Thoughts of a Trainspotting Mathematician

Short term vs. long term: why Britain should say Yes to HS2

2012-01-07T19:56:00.001Z

Two years ago, when the initial plans for HS2 were announced, I wrote a blog post trying to make the case for High Speed 2, or HS2 as it is now universally referred to. Today, it is being reported that a Network Rail review has concluded that the main alternatives could not generate the required capacity.

First of all, let's clear up one common misconception. The Daily Mail article on Saturday led off with "The biggest rail project in over a century will cut the journey time between Britain’s two biggest cities from one hour 24 minutes to just 49 minutes." Yes, it's true, but that's not the point!

The point of HS2 is not speed, it's capacity. Simply put, the railways are very rapidly running out of capacity. The West Coast Main Line (WCML) between London and Rugby is particularly bad, and will be completely out of capacity by the mid-2020s unless something is done.

So, what should be done? HS2 involves building a new high-speed railway line from London to Birmingham and Lichfield, so that all the long-distance services on the WCML can be diverted onto the new high-speed tracks, leaving the existing tracks free for more commuter services, meaning more capacity for everyone. While a price tag of £17bn seems like a lot, we're already spending £16bn building Crossrail, and another £6bn rebuilding Thameslink; and HS2 would have an impact across the country, rather than on "just" commuter services in the south-east.

Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of opposition, and various alternatives have been proposed. In particular, the HS2 report published two years ago examined in detail a range of incremental upgrades to the existing network which would deliver comparable capacity increases. Since the Network Rail report hasn't been published yet, I'm going to try and explain why such incremental upgrades won't be enough.

Option 1: longer trains. Fortunately, Virgin Trains are way ahead of you: they're already lengthening the Pendolinos from 9 carriages to 11. Any longer, and the trains won't fit into Liverpool Lime Street station; even if you disregard Liverpool, there are very few platforms that can cope with trains longer than 12 carriages. So lengthening trains any more all of a sudden comes with a huge disruptive price tag of having to lengthen platforms.

Lengthening platforms sounds easy, but it betrays the complexity of the network. For example, at the end of the platform there may be some points or signals, meaning that in order to extend the platforms you have to move the points and the signals too. The line may be on a curve, and thus extending the platforms requires curved platforms, which means a gap between train and platform, and more inconvenience (and I don't believe curved platforms are allowed any more).

Option 2: faster trains to Northampton. This sounds slightly counter-intuitive at first, so bear with me. There are two kinds of train on the fast lines out of Euston: Virgin Pendolinos, which can do 125mph, and London Midland Desiros, which (for the time being) can only manage 100mph. Each hour (off-peak), there are nine Pendolinos and two Desiros on the fast lines. Because the Desiros run slower, there has to be a gap behind them so that the next Pendolino doesn't catch them up; this means that you end up with fewer trains than you could in theory have.

The solution to this is to make all the trains the same speed. In theory, it doesn't actually matter whether you speed up the Desiros or slow down the Pendolinos; but slowing down the Pendolinos would be political suicide for Virgin and would significantly increase the journey times out to Birmingham and Manchester. So, the Desiros ought to be speeded up to 125mph.

Well, good news! The Desiros are currently being speeded up, but only to 110mph (they're not physically capable of any faster). This will mean a gain of at least one extra train per hour on the fast lines. In an ideal world, the Desiros would be supplemented (or replaced) by more 125mph trains to serve Northampton; while that would gain you some capacity, one starts to run into problems with running basically InterCity trains on commuter journeys to Northampton, such as it taking longer to get people on and off the train, which starts to negate some of the benefit.

Option 3: grade separation at Ledburn Junction. Ledburn Junction, between Tring and Leighton Buzzard, is the junction where the London Midland Desiros turn off the fast lines onto the slow lines, to get out of the way of the Virgin Pendolinos through Milton Keynes. Because of the arrangement of the tracks and the layout of the junction, trains crossing from fast to slow or vice versa block the junction to trains in the other direction.

It's like having a right-turning lane in the middle of a dual-carriageway: you have to wait for the traffic to clear before you can turn right. Because trains can't run on line-of-sight, and have to be signalled, it's usually the other way round: it's like the traffic stopping at traffic lights just so you can turn right. That slows lots of people (trains) down for only one person (train) to turn right. Much better would be to have a motorway junction, where you go up a ramp, and over the offending traffic. Which is a great idea, but it's fairly expensive to build. More importantly, it's disruptive: imagine trying to drive through the junction while they're in the middle of building the ramp.

Option 4: four-track Birmingham to Coventry. Or, more accurately, Stechford to Berkswell, since Birmingham to Stechford is too tight to fit any more tracks, and there's a tunnel just east of Berkswell that would be impossible to widen (to say nothing of trying to fit two extra tracks through western Coventry without demolishing several streets). The Birmingham-Coventry corridor is one of the most congested railway lines in the Midlands, with fast trains between Birmingham and London having to share track with stopping services calling at local stations.

Prior to 2008, the stopping services called at all the stations, every half-hour. But in order to fit the new every-20-minutes London to Birmingham service from Virgin in, the local trains have had to become every 20 minutes and only call at about 2/3 of the stops each. So at Canley, my nearest station in western Coventry, only two of the three stopping trains actually calls; one runs through non-stop. This means that, rather than an easily memorable half-hourly pattern, trains to Birmingham leave at 14 and 33 minutes past the hour (the third should be at 53, but runs through non-stop), and trains to Coventry leave at 17 and 44 minutes past the hour (where the third should be at 57).

Four-tracking between Stechford and Berkswell, then, would permit local trains to be overtaken by fast trains, and remove the risk inherent in the current timetable: the line has so little slack in it that one stopping train being just 3 minutes late can delay up to four or five trains behind it. Were it not for the huge disruption it would require to construct, and the enormous cost of £900 million, I would be entirely in favour of four-tracking Birmingham-Coventry.

Unfortunately, to deal with the capacity problems on the WCML, we don't just need one of options 1, 2, 3 and 4 above, we'd need all four of them, and many more besides such as extra platforms in London and in Manchester as well as speed improvements around Stafford and Northampton. The so-called "Rail Package 2" proposed by the DfT as an alternative to HS2 would cost £4.2 billion, including all the above track upgrades and new rolling stock.

Admittedly, it does represent good value for money; indeed, in the way the DfT has calculated it may even be better value for money than HS2. But looking at the number of calories will tell you that a bag of sweets is better than a hot meal, since it will give you more energy; it won't tell you that an hour after eating the bag of sweets you'll be hungry again.

Rail Package 2 undoubtedly has the ability to deliver a significant increase in capacity, but it provides a trickle of incremental benefits rather than one huge step-change, something I believe can only be delivered with long stretches of new track rather than quick fixes to bottlenecks and extra bits of track bolted on here and there.

