to Truro, arr 2057
Headcode: 2F91 and 2T91 resp., operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 153368
Distance: 0.5 miles and 12.25 miles, resp.; walk-up return included above
We were there with time to spare, time enough to catch the train as it was on its way to Falmouth Docks rather than the way back. With flexible rover tickets, we decided to head to Docks and back if only to get good seats; this was the smaller one-carriage train on the branch. Even though we only had half an hour we managed to play some Fluxx, a mildly ridiculous card game with ever-changing rules.
2102 Truro to Plymouth, arr 2225
Headcode: 2P96, operated by First Great Western using HST rake OC38 with 43182+43151
Distance: 53.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.20
Another swift change at Truro put us on a very quiet HST back to Plymouth; for whatever reason they need to get an HST back to Plymouth for the evening, and so it runs in service (at least on Fridays). We continued playing Fluxx, with the sun by now more or less below the horizon. Once back in Plymouth, we headed back to our hotel to do it all again on Saturday.
Saturday, 27 July 2013
Devon and Cornwall, Day 6
Thursday 6th June
On Thursday morning I said goodbye to my parents and headed by train up to Plymouth, where over the course of the day the five of us would descend to spend a long weekend track-bashing all the branches. My day was to largely consist of a trip to Torbay and back, including a ride on a steam train.
1056 Bodmin Parkway to Plymouth, arr 1139
Headcode: 1M49, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 220002
Distance: 26.75 miles; walk-up price: £5.30
Unfortunately the most conveniently-timed train was a CrossCountry Voyager, which I swore I'd avoid while down in the south west, but for only 45 minutes it wasn't a huge deal. After a brief delay at Saltash to wait for a train to come off the single-track Royal Albert Bridge, we arrived in Plymouth and I headed to the Travelodge, about 15 minutes away, to check in and dump my bags. Once I'd had some lunch, I headed back to the station to head east to Paignton to meet up with James and Ben.
1341 Plymouth to Newton Abbot, arr 1424
Headcode: 2A63, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150247
Distance: 32 miles; walk-up return: £4.15
The line between Plymouth and Newton Abbot is one of the hillest mainlines in the country, over the "Devon Banks". First comes Hemerdon Bank, a two-mile climb at 1 in 42 followed by a seven-mile slog at about 1 in 150, after which we descended Rattery Bank, with a solid three miles at an average of about 1 in 50. By Totnes we were nearly back to sea level, but between there and Newton Abbot there was Dainton Bank, necessitating a couple of miles of 1 in 37 up and a couple of miles at 1 in 36 back down again.
The majority of trains on this line are either HSTs or Voyagers, both long-distance trains with more than enough power to cope with such hills. But this was a local stopping service from Penzance extended through to Newton Abbot, formed of just a two-carriage 150, which felt rather underpowered as it struggled up the banks. To be honest, though, this gave a much more interesting ride: modern trains make it seem too easy.
I arrived at Newton Abbot about five minutes ahead of James and Ben, who were on a train down from London Paddington. They hadn't had lunch, and we had plenty of time, so we headed into Newton Abbot for some food, before coming back to get the train down the branch to Paignton:
1531 Newton Abbot to Paignton, arr 1551
Headcode: 2T20, operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143621+143617*
Distance: 8.25 miles; walk-up return: £2.65
Although I'd been to Paignton before just a few months previously (more in another blogpost), we were headed to Paignton to go on the Dartmouth Steam Railway. Our four-car Pacer down the branch was a few minutes late, having been held up somewhere on the Exmouth branch; we made it into Paignton just four-and-a-half minutes late, under the magic five-minute threshold for our train to be counted as late.
Once at Paignton, we crossed over the road by the level crossing to get to the adjacent Queen's Park station for the Dartmouth Steam Railway (DSR), which in spite of its name only goes to Kingswear: if you want to get to Dartmouth you have to get a ferry across the river Dart from Kingswear.
1615 Paignton Queen's Park to Kingswear for Dartmouth, arr 1645
and
1700 Kingswear for Dartmouth to Paignton Queen's Park, arr 1730
Operated by Paignton & Dartmouth Steam Railway, seven coaches hauled by 5239 'Goliath'
Distance: 6.75 miles each way; walk-up return: £11.00
The DSR is unusual in being a heritage railway line that doesn't rely on volunteers: it is popular enough and has been around long enough to successfully run on a commercial basis. A return costs £11, in a similar ballpark to most heritage lines. The half-hour journey starts on the eastern coast, but then heads over a hill to meet the mouth of the River Dart to the west; both sides give good views out over the water.
The train was hauled by a GWR tank engine, 'Goliath', dating from 1923 and originally designed for short-haul trips to and from the coalfields of South Wales. The seven coaches it hauled were a motley crew: on the way to Kingswear we travelled in Mark 1 compartment stock. On the way back, we chose to forgo the Mark 1 open coaches with 2+2 seating and tables, and instead we found our way into one of the GWR suburban coaches with 2+3 seating, dating from before the war and thus even older than the BR Mark 1s.
It wasn't quite as long and exciting a run as some of the other heritage lines I've been on, but the views more than made up for that, and the warm sunshine made the whole thing feel like a real day out. When you spend a lot of your leisure time on trains, you can become a bit blasé about them; when you're on a steam train by the Torbay coast, it's a whole different kettle of fish.
To be honest I wish we'd had time to head to Dartmouth and back on the ferry, but we were only able to get there in time for the last train of the day to Kingswear, and thus had to come straight back to avoid being stranded. Once we got back to Paignton we had time to look round the shop before heading back to the mainline station:
1753 Paignton to Newton Abbot, arr 1809
Headcode: 2F51, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150104
Distance: 8.25 miles; walk-up price included above
A short 15-minute run back up the branch to Newton Abbot ensued, with the train reasonably busy but not packed. The branch to Paignton is quite nice, though not in the same league as some of the Cornish branches we would see later in the weekend. It's rare, though, in being double-track throughout, such is the service frequency required - the branch usually sees a half-hourly stopping service to Exeter, with a handful of long-distance trains to London and Manchester each day.
At Newton Abbot, we had an optimistic three-minute connection onto a southbound CrossCountry service. We needn't have worried: the train we were connecting into was the 0900 Glasgow Central to Penzance, and had ample opportunity to be delayed en route; on this occasion it got stuck behind a stopping train from Bristol to Weston-super-Mare, and left Taunton 17 minutes late. By the time we got it at Newton Abbot, though, it was just seven minutes late:
1812 (actual 1819) Newton Abbot to Plymouth, arr 1850 (actual 1856)
Headcode: 1V58, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221132
Distance: 32 miles; walk-up price included above
On board our last train of the day, we met up with the other James, who had come down from Liverpool. Unlike my Sprinter earlier in the day, the Voyager made mincemeat of the Devon banks and we were back in Plymouth in no time. (Incidentally, the train had a booked 12-minute stand at Plymouth, and was thus on time once it left Plymouth.)
