Rare Track Days #3: Doncaster-York Diversions

Over the weekend of January 19th-20th, I set off to do a few interesting bits of track in the north of England, spending Saturday night in Sheffield with my friend Jonathan. The plan had in fact been to head north on the night of Friday 18th, but with six inches of snow falling during the day I thought better of it, and instead headed north on Saturday morning instead, deliberately allowing extra time in case the snow caused problems.

The East Coast Main Line (ECML) between Doncaster and York was shut for engineering works on Saturday, so trains were diverted on a number of lightly-used passenger lines. A large network of railway lines remains in Yorkshire, many of them used principally by freight trains to and from the many coal-fired power stations. This map might help:

(Map based on OpenStreetMap; © OpenStreetMap contributors)

The normal ECML route between Doncaster and York is marked in yellow, and the two diversionary routes we took are marked in orange and blue respectively.

0911 (actual 0922) Coventry to Birmingham New St, arr 0942 (actual 0952)
Headcode: 2Y06, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350257
Distance: 19 miles

While the snowfall had wreaked havoc across the network on Friday night, by Saturday morning the problems were relatively minor. Nonetheless, London Midland's driver problems reared their head again, and my first train to Birmingham was ten minutes late having awaited a driver at Northampton. Even so, I made my connection at New Street without any problems:

1003 Birmingham New St to Sheffield, arr 1117
Headcode: 1S39, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221128
Distance: 77.25 miles

I headed north through Derby to Sheffield. In spite of having travelled this route many times before, the covering of snow made the familiar look new and other-worldly: gone was the normal colour palette of greenery, replaced with a beautiful yet muted spectrum of greys and browns. The snow made for quite a spectacle, particularly as we fringed the eastern edge of the Peak District.

Because of the engineering works, CrossCountry trains were not running via Doncaster, instead running either via Leeds or Pontefract Baghill. While I hadn't done the latter route, I had more important track to do, so I hopped off at Sheffield and wandered down the platform to head to Doncaster:

1141 Sheffield to Doncaster, arr 1214
Headcode: 1W36, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158848
Distance: 19 miles

This Northern Rail train to Scarborough via Hull started out pretty quiet from Sheffield, but rather more people got on at Meadowhall, a major bus and tram interchange to the north-east of Sheffield. We were allowed eight minutes over standard timings to get to Doncaster, with 33 minutes allowed for a journey of just 18 miles; and sure enough, even though we were held outside the station for three minutes, we still arrived in Doncaster five minutes early.

I had arrived in Doncaster with 45 minutes to spare, which I had allowed in case one of the trains had been delayed or cancelled. I found a warm waiting room and read my book. I had no intention of missing my next train, which was the last one of the day to go on this particular route:

1255 Doncaster to York, arr 1327
Headcode: 1N92, operated by Grand Central using Adelante 180105
Distance: 35.5 miles

The section of the ECML between Doncaster and York is a recent addition to the network. Due to subsidence as a result of coal mining on the old ECML through Selby, a new diversion avoiding Selby was built and opened in 1983 to avoid the crippling speed restrictions that would otherwise have been necessary.

The new line branched off the old one at Temple Hirst Junction, and joined the Leeds-York line at Colton Junction. The points at Colton Junction were being renewed, so we branched off the main line at Hambleton, where the new ECML (running north-south) crosses the Leeds-Selby line (running east-west) with connections from north to east - which I did previously - and from south to west.

The south to west connection at Hambleton is rarely used, only being scheduled for use by the 0655 Skipton-King's Cross on Saturdays. Being able to travel on the connection in daylight is thus rather unusual; but on this occasion a few of the Grand Central services - including this one - were diverted over this connection, and then onwards to York via Gascoigne Wood Jn and Sherburn-in-Elmet (see the orange route in the map above).

At Church Fenton, our pair of tracks were joined by another pair of tracks from Leeds, to which we crossed at Colton South Junction. We then passed Colton Junction, where a large body of men were busy removing the old points; it was quite surreal to have overhead wires but no track beneath them!