It would also be horrendously disruptive to deliver Rail Package 2. Some of you probably think I'm over-egging the disruption that upgrades cause; my earlier blog post showed my experiences of the right way to do engineering works, diverting trains instead of replacing them with buses. However, that doesn't hide the fact that what should have been a four-and-a-half hour journey from Coventry to Edinburgh became six hours - a third longer - though at least the disruption was confined to one bank holiday weekend.

Imagine having to spend a third longer on your commute to work every day. A 2003 study put our average commuting time at 45 minutes each way; suppose instead that that went up to an hour each way. That's an extra half an hour of your day wasted on travelling; half an hour less with your family; half an hour less to relax and unwind. Imagine doing that every day for a year - or maybe even five years - and you begin to get some idea of the disruption caused by an upgrade on the required scale.

The worst thing, however, about Rail Package 2 is that we've been here before. All the anti-HS2 campaigners seem to have incredibly short memories: for eight years during the West Coast Route Modernisation, between 2000 and 2008, the whole WCML was left with a mediocre, sub-standard service, particularly at weekends, while they closed half the track to rebuild it all. I, for one, do not want an upgrade of that scale to happen again.

HS2, by contrast, would require minimal disruption to existing journey patterns; of course it will cause significant disruption to the countryside it runs through, but except for a few towns there aren't actually very many people living near the route. Were the Birmingham-Coventry line to be four-tracked as part of any alternative to HS2, I have no doubt that the very large number of people living alongside that line would far outweigh the number of people disrupted by building HS2 in the Chilterns.

The leading article in Saturday's Independent advocates against HS2, as follows: "The most convincing argument in favour of HS2 is that it will act as a much-needed bypass, easing the congestion that bedevils the West Coast Main Line. But to plump for an all-new high-speed rail link, rather than dealing with the bottlenecks in the existing network, runs counter to the advice of the most recent review of Britain's transport infrastructure and relies on passenger numbers soaring at an unprecedented rate to balance the sums."

True, the Eddington Report in 2006 did indeed shy away from recommending high-speed rail as a solution to our transport problems. But this was in an era when oil cost just $60 a barrel, rather than the current $110 or more; and with no prospect of the oil price going down any time soon, the economics of transport have changed dramatically in the last five years.

The rate of increase in passenger numbers is hardly unprecedented either: today the rail network is booming in a way that no-one expected even five years ago. Between 2005/6 and 2010/11, the total number of rail journeys increased by just over 25%, and now stands at 1.35 billion passenger journeys per year. Indeed, that represents nearly a doubling since the early 1990s, when there were fewer than 750 million journeys per year.

Fifteen years ago, the incremental, disruptive, West Coast Route Modernisation - which cost a whopping £9 billion - was touted as the long-term solution to the capacity problems then facing the WCML. Given that, just four years after its completion, we're even discussing such solutions as Rail Package 2 or HS2, it's clear that it wasn't. The modernisation of the last decade was much-needed and is very welcome, but it came at a huge cost of disruption and only solved the problem in the short term.

Once again, we are faced between the choice of a short-term sticking-plaster, in the form of Rail Package 2, or a long-term cure, in the form of High Speed 2. We are often told that we never learn from history; let this not be one of those occasions. If we reject HS2 it would prove that Britain has become incapable of thinking beyond the short-term.

Let us learn from our mistakes. Let us plan for the long-term. Let us endorse HS2.

California, Days 7-11

2011-11-08T20:38:00.001Z

My apologies for the delay to this blog: unfortunately, sometime between getting off the plane in Heathrow and arriving back in Coventry, I lost my iPod Touch on which I had been writing the blog entries from California, and until now I haven't had time to reconstruct my movements and write up what I did in Los Angeles and Pasadena. Here, then, is a reasonably detailed summary of what I did for the four days I was in LA, and of the journey home.

On Friday 23rd September (Day 7), I spent the day exploring Pasadena on foot. After a brief visit to Tim's office on Caltech campus, I walked west into the centre of Pasadena. It was a pretty hot day, with temperatures peaking at 33C, but thanks to the desert climate of the area the humidity was relatively low, and so the temperature, while relatively uncomfortable, was much more bearable than anything I experienced in Japan last June, where even 28C was enough to force me indoors.

Nonetheless, after lunch in Subway, I headed indoors to escape the peak of the heat, to the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena's (and one of southern California's) best art museums. The museum houses European paintings ranging from the 14th century right up to the 20th century: some of its more notable exhibits include a self-portrait by Rembrandt, Dujardin's Denial of Peter, and Rubens's David Slaying Goliath.

The museum is also home to a large collection of south and south-east Asian art, with a number of incredible vast sculptures in stone and in bronze. Outside, in the courtyard garden, there are also a number of modern sculptures dotted around the gardens. I enjoyed a snack of pitta and houmous from the café while sitting outside in the shade.

After looking round the Norton Simon Museum, I wandered around the western part of Pasadena, chancing upon Gamble House, built by Charles and Henry Greene at the beginning of the 20th century, and one of the finest examples of understated yet elegant architecture in the city. Eventually I headed back through Memorial Park and past City Hall to Caltech campus, from where Tim and I headed back to his apartment for dinner and a quiet evening watching more Coupling.

On Saturday 24th (Day 8), Tim and I headed to the western side of LA to the Getty Center; like most of southern California, the easiest access is by road, so we headed west on the 134 freeway, continuing onto the 101, before heading south on the 405. The 405 runs across a mountain pass, connecting Santa Monica to Van Nuys, and is such a key artery that, not only does it already have five lanes in each direction, it is being widened to six - clearly needed as even mid-morning on a Saturday there were traffic jams!

The Getty Center is a vast, sprawling campus home to (part of) the J. Paul Getty Museum. The campus itself is set upon a hilltop overlooking Los Angeles to the south; parking is in an underground car park just off the freeway, with six levels underground, from which a cable-drawn tram took us up to the campus. In clear weather the campus features incredible views of the city; unfortunately coastal fog conspired to rob us of the best views, but it was still pretty incredible.

We spent most of the day there, looking round the vast collection of pre-20th century art, including paintings, sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts, spread across four buildings. The buildings are surrounded by wonderful gardens which are host to a wide variety of flowers in a circular field with a stream and waterfall running through the middle.

After nearly six hours on the campus, we headed back to Pasadena; instead of retracing our steps, we headed south on the 405, east on the 10 - literally through downtown LA - and then north along the aborted stub of the 710. The 710 was originally meant to connect Pasadena and the 210 to East LA and Long Beach; but one key section through South Pasadena would have involved demolishing hundreds of houses in one of the most affluent areas of southern California, and the plans have been on indefinite hold for over 40 years.