Once we got to Plymouth, the others checked into the hotel before we went for dinner in Pizza Express. After dinner we headed back to the station to meet our final companion, Ian, off an evening peak train from London Paddington, before heading back to the hotel ready for the Cornish branch lines on Friday.
On Thursday morning I said goodbye to my parents and headed by train up to Plymouth, where over the course of the day the five of us would descend to spend a long weekend track-bashing all the branches. My day was to largely consist of a trip to Torbay and back, including a ride on a steam train.
1056 Bodmin Parkway to Plymouth, arr 1139
Headcode: 1M49, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 220002
Distance: 26.75 miles; walk-up price: £5.30
Unfortunately the most conveniently-timed train was a CrossCountry Voyager, which I swore I'd avoid while down in the south west, but for only 45 minutes it wasn't a huge deal. After a brief delay at Saltash to wait for a train to come off the single-track Royal Albert Bridge, we arrived in Plymouth and I headed to the Travelodge, about 15 minutes away, to check in and dump my bags. Once I'd had some lunch, I headed back to the station to head east to Paignton to meet up with James and Ben.
1341 Plymouth to Newton Abbot, arr 1424
Headcode: 2A63, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150247
Distance: 32 miles; walk-up return: £4.15
The line between Plymouth and Newton Abbot is one of the hillest mainlines in the country, over the "Devon Banks". First comes Hemerdon Bank, a two-mile climb at 1 in 42 followed by a seven-mile slog at about 1 in 150, after which we descended Rattery Bank, with a solid three miles at an average of about 1 in 50. By Totnes we were nearly back to sea level, but between there and Newton Abbot there was Dainton Bank, necessitating a couple of miles of 1 in 37 up and a couple of miles at 1 in 36 back down again.
The majority of trains on this line are either HSTs or Voyagers, both long-distance trains with more than enough power to cope with such hills. But this was a local stopping service from Penzance extended through to Newton Abbot, formed of just a two-carriage 150, which felt rather underpowered as it struggled up the banks. To be honest, though, this gave a much more interesting ride: modern trains make it seem too easy.
I arrived at Newton Abbot about five minutes ahead of James and Ben, who were on a train down from London Paddington. They hadn't had lunch, and we had plenty of time, so we headed into Newton Abbot for some food, before coming back to get the train down the branch to Paignton:
1531 Newton Abbot to Paignton, arr 1551
Headcode: 2T20, operated by First Great Western using Pacer 143621+143617*
Distance: 8.25 miles; walk-up return: £2.65
Although I'd been to Paignton before just a few months previously (more in another blogpost), we were headed to Paignton to go on the Dartmouth Steam Railway. Our four-car Pacer down the branch was a few minutes late, having been held up somewhere on the Exmouth branch; we made it into Paignton just four-and-a-half minutes late, under the magic five-minute threshold for our train to be counted as late.
Once at Paignton, we crossed over the road by the level crossing to get to the adjacent Queen's Park station for the Dartmouth Steam Railway (DSR), which in spite of its name only goes to Kingswear: if you want to get to Dartmouth you have to get a ferry across the river Dart from Kingswear.
1615 Paignton Queen's Park to Kingswear for Dartmouth, arr 1645
and
1700 Kingswear for Dartmouth to Paignton Queen's Park, arr 1730
Operated by Paignton & Dartmouth Steam Railway, seven coaches hauled by 5239 'Goliath'
Distance: 6.75 miles each way; walk-up return: £11.00
The DSR is unusual in being a heritage railway line that doesn't rely on volunteers: it is popular enough and has been around long enough to successfully run on a commercial basis. A return costs £11, in a similar ballpark to most heritage lines. The half-hour journey starts on the eastern coast, but then heads over a hill to meet the mouth of the River Dart to the west; both sides give good views out over the water.
The train was hauled by a GWR tank engine, 'Goliath', dating from 1923 and originally designed for short-haul trips to and from the coalfields of South Wales. The seven coaches it hauled were a motley crew: on the way to Kingswear we travelled in Mark 1 compartment stock. On the way back, we chose to forgo the Mark 1 open coaches with 2+2 seating and tables, and instead we found our way into one of the GWR suburban coaches with 2+3 seating, dating from before the war and thus even older than the BR Mark 1s.
It wasn't quite as long and exciting a run as some of the other heritage lines I've been on, but the views more than made up for that, and the warm sunshine made the whole thing feel like a real day out. When you spend a lot of your leisure time on trains, you can become a bit blasé about them; when you're on a steam train by the Torbay coast, it's a whole different kettle of fish.
To be honest I wish we'd had time to head to Dartmouth and back on the ferry, but we were only able to get there in time for the last train of the day to Kingswear, and thus had to come straight back to avoid being stranded. Once we got back to Paignton we had time to look round the shop before heading back to the mainline station:
1753 Paignton to Newton Abbot, arr 1809
Headcode: 2F51, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 150104
Distance: 8.25 miles; walk-up price included above
A short 15-minute run back up the branch to Newton Abbot ensued, with the train reasonably busy but not packed. The branch to Paignton is quite nice, though not in the same league as some of the Cornish branches we would see later in the weekend. It's rare, though, in being double-track throughout, such is the service frequency required - the branch usually sees a half-hourly stopping service to Exeter, with a handful of long-distance trains to London and Manchester each day.
At Newton Abbot, we had an optimistic three-minute connection onto a southbound CrossCountry service. We needn't have worried: the train we were connecting into was the 0900 Glasgow Central to Penzance, and had ample opportunity to be delayed en route; on this occasion it got stuck behind a stopping train from Bristol to Weston-super-Mare, and left Taunton 17 minutes late. By the time we got it at Newton Abbot, though, it was just seven minutes late:
1812 (actual 1819) Newton Abbot to Plymouth, arr 1850 (actual 1856)
Headcode: 1V58, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221132
Distance: 32 miles; walk-up price included above
On board our last train of the day, we met up with the other James, who had come down from Liverpool. Unlike my Sprinter earlier in the day, the Voyager made mincemeat of the Devon banks and we were back in Plymouth in no time. (Incidentally, the train had a booked 12-minute stand at Plymouth, and was thus on time once it left Plymouth.)
Once we got to Plymouth, the others checked into the hotel before we went for dinner in Pizza Express. After dinner we headed back to the station to meet our final companion, Ian, off an evening peak train from London Paddington, before heading back to the hotel ready for the Cornish branch lines on Friday.