The diversion only lengthened the usual 25-minute journey between Doncaster and York to just under 35 minutes, and it is certainly the shortest diversionary route available. Nonetheless, for some reason not all the trains were using it, so I made sure to get a train that did.

The train itself was just five carriages long, with Grand Central's usual six-car HSTs replaced on this particular run with a Class 180 "Adelante", a rather unloved fleet of 14 diesel multiple units capable of 125mph shared between Grand Central, Hull Trains and First Great Western. Being only five carriages, it was fairly full, and the only seat with a window that I could find was a conveniently placed tip-up seat next to one of the doors; even so, I managed to eat my lunch.

I had half an hour in York to look round - time enough to buy a magazine - before heading back to Doncaster on a rather different diversion:

1400 York to Doncaster, arr 1450
Headcode: 1E13, operated by East Coast using HST 43320+43257
Distance: 34.75 miles

The vast majority of the diversions were not via Hambleton, but instead used a route via Askern and Ferrybridge shown in blue on the above map. The route via Ferrybridge is a standard diversionary route that drivers are trained on, and that seems to have been the limiting factor: even though this diversion took 50 minutes to get from York to Doncaster, there weren't enough drivers who knew the faster route via Hambleton to run that way.

As far as Ferrybridge, we followed the Dearne Valley line, which was once considered the main line between Sheffield and York. However, the fact that it avoids almost all the major settlements of the West Riding - the only major station being Pontefract Baghill - means that almost all services now run either via Leeds or Doncaster.

We left York almost the same way we came in (crossing at Church Fenton, rather than Colton South Jn), as far as Sherburn-in-Elmet. From there we continued straight on to Milford Junction, where we crossed over to the other pair of tracks: rather than going straight on to Castleford, we curved left and headed towards Ferrybridge.

We crawled along past Ferrybridge power station, leaving the Dearne Valley Line at Ferrybridge North Junction, and used the Knottingley Curve to Knottingley West Junction. This short section of track sees no regular passenger services apart from occasional diversions by East Coast, most of which are in the dead of night; to do the curve in daylight is thus fairly unusual.

At Knottingley West Jn, we briefly flirted with the Pontefract Line between Leeds and Goole, for all of a few metres, before immediately turning off again onto the Askern Line. This ten-mile-long line from Knottingley to Shaftholme Jn, on the ECML proper just north of Doncaster, is normally used only by a few Grand Central services between London and Bradford (which I did last April), and otherwise sees relatively little use.

On this occasion it saw a train every hour between London and Edinburgh. This particular train was, in fact, the "Highland Chieftain", the once-a-day service between Inverness and London. Fortunately it wasn't nearly as busy as the previous train, and I got a nice window seat in the rear coach. Of course, being an HST, there was no underfloor engine noise to put up with, which made the journey all the more pleasant.

We arrived at Doncaster - not normally a stop for the "Highland Chieftain" but a stop today to permit a driver change - a few minutes late; I grabbed a chocolate bar and then hopped on my last train of the day, a stopper to Sheffield:

1503 Doncaster to Sheffield, arr 1541
Headcode: 2P73, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 144006
Distance: 19 miles

It wouldn't be a trip up north without a ride on a Pacer. Fortunately, as trains made from bus parts go, the 144s are a lot better than the other kinds of Pacer, and though I was somewhat lacking in legroom, the stops passed quickly enough.

All in all, a very successful day in which I bagged two pretty rare connections. After 204.5 miles, and only just over four hours on trains, I met up with Jonathan and spent the night in Sheffield, ready for another day of rare track on Sunday...

Rare Track Days #2: The Smethwick Connection

On Sunday 6th January, I took a day trip to Worcester, to cover just 500m of new track: a connection in the Smethwick area, about four miles west of Birmingham city centre, from the Birmingham-Wolverhampton line to the Birmingham-Stourbridge line.