Instead, the 710 dumps all its traffic onto surface streets at Valley Boulevard, and so we wended our way through the streets of Pasadena. There are ambitious plans to complete the missing section with a huge 4.5 mile tunnel, but such plans have not yet got off the drawing board.

This "South Pasadena Gap" means there are no north-south freeways between the 5, running through downtown LA, and the 605, running along the San Gabriel River valley. Although the east-west distance between the 5 and the 605 is only 12 miles, that 12 miles is in one of the most densely populated areas of the US; that said, pro- and anti-completion lobbies have long argued about whether completing the 710 would alleviate or aggravate the notorious traffic congestion in LA.

In the evening, we watched Heat, an epic three-hour crime thriller set (appropriately) in downtown LA, written and directed by Michael Mann and starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro; with some incredible action scenes I was literally on the edge of my seat.

Sunday 25th (Day 9) brought a fairly quiet day: Tim went to the dojo in the morning, after which we headed for lunch in Pasadena, before heading onto campus and discussing some maths. Caltech campus is beautiful: while more urban than Warwick campus, being integrated into the city blocks of Pasadena, the architecture and the landscape provides a wonderful environment in which to do research.

The tallest building on the campus is the Millikan Library, named after Robert Millikan, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who first successfully measured the charge on the electron, and who spent nearly 25 years as chairman of Caltech's executive council. The building stands ten floors high, and from the top floor one can see the San Gabriel Mountains to the north (though they were a little hazy on Sunday).

After a quiet Sunday evening, on Monday 26th (Day 10) I again spent the morning on Caltech campus; Tim had arranged for me to meet with Dennis Kochmann, another postdoctoral researcher, who has similar research interests to me, and we discussed a number of interesting mathematical questions. After lunch on campus, I headed into Pasadena to attempt the seemingly impossible: use public transport in southern California.

I walked to the north side of Pasadena to catch the Metro Gold Line from Lake station as far as Union Station in central downtown LA. They call them trains, and treat them like an underground metro system, but in reality they're what we would call trams, with the ability to run on tracks on streets as well as on dedicated tracks. The Gold Line between downtown LA and Pasadena opened in 2003, and runs every 12 minutes during the day (more at peak times, and less in the evenings), with the journey from Lake to Union Station taking just under 30 minutes.

Union Station itself is something of a timewarp, much like the Amtrak network as a whole: a throwback to what rail travel used to be like in Britain 50 years ago, with just one train a day to big destinations, and an apparent inability to just get a ticket and get on a train. Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to try Amtrak at all; all the more reason to go back, I guess!

I spent a couple of hours wandering around the centre of downtown LA: my first port of call was to City Hall, where there's an observation deck on the 28th floor where you can get a 360-degree panorama of the city. The views were very good, clearer than they had been from the Getty Center, although not being as high up meant some of the skyscrapers in the financial district towered over us.

I searched in vain for a bookshop, before heading towards Disney Hall, one of the most stunning pieces of modern architecture I've ever seen: home to LA's finest concert hall, designed by Frank Gehry, and opened in 2003, the building is an array of odd angles and sweeping curves covered in metal.

Finally, I headed back towards Union Station, passing over one of the bridges over the I-10 freeway. The 10 literally threads itself through downtown Los Angeles; lessons learned from ghettos created under freeways which were elevated through urban areas led to later freeways being sunk into cuttings through cities, such as the 10 through LA. It was quite odd to stand over a highway with four lanes in each direction with the skyscrapers of downtown LA almost in spitting distance.

My return trip from LA to Pasadena was during rush hour - I left Union Station at about 5:15pm - and I'm pleased to report that the train was pretty much full. So full that I was standing the whole way, which I didn't object to at all since I bagged a spot to stand at the front, looking into the driver's cab and out onto the track in front. The train thinned out gradually, and I got a seat for the last couple of stops.

I headed back to Caltech campus to meet Tim, before heading into the centre of Pasadena for dinner in Zono Sushi, a Japanese restaurant, and then back to Tim's apartment for the last time.

Tuesday 27th (Day 11) was my final day in California; after a quiet morning catching up on blog, followed by lunch on Caltech campus again, I got a SuperShuttle - basically a pre-booked shared taxi - from Caltech to the airport, since Tim had a meeting.

After checking in at about 3pm, I wandered over from Terminal 7, the United terminal from which I was due to depart, to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, in seach of some shops. I succeeded, finding some interesting maps which I'd been looking for, as well as a muffin and a drink. Once back in Terminal 7, I made my way through security - experiencing the back-scatter X-ray scanners for the first time - and relaxed, waiting for my flight home:

Flight UA934: 1755 Los Angeles T7 to London Heathrow T1, arr 1215 (+1)
Operated by United Airlines using a Boeing 777, seat 37B
Pushback: 1750, takeoff 1801, landing 1219, on stand 1225

My flight home lasted just over ten hours. We pushed back early, and were airborne just a few minutes after our departure time. We were served dinner, a beef brisket with mushrooms, an hour or so after takeoff, and a brunch of a bread roll, a yogurt, a banana and a Danish-style pastry about an hour before landing at 11am British time.

I tried to sleep on the plane, but just as I was getting off to sleep about five hours into the flight, we hit a solid five-minute patch of turbulence, and I was wide awake once more. I dozed for another half an hour or so, but I didn't exactly land well-rested.

Our route took us due north-east out of LA, over Las Vegas and the Rocky Mountains, crossing the Canadian border about Winnipeg, skirting the southern end of Hudson Bay, south of Greenland, hitting land once more on the western coast of Ireland about Sligo.

At this point the approach became spookily familiar: we headed east over Ireland, joining the standard eastbound track just north of the north coast of Wales, before turning south-east over the Wirral and heading towards London; from the north coast of Wales, all very similar to the usual approach from Belfast into Birmingham or London.

In spite of the prompt departure from LA, we landed a few minutes late at Heathrow, mostly due to traffic congestion on approach. We were placed in the infamous Bovingdon Stack, the holding pattern over the Hertfordshire village of Bovingdon, which is used for all flights arriving from the north west of London. We entered at 10,000 feet, and exited after five 180-degree turns - not the most pleasant of things when they're right-hand turns and you're sat one seat from the left-hand window - and headed south-west to line up for final approach to runway 09L.

On landing we taxied back to the stand from which I had departed ten days previously - gate 49 of terminal 1 - and after a few minutes embarked on the seemingly interminable walk to the terminal proper. Gate 49 is one of the stands which will form part of the first satellite building of the new Heathrow East terminal, and as such it is rather a long way from the main building so that they can fit planes all the way round it.