Friday, 26 July 2013
Devon and Cornwall, Days 2-5
Sunday 2nd June
Over the next four days in Cornwall, we packed in a lot of sightseeing, together with various family occasions. Sunday revolved around a barbecue at my aunt and uncle's house, involving probably the biggest reunion of my mum's side of the family in at least a decade. I hadn't seen two of my cousins since about 1995; in some sense it was almost like we'd never met, but equally there was an instant family tie, with none of the awkwardness that sometimes comes with meeting new friends.
My aunt and uncle's house is set on the edge of a village in beautiful countryside. We'd picked the right week to come to Cornwall: not two days before I left, it was cold and miserable, but by Sunday afternoon it was hot and sunny, feeling genuinely like summer for the first time. We sat outside in the sun enjoying our hot dogs and our steaks (to say nothing of the wide variety of salads and side dishes laid on), soaking up the sun.
After a lovely afternoon spent reminiscing and swapping stories, rounded off with a walk down to the river just down from their house, we headed back to the hotel, stuffed full of food. Rather than go out for dinner, we eventually headed out for a picnic, making our own sandwiches and eating them in the car on the beautiful beach at Polzeath, just north of Padstow, on the north coast, before taking a walk out to the edge of the Atlantic.
Monday 3rd June
The next day my parents and I left my aunt and uncle and headed west, to the very edges of England. While Land's End is the more popular, it is only the westernmost point in England, not Britain (Ardnamurchan, in Scotland, is further west). On the other hand, the Lizard Point is the southernmost point in Britain, but is much less of a tourist trap.
We headed first to the Lizard, over an hour's drive west even from Bodmin. (Even Cornwall itself is big!) The Lizard is a beautiful peninsula: the land is covered in beautiful fields, while the coastline is rugged but well-worn, with easy access to the coastal paths. After a nice walk over to the next headland, we headed back into the village of Lizard for some lunch.
After a brief stop at Kynance Cove - a beautiful bay just north of the Lizard - we headed to Marazion, just east of Penzance and home of St Michael's Mount, a natural island just a few hundred metres off the coast which has acted as a natural fortification for nearly a millennium.
While we made it to the island, unfortunately by the time we got to the castle it was too late in the afternoon and we couldn't take a look around the inside. At low tide, one can walk across the causeway to the island; but when we got there the tide was well in, and so a little motorboat shuttled us to and from the island.
With the afternoon gone, but plenty of time before dinner, we headed to Land's End. While much more touristy, and geographically less relevant, it's easy to see why Land's End is so much more popular than the Lizard: the whole country seems to narrow about you as you drive west on the A30, until at last you arrive at the end of England, surrounded by nearly 270 degrees of sea.
Surrounding the point itself is a sprawling tourist complex, with multiple cafes and gift shops. But arriving as we did at 6pm it was mercifully quiet, with just a few visitors and none of the tourist hubbub. The one disadvantage was that the toilets were locked, but otherwise we got to look into the Atlantic on all sides in peace.
We had dinner in St Ives, about half an hour's drive from Land's End, in a lovely fish restaurant with a view over the old harbour. Our meal was delayed by a hold-up in the kitchen, but this meant that we exited the restaurant just as the sun was crossing the horizon in a fabulous orange sunset. The fading sunlight persisted, with a few faint rays staving off darkness for the whole hour-long drive home.
Tuesday 4th June
On Tuesday, blessed with even better weather than the previous couple of days, we headed to the north coast, to Tintagel Castle. Located on a rocky peninsula jutting into the sea, and making a perfect natural fortification, Tintagel Castle may have been used as early as the third century AD; but the first definite evidence points to a fortress in early medieval times. Legend has it that King Arthur himself was conceived here.
The castle itself is a nearly impregnable fortress perched right on the coast, with just one wooden bridge linking it to the mainland. After climbing up a staircase carved out of the stone, you find yourself on top of the main rock of the island, and wandering around you get superb views out to the sea and to the cliffs on the coastline.
The ruined buildings of the castle make for an interesting sight (and site!), with remnants of a great hall, a well, a chapel, and a tunnel possibly used for storing food. The island is surrounded by cliffs, in one of which lies Merlin's Cave. The whole thing takes the better part of two hours to fully explore, and is remarkably interesting, made all the nicer by the lovely sunny day.
After a very nice lunch in the visitors centre at the Castle, we headed back up the steep hill (which hadn't seemed half as bad on the way down!) to the village of Tintagel itself. We then paid a visit to the Old Post Office, a beautifully-preserved fourteenth-century stone house now in the hands of the National Trust, before relaxing in the sun with a nice scone.
In the evening, after a brief rest in the hotel, we headed to Padstow for dinner. Padstow, a pretty fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, is sometimes referred to as Padstein - a tongue-in-cheek reference to the number of eating establishments in the town run by Rick Stein. We managed to avoid them all, however, and had a very nice Italian meal in a restaurant overlooking the harbour.
Wednesday 5th June
Wednesday was the last full day of family - my parents and my aunt and uncle were headed home on Thursday. We were thus headed for one last family lunch in Fowey. Beforehand, though, we paid a flying visit to Wave 7 Gallery, run by my cousin in rural Cornwall just a few miles north of where we were staying. The gallery is filled with paintings, pottery, prints and assorted knick-knacks, and my mum couldn't resist the urge to buy a couple of things.
A quick drive over to the south coast brought us to Fowey Hall, a lavish country house hotel where my Cornish aunt and uncle treated the rest of us to a fabulous three-course meal, all the while swapping stories aplenty. After a long, lingering lunch, we left my Cornish aunt and uncle, and the five of us headed for a drive around the coast to Mevagissey, where we stopped to look round the little fishing village.
After that we headed for the nearby Dormer Point, or more accurately to the car park where you can walk to the point. Navigating there proved to be a challenge: we dispensed with the satnav and I used a proper old-fashioned Landranger to guide us to the car park, which was down a seemingly interminable series of lanes. Once there, we went for a short walk; while we didn't bother going all the way to the point we still got some lovely views round the coast; my dad, ever eager, continued on to the point proper at his usual brisk pace, and by the time the rest of us had dandered back to the car he had practically caught us up.
Having had such a big lunch we decided a picnic tea would suffice, so we grabbed some sandwiches and, once back at our hotel, sat outside in the fading sunlight to enjoy one last picnic as a family.
Over the next four days in Cornwall, we packed in a lot of sightseeing, together with various family occasions. Sunday revolved around a barbecue at my aunt and uncle's house, involving probably the biggest reunion of my mum's side of the family in at least a decade. I hadn't seen two of my cousins since about 1995; in some sense it was almost like we'd never met, but equally there was an instant family tie, with none of the awkwardness that sometimes comes with meeting new friends.