Wait, why is there a connection between two lines out of Birmingham? Isn't there just a junction? Ah, no, you see there's more than one Birmingham - or at least, more than one Birmingham station. The Wolverhampton line runs from New Street, while the Stourbridge line runs from Snow Hill. The connection allows trains to and from Stourbridge to divert to New Street, instead of Snow Hill.

My afternoon started slightly late with a Pendolino to New Street:

1259 Coventry to Birmingham New St, arr 1324
Headcode: 1G08, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390155
Distance: 19 miles

A journey I've done countless times before was livened up by being on 390155, one of the four newly-built Pendolinos added to the fleet in 2012. Although the train left Coventry nearly ten minutes late, we made up a little time and arrived at New Street just four minutes late, unusually coming into platform 1. I headed over to platform 5, to get my train to Worcester:

1345 Birmingham New St to Worcester Shrub Hill, arr 1436
Headcode: 1V17, operated by London Midland using Turbostar 170631
Distance: 35 miles

Trains heading south from Birmingham towards Cheltenham or Worcester normally head down the Lickey Incline via Bromsgrove - the steepest sustained gradient on the network, with nearly three miles at 1 in 37¾. However, for six consecutive Sundays in January and February, there are engineering works at King's Norton, so my train was diverted via Stourbridge, necessitating use of the Smethwick connection.

Other than engineering works, the connection at Smethwick sees very little use, with only a handful of early morning and late night services running that way for route knowledge.

It wasn't always this way, though.

When the connection was built, it was about as much use as it is today - occasionally useful but not vital to the everyday service. The connection was built in 1867 with the rest of the line from Stourbridge Junction to Snow Hill. Although originally operated by the Stourbridge Railway, they were absorbed into the Great Western Railway in 1870, and the Snow Hill-Stourbridge line quickly became part of the GWR's suburban network in Birmingham, which remained almost wholly separate from the former London, Midland and Scottish (LMS) network.

For a hundred years the connection saw very little use. In the 1960s, however, hell-bent on cost-cutting, BR decided to "rationalise" the network around Birmingham. A decision was made to cut costs by diverting all the GWR services onto LMS tracks and into the newly-rebuilt New Street station. This permitted the closure of the line between Smethwick and Snow Hill, achieved by diverting everything from Stourbridge over the Smethwick connection. Use was also made of a connection from Tyseley into the other end of New Street. This meant Snow Hill station could be closed in 1972.

The plan wasn't entirely successful, however: even in the 1960s there wasn't room to divert all the services into New Street station. The intention had been to also close Moor Street station, which lies at the other end of a 600m tunnel from Snow Hill, but Moor Street was forced to remain open to serve local services to Solihull, Leamington and Stratford.

By the 1980s, New Street was getting too busy, and plans were made to undo the closures. First to reopen was the tunnel between Moor Street and Snow Hill, closed in 1968 but reopened in 1987 along with Snow Hill station. The line from Snow Hill to Smethwick reopened in 1995, in one of BR's last schemes before privatisation, and the pre-1960s order was restored. The Smethwick connection remained in case trains needed to be diverted.

When there are engineering works or problems, being able to divert trains is invaluable - it (often) allows a service to continue running rather than having run buses (though on this occasion only London Midland were diverting, and CrossCountry's Birmingham-Cheltenham services were replaced by buses).

My train was to continue to Hereford after reversing at Worcester Shrub Hill, but I had plans for the evening, and so I headed across the footbridge to head back to Birmingham:

1455 Worcester Shrub Hill to Birmingham New St, arr 1539
Headcode: 1M12, operated by London Midland using Turbostar 172334
Distance: 35 miles

The previous train had been a class 170, well-suited to medium-distance inter-regional services such as Birmingham-Hereford. This, however, was a class 172, built in 2010 to replace the class 150 Sprinters on the Snow Hill suburban services, and are usually seen operating all-stations services, not running non-stop from Droitwich to Birmingham. They also have more seats and more standing room, with fewer tables, to enable the maximum number of commuters to be crushed in.

All this is by way of saying: I picked the wrong train to eat a late lunch on, having to eat lunch off my lap rather than a table. Ah well.