With no queue at immigration I breezed through and picked up my bag, and headed for the Heathrow Express:

1303 Heathrow Express, Heathrow Central to Paddington arr 1319

After a brief wait outside Paddington for a platform, we arrived on time, and I stepped off the train into an unseasonably warm 27C. Unfortunately, unlike LA, it was horribly humid, and I found myself rather sweaty in short order. After grabbing some magazines and some lunch, I headed for the tube and went back to Euston the same way I'd arrived:

Bakerloo line, Paddington to Oxford Circus
Victoria line, Oxford Circus to Euston

I arrived in Euston a few minutes too late to catch the 1343, so I waited for the 1403. Normally I avoid the xx03 departures from Euston, since they call at Rugby and deprive you of the giddy sensation of going over the junction at Rugby at 125mph; on this occasion, however, I was too shattered to care, and just wanted to get home.

1403 Euston to Coventry, arr 1502

After the familiar trip up the West Coast Main Line - fortunately event-free, unlike the previous few times, though still five or six minutes late into Coventry for no apparent reason - I grabbed a bus for the short journey to my house, and arrived home at about 15:30, having been up for nearly 24 hours.

Obviously, not wanting to go to bed at 4pm - since that would have completely ruined what little semblance of a sleeping pattern I have - I decided to go to campus, and finished my day in the office catching up on what I'd missed over the five weeks in which I'd been in Edinburgh, Northern Ireland, Guildford, and California.

All in all, a busy and enjoyable September.

California, Day 6

2011-09-26T19:36:00.001+01:00

On Thursday, I said goodbye to San Francisco; while I now love the city I was heading south to Los Angeles to stay with Tim, another friend of mine, in Pasadena. After packing and saying many goodbyes, I headed for the nearby BART station and caught the train back to San Francisco Airport.

BART, Yellow Line: 1129 Civic Center/UN Plaza to San Francisco International Airport, arr 1158

At the airport, however, I was not heading for international departures; for the first time I was taking a domestic flight in another country. I checked in and joined the line for security, which had been so long it was taking up half the terminal; by the time I got there it was a bit more manageable.

Once through security, I was in the airside part of Terminal 3, the United Airlines domestic terminal. In contrast to every British airport, where departures and arrivals are well-segregated, it seems that the norm for American airports is to have everyone sharing the same terminal space.

Thus, arriving passengers were walking through exactly the same terminal space as those waiting for departures, past the same shops and using the same toilets. I guess when it's only domestic flights it's not so much of a problem from the point of view of preventing illegal immigration, but it is nonetheless odd from a British perspective.

That said, customs rules force any arriving international passengers to go through customs and immigration at their first point of landing in the US, thus making airside connections basically pointless and impossible. At first glance, it appears this is so the Americans don't have to redesign every airport in the country.

I bought a magazine and a copy of the New York Times (which is, de facto, a national newspaper) to read on the plane, and then got some lunch, a cheeseburger from Lori's. After that I headed to the gate.

I was particularly impressed with the amount of information provided by United and by the airport: instead of weasel words and apologies we got exact estimates of delays to planes and the reason for them (usually ATC or late inbound aircraft). It is a very small change that meant everyone knew where they stood and weren't constantly waiting for information over the tannoy; personally I find there's nothing worse than not knowing if you're going to be delayed or not.

Also on display at the gate were lists of passengers waiting for upgrades or on standby for seats, as well as information on the type of aircraft and where it's coming from. We were even told verbally that we might be a couple of minutes late boarding; no British airport would bother to alert people to that short a delay. It put me at ease, and we did indeed board a couple of minutes late:

Flight UA698: 1425 San Francisco T3 to Los Angeles T7, arr 1548
Operated by United Airlines using an Airbus A320, seat 31A
Pushback: 1424, takeoff 1458, landing 1559, on stand 1606

We pushed back on time, but then we queued for takeoff on one of the two east-west runways. From our plane we could quite easily see that both parallel runways were being used for both take-offs and landings, unlike, for example, Heathrow, which uses one runway for landings and the other for takeoffs. In spite of the fact that "mixed mode" is theoretically more efficient, we seemed to wait longer than was really necessary, and it took us nearly half an hour to get airborne.

The flight itself, though, was smooth as silk with some stunning views. I had a left-hand window seat; after taking off from runway 28L, we turned south-east and followed the coastline down to Los Angeles. This afforded us excellent views of the San Francisco Bay; while the Pacific side was covered in thick fog the bay itself was clear as crystal.

In particular, it was quite amazing to be able to look back down at the airport we had just departed from and see, clear as day, the runways we'd used, the queue of planes waiting to take off, and even two planes coming in to land simultaneously (not quite side by side, but they landed within 30 seconds of each other on parallel runways).

Most of the journey was clear, and I had a good view over the mountains and into the desert-like plains of central California. Los Angeles itself and the surrounding area were in the midst of pretty thick coastal fog, and the visibility was relatively poor for the last few minutes of the flight; after descending through cloud over downtown LA, we turned sharply to the right not far from the runway, and landed heading south-west on runway 24L.

On arrival into Los Angeles terminal 7, it was another American domestic terminal with arriving and departing passengers intermingled. I headed for baggage reclaim to another surprise: members of the public are permitted to enter as far as baggage reclaim, and so Tim was there waiting for me; I had expected to have to reclaim my bag, *then* go find him. My bag came pretty soon after I got there, and we headed to Tim's car.

San Francisco is one of the best cities in the USA for using public transport; Los Angeles is not. Indeed, the Los Angeles freeway network was started in the 1930s and fully mapped out in the 1940s, before most of the world had even heard of such roads.

While this blog exists primarily due my love of public transport, I cannot deny a strong interest in road and motorway design as well; indeed, my late grandfather played a part in designing much of the motorway network of Northern Ireland (though due to budget cuts in the 1970s calling it a network today is somewhat optimistic). As such I was actually quite looking forward to being driven on Los Angeles's incredible network of freeways.

Our drive from the airport to Tim's apartment in Pasadena took us east on Interstate 105, before turning north onto the 110. The 110 runs from Long Beach, on the coast south of Los Angeles, through the western part of downtown LA, and then up the Arroyo Seco valley (literally "dry river bed") to Pasadena. The portion between LA and Pasadena was the first freeway constructed in the area, opening in 1940, and does not conform to modern standards for Interstate Highways, thus meaning it is designated merely as a state highway.

It's not difficult to see why: some of the junctions are literally 90-degree right turns that have a rather generous speed limit of 5mph, and some of the on-slips are in fact stop lines where cars are then forced to accelerate to full freeway speed in no distance at all! One particular interchange, that between the 110 and the 5, requires traffic from the 110 northbound going to the 5 northbound to curve sharply left in a tunnel (with a speed limit of 25mph) in one lane. These myriad design features inevitably contribute to LA's infamous traffic problems; I'm almost glad that I can't drive, so that I'm not tempted to try in LA.