My aunt and uncle's house is set on the edge of a village in beautiful countryside. We'd picked the right week to come to Cornwall: not two days before I left, it was cold and miserable, but by Sunday afternoon it was hot and sunny, feeling genuinely like summer for the first time. We sat outside in the sun enjoying our hot dogs and our steaks (to say nothing of the wide variety of salads and side dishes laid on), soaking up the sun.
After a lovely afternoon spent reminiscing and swapping stories, rounded off with a walk down to the river just down from their house, we headed back to the hotel, stuffed full of food. Rather than go out for dinner, we eventually headed out for a picnic, making our own sandwiches and eating them in the car on the beautiful beach at Polzeath, just north of Padstow, on the north coast, before taking a walk out to the edge of the Atlantic.
Monday 3rd June
The next day my parents and I left my aunt and uncle and headed west, to the very edges of England. While Land's End is the more popular, it is only the westernmost point in England, not Britain (Ardnamurchan, in Scotland, is further west). On the other hand, the Lizard Point is the southernmost point in Britain, but is much less of a tourist trap.
We headed first to the Lizard, over an hour's drive west even from Bodmin. (Even Cornwall itself is big!) The Lizard is a beautiful peninsula: the land is covered in beautiful fields, while the coastline is rugged but well-worn, with easy access to the coastal paths. After a nice walk over to the next headland, we headed back into the village of Lizard for some lunch.
After a brief stop at Kynance Cove - a beautiful bay just north of the Lizard - we headed to Marazion, just east of Penzance and home of St Michael's Mount, a natural island just a few hundred metres off the coast which has acted as a natural fortification for nearly a millennium.
While we made it to the island, unfortunately by the time we got to the castle it was too late in the afternoon and we couldn't take a look around the inside. At low tide, one can walk across the causeway to the island; but when we got there the tide was well in, and so a little motorboat shuttled us to and from the island.
With the afternoon gone, but plenty of time before dinner, we headed to Land's End. While much more touristy, and geographically less relevant, it's easy to see why Land's End is so much more popular than the Lizard: the whole country seems to narrow about you as you drive west on the A30, until at last you arrive at the end of England, surrounded by nearly 270 degrees of sea.
Surrounding the point itself is a sprawling tourist complex, with multiple cafes and gift shops. But arriving as we did at 6pm it was mercifully quiet, with just a few visitors and none of the tourist hubbub. The one disadvantage was that the toilets were locked, but otherwise we got to look into the Atlantic on all sides in peace.
We had dinner in St Ives, about half an hour's drive from Land's End, in a lovely fish restaurant with a view over the old harbour. Our meal was delayed by a hold-up in the kitchen, but this meant that we exited the restaurant just as the sun was crossing the horizon in a fabulous orange sunset. The fading sunlight persisted, with a few faint rays staving off darkness for the whole hour-long drive home.
Tuesday 4th June
On Tuesday, blessed with even better weather than the previous couple of days, we headed to the north coast, to Tintagel Castle. Located on a rocky peninsula jutting into the sea, and making a perfect natural fortification, Tintagel Castle may have been used as early as the third century AD; but the first definite evidence points to a fortress in early medieval times. Legend has it that King Arthur himself was conceived here.
The castle itself is a nearly impregnable fortress perched right on the coast, with just one wooden bridge linking it to the mainland. After climbing up a staircase carved out of the stone, you find yourself on top of the main rock of the island, and wandering around you get superb views out to the sea and to the cliffs on the coastline.
The ruined buildings of the castle make for an interesting sight (and site!), with remnants of a great hall, a well, a chapel, and a tunnel possibly used for storing food. The island is surrounded by cliffs, in one of which lies Merlin's Cave. The whole thing takes the better part of two hours to fully explore, and is remarkably interesting, made all the nicer by the lovely sunny day.
After a very nice lunch in the visitors centre at the Castle, we headed back up the steep hill (which hadn't seemed half as bad on the way down!) to the village of Tintagel itself. We then paid a visit to the Old Post Office, a beautifully-preserved fourteenth-century stone house now in the hands of the National Trust, before relaxing in the sun with a nice scone.
In the evening, after a brief rest in the hotel, we headed to Padstow for dinner. Padstow, a pretty fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, is sometimes referred to as Padstein - a tongue-in-cheek reference to the number of eating establishments in the town run by Rick Stein. We managed to avoid them all, however, and had a very nice Italian meal in a restaurant overlooking the harbour.
Wednesday 5th June
Wednesday was the last full day of family - my parents and my aunt and uncle were headed home on Thursday. We were thus headed for one last family lunch in Fowey. Beforehand, though, we paid a flying visit to Wave 7 Gallery, run by my cousin in rural Cornwall just a few miles north of where we were staying. The gallery is filled with paintings, pottery, prints and assorted knick-knacks, and my mum couldn't resist the urge to buy a couple of things.
A quick drive over to the south coast brought us to Fowey Hall, a lavish country house hotel where my Cornish aunt and uncle treated the rest of us to a fabulous three-course meal, all the while swapping stories aplenty. After a long, lingering lunch, we left my Cornish aunt and uncle, and the five of us headed for a drive around the coast to Mevagissey, where we stopped to look round the little fishing village.
After that we headed for the nearby Dormer Point, or more accurately to the car park where you can walk to the point. Navigating there proved to be a challenge: we dispensed with the satnav and I used a proper old-fashioned Landranger to guide us to the car park, which was down a seemingly interminable series of lanes. Once there, we went for a short walk; while we didn't bother going all the way to the point we still got some lovely views round the coast; my dad, ever eager, continued on to the point proper at his usual brisk pace, and by the time the rest of us had dandered back to the car he had practically caught us up.
Having had such a big lunch we decided a picnic tea would suffice, so we grabbed some sandwiches and, once back at our hotel, sat outside in the fading sunlight to enjoy one last picnic as a family.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Devon and Cornwall, Day 1
It's too easy to think that Britain is a long, thin country, with plenty of north and south but not much east and west, a view that's particularly easy to slip into living in Coventry, pretty much bang in the middle of England. In reality, though, the eastern and western extremities of England are in fact quite far away. In particular, it's pretty much impossible to make a day trip out of going to Devon and Cornwall. So I didn't: I went for a week in June.
A nine-day holiday to Cornwall was divided into two parts. I travelled down on Saturday 1st June, to spend five nights in a quiet country hotel near Bodmin with my parents and my aunt and uncle. They had travelled over from Northern Ireland to visit my other aunt and uncle, who live near Bodmin. For all I've seen of my aunt and uncle in Cornwall, it's as if they're on another island; I really should get down more often.