Still, the views made up for the lack of tables: as one of the guards commented, "we're going the pretty way to Birmingham". The Lickey Incline, while steep, isn't particularly scenic. However, the line through Stourbridge and Kidderminster is really rather pretty, with views across to the hills of the Wyre Forest.

From Worcester to Stourbridge, we follow the old Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway route, opened in 1852 as the GWR's first mainline to Wolverhampton. But the section beyond Stourbridge is no more; the line through Dudley remains in situ, rusting away, waiting for someone to decide its fate, leaving Dudley as the largest town in the country without a railway station to call its own.

On getting to Stourbridge Junction, we slowed right down to 15mph and squealed our way round the curve onto the Stourbridge Railway. Most of the trains on this line are all-stations suburban trains, and so it was particularly nice to be non-stop on the next section through Old Hill: the Stourbridge Railway also had to get up the Lickey Hills, but did so a little more gradually, with just over a mile of 1 in 51, which we took at a brisk pace.

We stopped briefly at Smethwick to let a train go past in the other direction before turning right and going over the Smethwick connection once more. All of a sudden we emerged from the short tunnel on the connection to see overhead wires again; the Snow Hill lines are not wired, but the Wolverhampton line is, and we joined it at Galton Junction to follow it for just under four miles back to New Street.

1550 Birmingham New St to Coventry, arr 1611
Headcode: 1B48, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390008
Distance: 19 miles

I joined another fairly quiet Pendolino for the familiar run back to Coventry, to cap off an enjoyable afternoon in which I covered 108 miles for a very reasonable £7.15 day return.

The Smethwick connection may not be the longest or the most interesting bit of rare track out there, but it's one I'd been waiting patiently to do for quite a few years; it also reminds us that every line tells a story.

Rare Track Days #1: Avoiding Wolverhampton

New year's resolution: write more, shorter blogposts.

I've been on many trains over the last few months, but no big multi-day excursions like I usually blog about. Instead I've been on lots of little day trips, most of them to cover a short section of "rare track".

Most of the British railway network is used day in, day out. But there are a few bits of track that aren't used much, or are only used by freight trains. I'm trying to travel on the whole British railway network, so when one of these rarely-used bits of track is called upon for diverting trains, I jump at the chance.

So, here begins a new series of reports about the many little trips I do.

On New Year's Day, I traversed a line which avoids Wolverhampton; it was probably the weirdest day's train travel I've ever done.

Cynics might think that that avoiding Wolverhampton is a good thing; but it's a big enough city that everything stops, and skirting round the edge rather than going through the station is mostly pointless these days. That opinion, however, was not shared by the builders of the Grand Junction Railway, one of the pioneer railway companies of the 1830s who set out to join the country together by rail, by linking the London and Birmingham Railway to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway; they saw fit to completely avoid Wolverhampton, giving it only a station at Wednesfield Heath, nearly a mile north-east of the current Wolverhampton station.

The Grand Junction and the L&B shared a station in Birmingham at Curzon Street, a little way east of New Street; only the frontage survives, but you can see it on your right on your way into New Street from the east, just before the tunnels. Their original route from Birmingham through Aston, Perry Barr, Bescot, and Wednesfield Heath survives, but has been supplanted for through traffic by the main line heading west from New Street through Soho, Smethwick, Tipton and Wolverhampton proper.

The original route through Bescot is still used by trains to and from Walsall, but the last three miles through Wednesfield Heath - between Portobello Junction and Bushbury Junction - do not see many regular passenger services, with only some of the London-Glasgow sleeper trains using it (but only on a Sunday night!).

Except on New Year's Day, when engineering works shut the WCML between Rugby and Stafford, and the only option was to divert London-Manchester and Liverpool trains via the original Grand Junction route. Well, that was the plan, anyway...

1151 Coventry to Milton Keynes Central, arr 1219
Headcode: 1B38, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390121
Distance: 44.25 miles

The astute among you will recognise that, from Coventry, Milton Keynes is the other direction to Wolverhampton. Unfortunately, while the trains were being diverted via Wednesfield Heath, they weren't stopping between Milton Keynes and Stafford. So in order to go on a bit of track near Wolverhampton, I had to go to Milton Keynes, in order to go back through Coventry to Stafford, and then repeat on the way home. So off I headed to Milton Keynes, where I had a half-hour wait to change trains.