We left LAX at just after 4:20pm, and the traffic was just starting to clog up for the evening rush hour. Tim decided to put Beethoven's 9th Symphony on and see if we could get back to his apartment before its completion; we succeeded, but with only 57 seconds to spare. (For the record, it was the performance by the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra.) That said, had it not been for the carpool lanes on various stretches it would have taken much longer.

Tim is a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics at Caltech (the California Institute of Technology), and after dumping my stuff we headed to his office on the Caltech campus, a short five-minute walk away, so he could do a little more work and check in with the world.

After that we headed back to Tim's apartment, where he cooked dinner for us, before Tim headed to the dojo for an aikido training session while I relaxed and wrote some blog. Later in the evening, Tim introduced me to an hilarious British comedy series from 2000 or so, called Coupling, of which we watched a couple of episodes before retiring to bed.

California, Day 5

2011-09-25T02:34:00.001+01:00

My original plan for Wednesday had been to head for a boat tour to Alcatraz, but by the time I got round to actually booking it it was sold out. I decided instead to go for a boat cruise around the San Francisco bay; but given the busy few days I'd had previously I took things easy and was in no rush.

I left the house about 11:30 and headed out to get some lunch, with the intention of going on a boat trip in the afternoon. I decided to head to the Castro for lunch, using the Muni Metro.

However, when I got to the metro station at Civic Center it was clear that not all was going to plan; in 15 minutes only one train went by, but that was going along the N line, and I needed either K, L or M. After 15 minutes an L train turned up, but then they announced they were experiencing "outbound delays due to technical difficulties".

After a couple of minutes of being held in the station, we proceeded to the next station, Van Ness. At Van Ness we sat for a while longer, and I considered going up to street level to catch the F instead to the same destination. After six minutes I finally decided to get off, whereupon my impatience was duly rewarded with the train's immediate departure. That'll teach me.

So, having gone up to street level, I caught another historic streetcar, this one from Birmingham (I presume it meant Alabama, not the West Midlands); I rode the F from Van Ness to Castro and 17th, the line's terminus.

The Castro is a district of much culture and history; in 1977 it made history by electing Harvey Milk to the board of supervisors (essentially the city council), who thus became the first openly gay man elected to public office anywhere in the United States (and possibly the world). Tragically, he was shot dead a year later, as was Mayor Moscone, by Dan White, one of Milk's fellow supervisors.

The district today is a bastion of local culture, and I enjoyed a lingering lunch in Harvey's, a local restaurant at the intersection of 18th and Castro named in Milk's honour, while watching the world go by.

Eventually I headed back towards the waterfront, taking the metro line T from Castro to Embarcadero, from where I took a short walk to catch the F from Ferry Plaza to Fisherman's Wharf.

As I said my original plan had been to take a boat to Alcatraz and look around "The Rock", the infamous prison island dotted in the middle of San Francisco Bay. As it was, partly due to my forgetting and partly due to not being all that fussed about doing it at all, I failed to book in time they had sold out.

This being my last full day in San Francisco, I didn't have another opportunity to go on a boat, so I decided instead to head on a one-hour cruise around the bay with Blue and Gold Ferries. For $25, we were taken under the Golden Gate Bridge, around Alcatraz, and back alongside the Wharf.

The Golden Gate Bridge was, as is quite usual, shrouded in some fog but the visibility was better than Monday and we actually got a pretty good view of the bridge; the southern end was again covered in fog but the view to the northern end was clear enough when we got up close to see quite a lot of Marin County.

On the return from the Golden Gate Bridge we passed Alcatraz, which was originally inhabited in 1858 as a military base overseeing the bay; but the officers hated its remoteness and it was converted first to a military prison and then eventually into a federal penitentiary. There were only about 300 cells on the island, and the prison was reserved for the worst offenders only, eventually closing in 1963.

It's difficult to explain how remote Alcatraz feels, in spite of - or perhaps because? - its position only 1.5 miles offshore. The island is now a national historic landmark, and tours around the jails are apparently very interesting, if rather touristy.

After an hour at sea - where it was pretty windy, but still sunny enough to sunburn my cheeks - we landed back at Pier 39, and I had an ice-cream before heading back to Ferry Plaza on the F, this time on a streetcar from Philadelphia.

By now I'd been on almost all the types of public transport in San Francisco, except one: the trolleybuses. Most of the major bus lines have electric wires overhead, just like trams, and electric buses run along the streets (on normal tyres) powered by their connection to the overhead electric wires.

I thus decided to forgo the F at Ferry Plaza and get a #21 from Ferry Plaza to Market and 7th. It was an odd sensation being on what was quite obviously a bus but without the inevitable diesel engine sounds and smells: the quiet hum sounded so like a tram that it was hard to believe that underneath us were rubber tyres, not steel rails. But tyres they were, and I got off at Market and 7th to head to a shop and get some milk.

In my search for a shop I chanced upon the United Nations Plaza, which forms the centrepoint of the city's municipal buildings. On June 26th, 1945, the treaty establishing the United Nations was signed in San Francisco, and the plaza commemorating this was inaugurated in 1975.

Engraved in the ground is the full text of the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations: "We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war... do hereby establish an international organisation to be known as the United Nations."

After a quiet dinner, Robert, Charlie and I watched Rushmore, a 1998 film directed by Wes Anderson, in which an eccentric teenager, Max, and a rich industrialist, Herman (played by Bill Murray), become friends and vie for the love of an elementary school teacher, Rosemary Cross. The film is hilarious and very well-directed, and made for an interesting evening's entertainment. I eventually headed to bed for my last night's sleep in San Francisco, before flying to Los Angeles on Thursday.

California, Day 4

2011-09-23T19:07:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday, I went for a tour of San Francisco's art museums. I started with the four-block walk to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I got there at 11am, just as it opened, and I had to queue for 15 minutes to get in.

The museum houses an impressive collection in a spectacular building: spanning five floors, the building was completed in 1995 and remains one of the most eye-catching buildings in the city. Inside, there are a number of permanent exhibitions as well as a variety of rotating temporary exhibitions; as a result, the fourth floor (i.e., the third floor) was closed for renovation.

The first exhibit I came upon was also the most interesting: it exhibited the work of Dieter Rams, a designer for the electrical company Braun, whose ruthless desire for simplicity and good design have led, directly or indirectly, to some of the most iconic designs of our time: everything from calculators to hairdryers were subjected to unrelenting simplification, and his work has influenced many designers, not least Jonathan Ive at Apple who designed the iMac and the iPhone.

There was an exhibit of portraits and self-portraits: perhaps the most eye-catching exhibit was a pair of sculptures by Janine Antoni, both busts of her head, one in chocolate and one in soap. Another exhibit of photographs, Face of Our Time featured a series of photos by Richard Misrach of houses in New Orleans devastated and looted after Hurricane Katrina. Finally, the Rooftop Garden featured a number of large-scale sculptures.