But from Thursday 6th June, the focus shifted; I headed back over the Tamar to Plymouth, to meet up with the guys and go track-bashing. Once you get west of Exeter, there is but a single main line to Penzance, with no fewer than nine branches, all but one reaching to the coast. Over the course of four days, we went over all but one of those branches; it's not quick, given that you have to go down each branch and come back up again, but the scenery and the locations made for an unforgettable week in the south west.
Saturday 1st June
1125 (actual 1129) Coventry to Reading, arr 1239 (actual 1246)
Headcode: 1O12, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221127*+221122
Distance: 79.75 miles
The first step was to get to Cornwall. This would take five and a half hours. I'd forgotten just how much west there is to this country.
I had two options: I could go via Birmingham, necessitating another change at Plymouth, and condemning me to make more or less the whole journey on CrossCountry; or I could go via Reading, changing just the once, and using First Great Western (FGW) the whole way from Reading to Bodmin. I opted for the latter, mainly because I'm fed up using CrossCountry, not least because their trains are too short; by comparison I don't use FGW very much and looked forward to something a bit different.
So I started with the familiar hour-and-a-half run to Reading. It being CrossCountry it wasn't even a surprise that it was a few minutes late. It was, however, a surprise to have a 10-car train turn up, two 5-car Voyagers having been coupled together. This turned what would otherwise have been quite a busy train into a pleasantly quiet one, with plenty of space for everyone to spread out. I found a seat in the quiet coach on the unreserved half of the train and settled down.
During the journey, though, it became apparent that the longer train was a definite advantage: it ended up being quite busy, and just by having to stop a bit longer at each station we crept later and later. We arrived at the newly-rebuilt Reading station seven minutes late, giving me 45 minutes until my train to Cornwall. I picked up a couple of things in the shops before heading over to platform 8:
1332 Reading to Bodmin Parkway, arr 1703
Headcode: 1C84, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA16 with 43069+43041
Distance: 216.5 miles
With a three-and-a-half hour journey to Bodmin ahead of me, I took advantage of one of the best features of an FGW HST: first class. While on weekdays the first class carriages may be filled with rich commuters, on weekends they'd just cart about fresh air. So FGW, in common with most long-distance operators, offer cheap upgrades to first class at weekends, which also serves to ease the shortage of capacity in standard class.
With such a long journey ahead, I decided £20 for a Weekend First was worth it for the wide, comfortable seat, with an individual table, an unobstructed window view, and a few snacks thrown in for free. Once the conductor had upgraded my ticket, about half an hour into the journey, I reclined my seat, ate my lunch, and relaxed as the countryside streaked past.
Exeter marked the half-way point by journey time, though we'd covered nearly two thirds of the distance from Reading to Bodmin. East of Exeter, the train was very much an express service, calling at just Taunton and Tiverton, and cruising at 110mph for much of the journey. By contrast, west of Exeter, the train weaved its way through the countryside, first along the sea wall at Dawlish, before climbing over central Devon (south of Dartmoor) to Plymouth, and then weaving its way sinuously through Cornwall.
While the journey west of Exeter thus seemed slower, it was all the more worth it for the views. The countryside of Berkshire, Wiltshire and Somerset is all well and good. But it can't compare to the Dawlish Sea Wall, where the railway between Exeter and Newton Abbot is the sea wall, built on land reclaimed from the sea; nor to the pretty Devon hills, climbed with gradients of 1 in 40, looking towards Dartmoor; nor to the second-to-none Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar, where we cross from Devon into Cornwall; nor to the innumerable viaducts and bridges carrying us through the ups and downs of Cornwall itself.
After three-and-a-half hours I arrived in Bodmin Parkway station, greeted by my dad, who drove me to the hotel. In spite of the first class seat, my back was aching a little from the long journey; no doubt it would have been worse, though, if I'd been forced to endure the same journey in standard class.
A relaxing evening ensued, with dinner in a nearby pub, followed by an early night, ready for a big family reunion on Sunday.
A nine-day holiday to Cornwall was divided into two parts. I travelled down on Saturday 1st June, to spend five nights in a quiet country hotel near Bodmin with my parents and my aunt and uncle. They had travelled over from Northern Ireland to visit my other aunt and uncle, who live near Bodmin. For all I've seen of my aunt and uncle in Cornwall, it's as if they're on another island; I really should get down more often.
But from Thursday 6th June, the focus shifted; I headed back over the Tamar to Plymouth, to meet up with the guys and go track-bashing. Once you get west of Exeter, there is but a single main line to Penzance, with no fewer than nine branches, all but one reaching to the coast. Over the course of four days, we went over all but one of those branches; it's not quick, given that you have to go down each branch and come back up again, but the scenery and the locations made for an unforgettable week in the south west.
Saturday 1st June
1125 (actual 1129) Coventry to Reading, arr 1239 (actual 1246)
Headcode: 1O12, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221127*+221122
Distance: 79.75 miles
The first step was to get to Cornwall. This would take five and a half hours. I'd forgotten just how much west there is to this country.
I had two options: I could go via Birmingham, necessitating another change at Plymouth, and condemning me to make more or less the whole journey on CrossCountry; or I could go via Reading, changing just the once, and using First Great Western (FGW) the whole way from Reading to Bodmin. I opted for the latter, mainly because I'm fed up using CrossCountry, not least because their trains are too short; by comparison I don't use FGW very much and looked forward to something a bit different.
So I started with the familiar hour-and-a-half run to Reading. It being CrossCountry it wasn't even a surprise that it was a few minutes late. It was, however, a surprise to have a 10-car train turn up, two 5-car Voyagers having been coupled together. This turned what would otherwise have been quite a busy train into a pleasantly quiet one, with plenty of space for everyone to spread out. I found a seat in the quiet coach on the unreserved half of the train and settled down.
During the journey, though, it became apparent that the longer train was a definite advantage: it ended up being quite busy, and just by having to stop a bit longer at each station we crept later and later. We arrived at the newly-rebuilt Reading station seven minutes late, giving me 45 minutes until my train to Cornwall. I picked up a couple of things in the shops before heading over to platform 8:
1332 Reading to Bodmin Parkway, arr 1703
Headcode: 1C84, operated by First Great Western using HST rake LA16 with 43069+43041
Distance: 216.5 miles
With a three-and-a-half hour journey to Bodmin ahead of me, I took advantage of one of the best features of an FGW HST: first class. While on weekdays the first class carriages may be filled with rich commuters, on weekends they'd just cart about fresh air. So FGW, in common with most long-distance operators, offer cheap upgrades to first class at weekends, which also serves to ease the shortage of capacity in standard class.