1251 Milton Keynes Central to Stafford, arr 1416
Headcode: 1F17, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390137
Distance: 91.25 miles

The train from Milton Keynes to Stafford is probably the weirdest train journey I've ever made in my life. As I said, we were booked to run non-stop from Milton Keynes to Stafford. On the mainline via Nuneaton and Lichfield, this would be perfectly normal. But we weren't on the mainline, we were diverted to run non-stop through Coventry, alongside platform 3.

Running non-stop through a station you normally get off or on at is really weird. Admittedly we were following a stopping train, so we only went through Coventry at 40mph, but it was still seriously weird.

From Coventry the plan was that we'd to go along the mainline to Birmingham as far as Stechford, use another little-used bit of track from there to Aston, and then join the old Grand Junction main line through to Stafford. In fact, we were to use exactly the three dashed lines on this map:

Bad news: unfortunately, there was a track circuit failure near Bescot, and so we were unable to run via Wednesfield Heath. (Boo! That was the whole point of going on the train!) Fortunately, a check of Real Time Trains suggested that trains in the other direction were able to run normally, so I crossed my fingers that coming back we'd go through Wednesfield Heath.

Good news: being unable to run via Bescot left us with just one option: go via Birmingham New Street. Since we weren't booked to call, we proceeded through without stopping.

Yes, we went through Birmingham New Street station without stopping. (At the full permitted speed... of 10mph.) That was so weird it was slightly disorienting. I still can't quite get my head around having the line

Bham New St pf 6   13/47½ (!)

recorded in my logbook (where the / means that we passed without stopping). We continued to also run non-stop through Wolverhampton; surprisingly, we arrived at Stafford exactly on time, the diversion through New Street not having cost us any time.

I trotted over to platform 1, and waited for my train back:

1448 Stafford to Milton Keynes Central, arr 1615
Headcode: 1A40, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390006
Distance: 89.5 miles

I joined the train and sat for the next fifteen minutes with my fingers crossed, hoping desperately that we'd turn left at Bushbury Junction and not go back through Wolverhampton. We duly slowed down on approach to Bushbury Junction, consistent with turning left... and we did!

I'd honestly been waiting years to do the three miles of track between Bushbury Junction and Portobello Junction, so finally succeeding had me very nearly singing the Hallelujah Chorus to myself. You see, when they rebuilt the West Coast Main Line a few years ago, and upgraded the line between Rugby and Stafford from two to four tracks, they used the Wednesfield Heath line to divert trains every single weekend for four years. And I missed my chance. So to finally get the chance was super!

Once we joined the mainline at Stechford, instead of crawling along, we were afforded a short burst of a clear run, and accelerated up to 100mph - a speed we kept even through Birmingham International, but approaching Coventry we caught up to a stopping train and slowed down again.

Normally a train non-stopping Coventry towards Rugby would use platform 2; but the Nuneaton shuttle happened to be departing from platform 2, and rather than delay us, the signaller decided to send us across, through platform 3, and back over. So in one day I passed through Coventry platform 3 without stopping... twice!

We duly arrived at Milton Keynes, and I crossed the platform for the next train home:

1628 Milton Keynes Central to Coventry, arr 1733
Headcode: 2Y34, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350267*+350233
Distance: 46.25 miles

It happened that I'd just missed the fast Virgin Trains service, so the best option was to sit on the stopper via Northampton instead. An hour later, I found myself back at Coventry station for the fourth time that day - though only the second time that I'd stopped there...

So, in summary, I spent nearly four and a half hours on trains, travelled over 270 miles, and spent £38.05, just to go on a short bit of track outside Wolverhampton. Was it worth it? Yes, not just for the track; going non-stop through Birmingham New Street is not an experience I'd ever expect to repeat.