The museum as a whole was very nice, and exhibits some of the best art west of Chicago; an enjoyable hour and a half, after which I popped into Subway, grabbed some lunch, and walked to Union Square to eat in the shade.

After lunch, I took two buses to head to Lincoln Park, in the north-west of the city. I first took the #38L along Geary Street (which becomes Geary Boulevard further out) from Union Sq to 33rd Avenue, which took nearly half an hour. There, I changed to the #18, from 33rd and Geary up to the Legion of Honor.

The Legion of Honor, a beautiful stone building with mock Greek columns, was given to San Francisco by Alma de Brettville Spreckels on Armistice Day, 1924, to honour the Californians who died in World War I. It is now home to San Francisco's finest collection of art from the renaissance right through to the early 20th century.

Its biggest and most impressive collection is that of the bronze sculptures of Auguste Rodin, with one, The Thinker, standing in the courtyard at the entrance to the museum. Others include The Three Shades and The Severed Head of St John the Baptist; all are exquisite, and the collection befits its impressive surroundings.

The rest of the permanent collection houses an impressive collection of old paintings, including El Greco's St John the Baptist, and Monet's Grand Canal, Venice. One of my favourites, though, was the slightly more obscure painting called Holy Week in Seville by Jose Jimenez y Aranda, depicting a pastor preaching to the assembled crowds outside the cathedral.

There were two temporary exhibitions on: one was of Dutch and Flemish Masters, which was interesting but not especially memorable. The second, though, was of The Mourners, tomb sculptures from the Court of Burgundy in Dijon. The cathedral in Dijon is currently undergoing renovation, permitting these 37 porcelain figurines depicting monks mourning in various manners to be removed for a special exhibition. Rarely is it possible to see them so close up and so intimately; the Mourners are a fascinating study of the continuing human battle with grief.

After nearly two hours in the museum, I headed into the surrounding Lincoln Park. From the museum, it is a short walk to the coastal path; after one or two false starts, I found myself onto the coastal path and headed west round the headland of Point Lobos.

The point of Lands End affords some of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge: for the first (and only) time, I saw the bridge completely unadorned by fog. A little further west, at Point Lobos, is the westernmost point of San Francisco, with views stretching out over the Pacific Ocean.

On round the coast a little, past the one-time tourist resort of Cliff House, is Ocean Beach: a mile-long stretch of beach on the Pacific coast, busy with beachgoers, sunbathers, surfers, and many others. On this unseasonably warm Tuesday, all the locals were out enjoying some September sunshine.

After an hour and a half meandering round the coast, about 6pm I caught the Muni Metro N line from near the beach, at Judah and 47th, to Civic Center. The Muni Metro is what we would probably call a tram, though in this case it was more like two trams coupled together. Fortunately I was travelling against the peak flow, since the trams in the other direction were full and standing; as it was I was seated comfortably the whole way back to the apartment.

While in the city centre the trams runs underground, like a subway, and the doors have level access to platforms in dedicated underground station. On the surface, though, it runs more like a bus, with the major stops having dedicated wheelchair access ramps, but most being just like bus stops (and sometimes used by buses too); the flat access to the platforms recedes to form a set of steps down to ground level to get on and off the tram.

After getting back to the apartment, we headed for dinner with one of Charlie's friends from Cambridge, Sam, to Bossa Nova, a Brazilian place on 8th Street near the intersection with Mission. We ate tapas-style, all sharing a bunch of really interesting plates of food. I retired quite early, ready for my last full day in San Francisco.

California, Day 3

2011-09-21T18:28:00.000+01:00

The thing I love about flying west is it makes getting up relatively early in the morning wonderfully easy: this Monday morning I woke up effortlessly at 8am after a good night's sleep. After a shower and some blog-writing, I headed out about 11am for a tour of San Francisco's parks.

After grabbing some lunch to take with me, I walked to Powell Street to catch another cable car, this time down Powell and Hyde Streets to Fort Mason. Yesterday, however, I'd caught the cable car from its third stop; today I was getting on at the terminus and boy, was there a queue.

I queued for a full half-hour, but it was worth the wait; the ride up and down the hills was even more spectacular than yesterday; this time, rather than hanging off the side, I was inside the car right at the back, so I had a pretty good view, but I could still brace and take photographs without fear of falling off.

I arrived on the north waterfront at the west end of Fisherman's Wharf, and headed for Fort Mason, a former US military base turned into parkland sitting right on the shoreline, with great views out into the bay. I walked to the end of the municipal pier, from where you could see Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.

I walked up the hill to the upper part of Fort Mason and sat on the grass under the shade of a palm tree eating my lunch. By now it was getting pretty hot, but being on the Pacific side of the hills of San Francisco made it a little fresher and just right, rather than overbearingly hot.

After lunch, I wandered down to Lower Fort Mason, once a military installation but now used by theatres, charities and various non-profit organisations. I caught a #28 bus from there to the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza.

The Golden Gate Bridge connects San Francisco to the peninsula of Marin County to the north; the two peninsulas come within just two miles of each other and form the Golden Gate, the entrance to one of the world's greatest natural harbours.

In 1937, after four years construction and nearly a hundred years since the idea was first suggested, a suspension bridge connected the two peninsulas for the first time. It was originally painted first with an orange undercoat, and was to be finished in the usual grey colour; but the residents of San Francisco so liked the orange that they lobbied the builders to keep it that way; and so the bridge remains in International Orange.

On a clear day, the bridge is reportedly breathtaking. Today, however, the only breathtaking thing was the wind and the fog: at the toll plaza (on the San Francisco side) there was perhaps 100m visibility.

More annoyingly, part of the footpath for pedestrians was closed, so I couldn't walk across to the other side. I hesitated about bothering to walk on it at all, such was my pessimism at seeing anything, but eventually I decided I should at least step out onto it.

As I walked out onto the bridge, I noticed I could see a little further, and then when I got on a little further I could see even further still... Soon the fog was not at bridge height, but rather below the bridge. Gradually as I walked further and further I found myself discovering previously unseen views.

Indeed, by the time I got to the first tower of the bridge, I could see most of San Francisco and the bay, except of course looking back along the bridge towards the toll plaza I couldn't see a thing. What was most unnerving, though, was hearing boats below us, sounding their foghorns, which were completely invisible.

The fog was truly incredible - though perfectly normal for the Golden Gate, even in the fine weather we had - and actually it added to the views; if I'd seen it all at once it wouldn't have been nearly as wonderful a walk of discovery across the bridge in the fog.

After nearly an hour on and around the bridge, I decided to forgo the walk down to Fort Point, under the bridge, since it was completely shrouded in fog. Instead, I caught the #28 bus from Golden Gate Bridge to Golden Gate Park.