With such a long journey ahead, I decided £20 for a Weekend First was worth it for the wide, comfortable seat, with an individual table, an unobstructed window view, and a few snacks thrown in for free. Once the conductor had upgraded my ticket, about half an hour into the journey, I reclined my seat, ate my lunch, and relaxed as the countryside streaked past.
Exeter marked the half-way point by journey time, though we'd covered nearly two thirds of the distance from Reading to Bodmin. East of Exeter, the train was very much an express service, calling at just Taunton and Tiverton, and cruising at 110mph for much of the journey. By contrast, west of Exeter, the train weaved its way through the countryside, first along the sea wall at Dawlish, before climbing over central Devon (south of Dartmoor) to Plymouth, and then weaving its way sinuously through Cornwall.
While the journey west of Exeter thus seemed slower, it was all the more worth it for the views. The countryside of Berkshire, Wiltshire and Somerset is all well and good. But it can't compare to the Dawlish Sea Wall, where the railway between Exeter and Newton Abbot is the sea wall, built on land reclaimed from the sea; nor to the pretty Devon hills, climbed with gradients of 1 in 40, looking towards Dartmoor; nor to the second-to-none Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar, where we cross from Devon into Cornwall; nor to the innumerable viaducts and bridges carrying us through the ups and downs of Cornwall itself.
After three-and-a-half hours I arrived in Bodmin Parkway station, greeted by my dad, who drove me to the hotel. In spite of the first class seat, my back was aching a little from the long journey; no doubt it would have been worse, though, if I'd been forced to endure the same journey in standard class.
A relaxing evening ensued, with dinner in a nearby pub, followed by an early night, ready for a big family reunion on Sunday.
Friday, 26 April 2013
Easter Engineering Works at Wolverhampton (or, How Not to Run a Railway on Maundy Thursday)
The evening of Maundy Thursday is the single busiest evening peak on the railways all year. While Christmas sees a much larger volume of traffic, it's spread out much more - some people travel nearly a week before Christmas, some as late as Christmas Eve. But at Easter, everyone gets a four-day weekend off work, and everyone wants to take full advantage by heading away on Thursday evening.
However, from the railway's point of view, the Easter weekend affords a rare opportunity to shut lines for four days to do larger pieces of engineering works that simply can't be done overnight or in a normal weekend, be they large-scale remodelling works or simply renewal works in awkward locations.
Yes, it causes disruption to people travelling home or on holiday at Easter. But the railways don't make money from leisure traffic; they make money from commuters paying thousands of pounds for an annual season ticket. Not pissing off the people paying £5000 for a ticket is rather more important than not pissing off those paying £50, so you do the work when most commuters aren't at work.
Unfortunately, this Easter I think the railways - in collusion with Network West Midlands - managed to piss off absolutely everyone trying to travel between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, including me...
The points at Crane Street Junction, where the lines to Walsall and Birmingham split right outside Wolverhampton, were to be renewed, but it couldn't quite be accomplished in four days. So the lines were closed at 3pm on Maundy Thursday, until 5am on Tuesday morning.
Yes, that's right. They closed probably the most congested railway in the West Midlands - probably the busiest line in England outside London - before the evening peak on Maundy Thursday.
So what can you do when you shut Birmingham-Wolverhampton?
For some of the long-distance traffic, there wasn't really a problem. CrossCountry services between Birmingham and Manchester, and Virgin Trains services between Birmingham, Preston, Glasgow and Edinburgh, were diverted via Wednesfield Heath - a line I managed to use on New Year's Day when there were works between Nuneaton and Stafford. Obviously such diverted trains couldn't call at Wolverhampton, but it did mean that those services ran more or less as normal.
However, Wolverhampton was only shut from the south end: the north end was still open. London Midland's services between Liverpool and Birmingham simply terminated short at Wolverhampton, providing a link between Wolverhampton, Stafford and Crewe. All trains to and from Shrewsbury also terminated at Wolverhampton. At Wolverhampton, to give a safe area for the worksite - which was right off the end of the platform - platforms 1, 2 and 5 were shut, with just platforms 3, 4 and 6 open.
None of that, however, provides a service between Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
Those trains I've already mentioned account for eight of the ten trains per hour that usually run between Birmingham and Wolverhampton: the two remaining services are the stopping trains, which provide a half-hourly service to all six intermediate stations. These ran between Birmingham and Sandwell and Dudley, with buses between there and Wolverhampton.
Yes, that's right: instead of ten trains an hour between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, there were two trains an hour to Sandwell, and buses onwards to Wolverhampton. And to add injury to insult, for whatever reason the trains running the shuttle between Birmingham and Wolverhampton were just two carriages long.
It doesn't take a genius to realise that that probably isn't enough.
To be honest, on Easter Sunday it might well have been fine. But this wasn't Sunday, this was the evening of Maundy Thursday. After sampling the diversions and looking at the work at Wolverhampton, I arrived in New Street just before 6pm and headed over the Victoria Street footbridge to platform 4C for the 18:08 shuttle to Sandwell, if only to see just how bad it would be.
I got half-way down the stairs to see the train pulling in, and the platform next to it absolutely heaving with passengers, about nine minutes before departure. It's difficult to describe just how insanely busy it was, but let me try. Firstly, I'm pretty sure that the passengers, standing on the platform, took up more space than the train did.
After a sizable number of people got off the train - which took a good minute or two - we all piled on. I have been on the Northern Line between London Bridge and Bank in the morning rush hour: frankly, I had more room on the Northern Line. And at least with the Northern Line there was another train just three minutes behind; but the stoppers to Sandwell were every half an hour.
I ended up standing in the vestibule of the two-car class 170 - hardly the best choice of train, but I'll come back to that - and even with five minutes to go to departure there was literally no more room on the train. A shout came down from the middle of the carriage to stop letting people on; I was wedged in next to the door controls and, after general nods of agreement from people around me, I shut the doors.
Just as I pushed the button I had to push back another passenger who insisted on trying to get on the train, saying perhaps more forcefully than I needed to, "no, I'm sorry, this carriage is full!" The doors shut, and the man was left clearly slightly angry, but it would simply have been unsafe to let anyone else on the train.
One person did try opening the doors again - but once he saw how busy it was moved down the platform to try another door, and I shut the door again. "Crush-loaded" doesn't quite do it justice. Unlike buses or taxis or planes, there are no maximum occupancy rules for trains: a train can take as many passengers as it can hold.
Eventually, though, there was simply nowhere for the people to go, and we left people behind on the platform. After letting a train to Manchester go a few minutes late, we finally left Birmingham at 18:10.
There was little need to hold on, as we were so wedged in that there was almost nowhere for anyone to go - except that we called at Smethwick Rolfe Street and Smethwick Galton Bridge, at which people wanted off. Somehow, the passengers for Smethwick struggled off the train, and a few even managed to join the train.