Golden Gate Park, planned and planted long before the housing that now surrounds it on three sides (the Pacific being the fourth side) is San Francisco's lungs: over 1500 acres of parkland nestled right in the city provide a getaway for locals and tourists alike. I entered in the middle of the park and headed east, past Strawberry Hill and Stow Lake.

Because the park was planned, it incorporates a number of museums, gardens and memorials that in any European city would be dotted around the place and never seen unless you made the effort to go. One of the most popular attractions is the Japanese tea garden, but since I don't drink tea I decided to save the $7 and look elsewhere.

Nearby is the Music Concourse, an arena dotted with trees and flanked by the two most important buildings in the park: the M. H. de Young Museum, a major art museum, and the California Academy of Science, the state's science museum. Both are housed in beautiful buildings, but both were closed on Mondays.

Instead, I simply sat and let the world go by: the Spreckel Temple of Music provides the stage for this vast arena, and even without any musicians it is a sight to behold. I enjoyed an ice cream while watching locals cycling and skateboarding, as well as fellow tourists admiring the architecture.

Eventually, I wandered on: I passed some baseball fields, from where one could clearly see the juxtaposition of green space and city buildings, and the use to which the locals put the space. This is a living, breathing park which is used by all ages.

I came across the National AIDS Memorial Grove, the first national memorial to the victims of AIDS. The sheer number of names carved in the stone goes to show just how many people have been touched by this horrible disease.

Finally, I found myself outside the Conservatory of Flowers, a San Franciscan Kew Gardens, with an explosion of colour in the grounds outside making for a wonderful feast for the eyes while I sat and relaxed.

Eventually, I headed out of the park and caught the #71 bus from Haight and Stanyan to Market and 7th St, from where I walked back to the apartment. For dinner we headed out to a local Italian place, la Briciola, which had good food and good wine, before eventually retiring for a good night's sleep.

California, Day 2

2011-09-19T17:34:00.001+01:00

After a long night's sleep, my first full day in San Francisco started with something I've never done before: breakfast on the patio. San Francisco is currently in the middle of an Indian summer, with temperatures peaking today at a very pleasant 23C.

After a relaxed morning, I headed out about lunchtime to explore the city. I walked the two blocks to the city's main artery: Market Street.

San Francisco has a crazy mixture of grids and ad hoc roads: a grid aligned north-south and east-west extends from the northern waterfront as far south as Market Street, which is aligned northeast-southwest. South of Market Street, another grid aligned perpendicular and parallel to Market Street exists, which doesn't align much with the other grid and makes crossing Market Street by car rather difficult.

Travelling along Market Street, on the other hand, is easy, with a huge variety of on-street trams and buses, as well as two underground railway systems. What's more, all buses, trams, cable cars, and the main underground network are integrated under the San Francisco Municipal Transport Authority, universally known as Muni.

My first port of call was to Hallidie Place, at the intersection of Market and Powell, to use the main tourist information centre. I bought a map of all the transportation routes - the network is pretty complex and changes fairly frequently - as well as a seven-day pass for the whole Muni network, at a cost of $27, which is very good value - for comparison a seven-day for just zone 1 in London is £27.60.

From there I grabbed some lunch in Subway off Powell and wandered to the nearby Union Square, which probably has the best claim to be the centre of San Francisco: it's an oasis of open space in an otherwise crowded downtown area. I sat in the shade and ate my lunch, watching all manner of locals and tourists go by.

After lunch, I caught one of San Francisco's historic cable cars. San Francisco is home to the only remaining cable car system in the world, where (unlike a funicular railway) the cable cars move by "gripping" a cable in the ground between the two rails, which moves at a constant speed of 9.5mph.

I caught the Powell-Mason line from Union Square as far as the intersection of Mason and Greenwich. I was standing on the outside of the car, holding on to the handrail. It was an exhilarating and novel way to ride around the city, and was much easier than walking for tackling San Francisco's most notable attribute: hills.

To compare San Francisco to another hilly city I've visited recently, Edinburgh has hills which interrupt the urban sprawl of the city, with the Mound, Calton Hill and Arthur's Seat all jutting up and all unspoilt by modern buildings. San Francisco, by contrast, has for the most part extended right over the hills, and to maintain the grid some of the streets have almost impossibly steep gradients, to the point that some even have steps for pedestrians.

I discovered this for myself after the cable car ride. I was heading for Coit Tower, which sits atop Telegraph Hill, and provides wonderful 360-degree vistas. However, being at the top of a hill, it requires a certain amount of effort to get up there. I had hoped to get a #39 bus up to the top, but it wasn't running this Sunday due to a special event in the area.

I was thus faced with the long walk up the hill. As well as some pretty hilly bits of road (which make many cities in the UK seem positively flat), there were over 100 steps up Filbert Street. After a few minutes, though I made it to the base of the tower.

Even from the base of Coit Tower, the views are pretty spectacular. Once you ride the lift (sorry, the elevator) to the top, however, you are rewarded with just about the best view of San Francisco and the bay area; well worth the $7 for the lift.

To the south is downtown San Francisco, and to the west are the hills of the North Beach suburb. To the north-west is San Francisco's most-photographed sight: the Golden Gate Bridge. Connecting San Francisco to neighbouring Marin County, it forms a vital transport link that saves a very long detour.

To the north, in the bay, you can see the bleak former prison island of Alcatraz, now a well-trodden museum (which I intend to visit later in the week). To the east you can see the Bay Bridge, a double-deck road bridge much less photographed than the Golden Gate bridge but much more important and much busier.

After a good few photos from the small top of Coit Tower, I got the elevator back down to ground level and had an ice-cream while admiring the only slightly less spectacular views from the base of the tower.

I then headed down to the Embarcadero, the eastern waterfront of San Francisco. To get down to sea level, I followed Greenwich Street which, due to the hills, was no longer a road but a long set of steps with pedestrian access to some of the most impossibly-placed houses in the city. After no fewer than 398 steps, I was back at sea level - I'm glad I was going down, not up!

I caught the F streetcar (tram) line round to the Waterfront Park area of Fisherman's Wharf, which was thronging with tourists. I wandered around a little, but decided the area was best experienced when it was a bit quieter, and headed back on the F line to Ferry Plaza.

The Ferry Building stands at the north-east end of Market Street and marks the focal point of the old waterfront: before the Bay Bridge was built, there were nearly as many commuters between San Francisco and Oakland who used the ferries.

Nowadays, with Oakland being the main port for cargo in the area, San Francisco's eastern waterfront is used mainly by ferries offering cruises around the bay, including to the Golden Gate and to Alcatraz.

Until the earthquake of 1989, however, a freeway ran over the Embarcadero, which runs along the waterfront, which was originally going to connect the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge; it was never completed, but the sections that were built were well-used until the 1989 earthquake damaged the Embarcadero section.