Eventually we arrived at Sandwell and Dudley at 18:25 - seven minutes late, simply because the train was so full it couldn't keep up - and proceeded to spend a full two and a half minutes disgorging its passengers. Definitely a new record for busiest train, and by far the least pleasant train journey I have ever undertaken.
From there, passengers for Wolverhampton were directed to the buses outside, of which there were most definitely not enough; I reckon our two-carriage train had well in excess of 200 people, and I only saw two buses to take them on towards Wolverhampton.
I decided not to join the assembled hordes of people on the buses, and instead crossed to the other platform to head back on the shuttle to Birmingham. The train used a crossover at the far end of Sandwell and Dudley to reverse. The train back into Birmingham was busy - there were still people standing, but I got a seat - but nothing like as busy as the way out of Birmingham had been.
When we got back to Birmingham, the platform wasn't as busy as it had been when I left an hour earlier, but the train wasn't departing again for twenty minutes. I'm told that every single shuttle train between 5pm and 8pm left people behind at New Street.
---
So, what could have been done better, and what lessons can be learned for next time?
The first thing to do would be to run longer trains. The shuttles were run with diesel class 170 Turbostars, making me suspect that the overhead wires had been turned off in connection with the works. Fair enough, but at least London Midland could have got a three-car unit from somewhere, rather than the two-car units that actually ran. I saw a three-car unit, mostly empty, on the Wolverhampton-Shrewsbury stopper; just swapping those over would have been a major improvement.
Of course, it's also nice to say there should have been more buses, but that's trickier. Hiring in buses is quite a challenge, especially when buses have to be used for school runs and so on - the level of buses will have been planned months in advance, and there's not much that can be done upon suddenly realising that double that level would have still been busy.
So were buses necessary in the first place? Wolverhampton was still open, and accessible to trains from the north, so could trains have been diverted and still run between Birmingham and Wolverhampton? I think the answer is probably yes. Initial plans had Arriva Trains Wales running trains between Birmingham and Shrewsbury via reversal at Bushbury Junction (on a goods line), avoiding Wolverhampton; in the end those plans were abandoned.
Nonetheless, the same reversal could have been used to get trains between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Even two trains an hour on that route would probably have given more capacity than the buses that were running, and journey times would almost certainly have been quicker. It would have been risky, and it would still have required buses for the local stations, but it would almost certainly have been better.
The other question that has to be asked is why the timing of the work was as it was. Firstly, why such a long closure? Well, renewing the points is a big job that has to be undertaken in one go, and the points are on a viaduct, making access particularly difficult. Rather than bringing everything to the site in advance and simply blocking the lines to install the points, I think that here the lines had to be blocked just to bring the stuff in.
After that, I think the logic was as follows: we need a little more than four days, so it's a choice between shutting the line on Thursday evening or on Tuesday morning. By closing the line on Thursday evening, you only disrupt journeys home from work; if the line had been closed on Tuesday morning, people's journeys to work would have been disrupted. At least by closing it on Thursday evening no-one is late for work.
I can understand that logic, but I'm not sure I agree that shutting the railway on the busiest evening of the year was the most sensible policy. Keeping the line shut for Tuesday morning - perhaps even all of Tuesday - may well have inconvenienced fewer people, given that by then the Easter holidays were underway throughout the country.
The other thing that didn't help was that Network West Midlands decided to shut the Midland Metro - a tram linking Birmingham Snow Hill to Wolverhampton - for two weeks from Easter Saturday. So while it was available to carry passengers on Thursday and Friday, by Saturday you had no alternative to getting a bus.
At the end of the day, this showed the fragmented, privatised railway at its worst. Network Rail were in charge of the work. Four separate train companies were running trains; all of them made different decisions on diversions and bus substitution. Network West Midlands seemed to be talking to no-one but themselves in deciding to close the Midland Metro at the same time.
That kind of overcrowding and lack of service simply wouldn't have happened in British Rail days, not least because they had enough men to throw at the job and get it done in a shorter time: BR functioned as one unit, not a network fragmented into a million tiny pieces.
London Midland spent half the evening apologising on Twitter: who they were apologising for, though, isn't clear, because no-one was in charge. Seemingly no-one had the authority to sit down and say "no, this isn't going to work, we need more trains".
Worse: I'm not sure if anyone has the ability to stop it happening again. Suggestions on a postcard, please.
However, from the railway's point of view, the Easter weekend affords a rare opportunity to shut lines for four days to do larger pieces of engineering works that simply can't be done overnight or in a normal weekend, be they large-scale remodelling works or simply renewal works in awkward locations.
Yes, it causes disruption to people travelling home or on holiday at Easter. But the railways don't make money from leisure traffic; they make money from commuters paying thousands of pounds for an annual season ticket. Not pissing off the people paying £5000 for a ticket is rather more important than not pissing off those paying £50, so you do the work when most commuters aren't at work.
Unfortunately, this Easter I think the railways - in collusion with Network West Midlands - managed to piss off absolutely everyone trying to travel between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, including me...
The points at Crane Street Junction, where the lines to Walsall and Birmingham split right outside Wolverhampton, were to be renewed, but it couldn't quite be accomplished in four days. So the lines were closed at 3pm on Maundy Thursday, until 5am on Tuesday morning.
Yes, that's right. They closed probably the most congested railway in the West Midlands - probably the busiest line in England outside London - before the evening peak on Maundy Thursday.
So what can you do when you shut Birmingham-Wolverhampton?
For some of the long-distance traffic, there wasn't really a problem. CrossCountry services between Birmingham and Manchester, and Virgin Trains services between Birmingham, Preston, Glasgow and Edinburgh, were diverted via Wednesfield Heath - a line I managed to use on New Year's Day when there were works between Nuneaton and Stafford. Obviously such diverted trains couldn't call at Wolverhampton, but it did mean that those services ran more or less as normal.
However, Wolverhampton was only shut from the south end: the north end was still open. London Midland's services between Liverpool and Birmingham simply terminated short at Wolverhampton, providing a link between Wolverhampton, Stafford and Crewe. All trains to and from Shrewsbury also terminated at Wolverhampton. At Wolverhampton, to give a safe area for the worksite - which was right off the end of the platform - platforms 1, 2 and 5 were shut, with just platforms 3, 4 and 6 open.
None of that, however, provides a service between Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
Those trains I've already mentioned account for eight of the ten trains per hour that usually run between Birmingham and Wolverhampton: the two remaining services are the stopping trains, which provide a half-hourly service to all six intermediate stations. These ran between Birmingham and Sandwell and Dudley, with buses between there and Wolverhampton.
Yes, that's right: instead of ten trains an hour between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, there were two trains an hour to Sandwell, and buses onwards to Wolverhampton. And to add injury to insult, for whatever reason the trains running the shuttle between Birmingham and Wolverhampton were just two carriages long.
It doesn't take a genius to realise that that probably isn't enough.
To be honest, on Easter Sunday it might well have been fine. But this wasn't Sunday, this was the evening of Maundy Thursday. After sampling the diversions and looking at the work at Wolverhampton, I arrived in New Street just before 6pm and headed over the Victoria Street footbridge to platform 4C for the 18:08 shuttle to Sandwell, if only to see just how bad it would be.
I got half-way down the stairs to see the train pulling in, and the platform next to it absolutely heaving with passengers, about nine minutes before departure. It's difficult to describe just how insanely busy it was, but let me try. Firstly, I'm pretty sure that the passengers, standing on the platform, took up more space than the train did.
After a sizable number of people got off the train - which took a good minute or two - we all piled on. I have been on the Northern Line between London Bridge and Bank in the morning rush hour: frankly, I had more room on the Northern Line. And at least with the Northern Line there was another train just three minutes behind; but the stoppers to Sandwell were every half an hour.
I ended up standing in the vestibule of the two-car class 170 - hardly the best choice of train, but I'll come back to that - and even with five minutes to go to departure there was literally no more room on the train. A shout came down from the middle of the carriage to stop letting people on; I was wedged in next to the door controls and, after general nods of agreement from people around me, I shut the doors.
Just as I pushed the button I had to push back another passenger who insisted on trying to get on the train, saying perhaps more forcefully than I needed to, "no, I'm sorry, this carriage is full!" The doors shut, and the man was left clearly slightly angry, but it would simply have been unsafe to let anyone else on the train.
One person did try opening the doors again - but once he saw how busy it was moved down the platform to try another door, and I shut the door again. "Crush-loaded" doesn't quite do it justice. Unlike buses or taxis or planes, there are no maximum occupancy rules for trains: a train can take as many passengers as it can hold.
Eventually, though, there was simply nowhere for the people to go, and we left people behind on the platform. After letting a train to Manchester go a few minutes late, we finally left Birmingham at 18:10.
There was little need to hold on, as we were so wedged in that there was almost nowhere for anyone to go - except that we called at Smethwick Rolfe Street and Smethwick Galton Bridge, at which people wanted off. Somehow, the passengers for Smethwick struggled off the train, and a few even managed to join the train.
Eventually we arrived at Sandwell and Dudley at 18:25 - seven minutes late, simply because the train was so full it couldn't keep up - and proceeded to spend a full two and a half minutes disgorging its passengers. Definitely a new record for busiest train, and by far the least pleasant train journey I have ever undertaken.
From there, passengers for Wolverhampton were directed to the buses outside, of which there were most definitely not enough; I reckon our two-carriage train had well in excess of 200 people, and I only saw two buses to take them on towards Wolverhampton.
I decided not to join the assembled hordes of people on the buses, and instead crossed to the other platform to head back on the shuttle to Birmingham. The train used a crossover at the far end of Sandwell and Dudley to reverse. The train back into Birmingham was busy - there were still people standing, but I got a seat - but nothing like as busy as the way out of Birmingham had been.
When we got back to Birmingham, the platform wasn't as busy as it had been when I left an hour earlier, but the train wasn't departing again for twenty minutes. I'm told that every single shuttle train between 5pm and 8pm left people behind at New Street.
---
So, what could have been done better, and what lessons can be learned for next time?
The first thing to do would be to run longer trains. The shuttles were run with diesel class 170 Turbostars, making me suspect that the overhead wires had been turned off in connection with the works. Fair enough, but at least London Midland could have got a three-car unit from somewhere, rather than the two-car units that actually ran. I saw a three-car unit, mostly empty, on the Wolverhampton-Shrewsbury stopper; just swapping those over would have been a major improvement.
Of course, it's also nice to say there should have been more buses, but that's trickier. Hiring in buses is quite a challenge, especially when buses have to be used for school runs and so on - the level of buses will have been planned months in advance, and there's not much that can be done upon suddenly realising that double that level would have still been busy.
So were buses necessary in the first place? Wolverhampton was still open, and accessible to trains from the north, so could trains have been diverted and still run between Birmingham and Wolverhampton? I think the answer is probably yes. Initial plans had Arriva Trains Wales running trains between Birmingham and Shrewsbury via reversal at Bushbury Junction (on a goods line), avoiding Wolverhampton; in the end those plans were abandoned.
Nonetheless, the same reversal could have been used to get trains between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Even two trains an hour on that route would probably have given more capacity than the buses that were running, and journey times would almost certainly have been quicker. It would have been risky, and it would still have required buses for the local stations, but it would almost certainly have been better.
The other question that has to be asked is why the timing of the work was as it was. Firstly, why such a long closure? Well, renewing the points is a big job that has to be undertaken in one go, and the points are on a viaduct, making access particularly difficult. Rather than bringing everything to the site in advance and simply blocking the lines to install the points, I think that here the lines had to be blocked just to bring the stuff in.
After that, I think the logic was as follows: we need a little more than four days, so it's a choice between shutting the line on Thursday evening or on Tuesday morning. By closing the line on Thursday evening, you only disrupt journeys home from work; if the line had been closed on Tuesday morning, people's journeys to work would have been disrupted. At least by closing it on Thursday evening no-one is late for work.
I can understand that logic, but I'm not sure I agree that shutting the railway on the busiest evening of the year was the most sensible policy. Keeping the line shut for Tuesday morning - perhaps even all of Tuesday - may well have inconvenienced fewer people, given that by then the Easter holidays were underway throughout the country.
The other thing that didn't help was that Network West Midlands decided to shut the Midland Metro - a tram linking Birmingham Snow Hill to Wolverhampton - for two weeks from Easter Saturday. So while it was available to carry passengers on Thursday and Friday, by Saturday you had no alternative to getting a bus.
At the end of the day, this showed the fragmented, privatised railway at its worst. Network Rail were in charge of the work. Four separate train companies were running trains; all of them made different decisions on diversions and bus substitution. Network West Midlands seemed to be talking to no-one but themselves in deciding to close the Midland Metro at the same time.
That kind of overcrowding and lack of service simply wouldn't have happened in British Rail days, not least because they had enough men to throw at the job and get it done in a shorter time: BR functioned as one unit, not a network fragmented into a million tiny pieces.
London Midland spent half the evening apologising on Twitter: who they were apologising for, though, isn't clear, because no-one was in charge. Seemingly no-one had the authority to sit down and say "no, this isn't going to work, we need more trains".
Worse: I'm not sure if anyone has the ability to stop it happening again. Suggestions on a postcard, please.
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