Pressure had been growing to demolish the freeway even before the earthquake, and the opportunity was taken to demolish the freeway and restore the waterfront to it's rightful glory. The Ferry Building now takes pride of place in a modern, vibrant waterfront.

Just to the south lies the Bay Bridge, completed six months earlier than the Golden Gate Bridge and now carrying over double the traffic. It connects San Francisco to Oakland, across the bay, via Yerba Buena Island. Given the population in both cities and the volume of traffic using the bridge, it's no wonder that it's been nicknamed the car-strangled spanner.

Its lower deck was originally dedicated to trains and trucks, with the upper deck for cars, but in 1963 the decks were reconfigured with five lanes on each deck, one for eastbound traffic and one for westbound.

The section east of Yerba Buena Island is a steel truss construction, though it is currently being replaced with a suspension bridge to prevent a repeat of the partial collapses suffered in the 1989 earthquake. The section west of Yerba Buena Island, however, is a two-span suspension bridge which was retrofitted immediately after the earthquake. It makes for a decent photo backdrop while at the waterfront.

A short walk away is the San Francisco Railway Museum. Unlike the other Muni rail lines, the F line which runs along the waterfront and down Market Street runs preserved tram cars from all over the world, which were saved and lovingly restored by "a bunch of rail nerds" (the proprietor's words), before being handed over to Muni for use in service.

The museum shows all 50 preserved tram cars: every day a selection of 20 cars are used in service. On my three journeys on the F line today I rode two from Milan, Italy, and one from Philadelphia that had been painted to honour the Boston Elevated Railway.

I bought a t-shirt and a couple of postcards in the museum, which in spite of its size was really interesting, and the proprietor was really nice and talkative (though I guess when you're self-employed and running a museum it's probably a good idea to entertain your customers as much as possible).

After that, I caught my third and final F line streetcar of the day and headed back to the apartment, where we had some dinner and again retired for a fairly early night.

California, Day 1

2011-09-18T18:12:00.000+01:00

Even as I write this, on the plane, it hasn't quite hit me yet: I'm going to California!

Permit me to explain. After a long and busy year doing an MSc at the University of Warwick, this September has been both a relaxing break, and a frantic rush as I try and cram as much as possible into my five weeks of freedom between handing in my dissertation and starting my PhD at the same institution.

After handing in my dissertation on August 27th, I headed to Edinburgh for a week-long summer school at Heriot-Watt University on theoretical fluid dynamics, which was fascinating and closely related to my research. It was particularly nice to have academics who were not simply evangelising their latest "look at what I can prove" theorem, but instead had come, some from the USA, to teach us.

After that, I spent a quiet week at home in Northern Ireland, before heading to Guildford for a week: this was another summer school, in the more broad vein of analytic methods for PDEs, which was also very interesting, if a little more broad and not quite as relevant to me as the previous one.

Now, however, the focus shifts from maths to relaxation, with a ten-day holiday in California, spending five nights in each of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A good friend of mine, Tim Sullivan, who was a PhD student at Warwick when I was an undergrad there, is now in a postdoctoral research position at the California Institute of Technology, better known as Caltech, in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. I've always wanted to get out to California and see him, an this is basically my last chance to do so, since his position at Caltech finishes in the spring.

I'm combining a visit to Pasadena and LA with a whistle-stop tour of San Francisco. Serendipitously, my housemate's boyfriend (Robert) lives in San Francisco, and kindly offered his sofa-bed for me to crash on; coincidentally, my visit overlaps with that of Charlie (my housemate).

I'll be blogging about every day as usual. All of California uses Pacific time; except for a couple of weeks (due to non-matching daylight savings dates), this means that California is 8 hours behind the UK. Unless otherwise stated, all times are local.

---

My journey started this Saturday morning (17th), having spent just one night in Coventry after getting back from Guildford. Task one: get from Coventry to Heathrow.

In spite of being the world's fourth busiest airport (only Atlanta, Beijing, and Chicago O'Hare handle more passengers), Heathrow's connections to London and, more importantly to the rest of the UK leave something to be desired. Its road connections are actually remarkably good: it has direct access to the M4, into central London and to the west; with the opening of T5 in 2008, a new junction to the M25 was opened, giving easy access to all directions from the capital.

By contrast, in spite of being London's main airport since the 1960s, the Piccadilly line was only extended to Heathrow in 1977, with the Heathrow Express connection to the Great Western Main Line out of Paddington opening only in 1998. As an illustration of how joined-up public transport is at best a side-effect, rather than the focus, of government transport policy, the Heathrow Express would never have been built if it had not been for private finance from BAA, the airport operator.

While bus connections run from Reading and Woking railway stations to Heathrow, many people instead opt to travel to the airport by National Express coach. I, however, decided to go via London and use the Heathrow Express.

0931 Coventry to London Euston, arr 1034 (actual 1041)

I headed to London not 24 hours after doing the opposite journey. For the second time in as many journeys, not everything went perfectly to plan: my journey to Coventry on Friday was delayed by 20 minutes while we waited just south of Queens Park while checks were made of the overhead wires; fortunately the damage was confined to a different line, and we eventually got underway again.

This morning, there was a broken down train at Berkhamsted. I suspect, however, that it had cleared by the time we were going through, because although we crawled along for a few miles north of Berkhamsted, I could see no trains stopped, and I think by the time we passed through there was merely the tail end of a tailback, so mercifully we arrived into Euston just seven minutes late.

At this point, I had intended to make the short walk to Euston Square and get the Circle line to Paddington. However, I went completely into autopilot and before I'd realised what I'd done I'd touched in my Oyster card and gone through the barriers at Euston underground station. So, plan B: go via Oxford Circus.

Victoria line, Euston to Oxford Circus

Now, regular users of the tube will know that there is cross-platform interchange between the Bakerloo and Victoria lines at Oxford Circus. Unfortunately, the interchange goes in the wrong direction: from the southbound Victoria line I had level access to the southbound Bakerloo line, but I needed the northbound Bakerloo line.

As this is a fairly rare connection and the passageways are relatively narrow, making this particular change requires stairs; there are no escalators. Fortunately I didn't have too big a case, and I didn't have to wait long for the next train:

Bakerloo line, Oxford Circus to Paddington

At Paddington I tried to use the Heathrow Express ticket machine but, undoubtedly to make it simpler for foreigners, the ticket machines do not sell railcard fares, and thus I was forced to queue up at the ticket office. Fortunately there is a dedicated Heathrow Express ticket office and I made the next train with a minute or so to spare.

1110 Heathrow Express, Paddington to Heathrow Central, arr 1125

The Heathrow Express, inaugurated in 1998, branches off the Great Western Main Line twelve miles west of Paddington. With a top speed of 100mph, it whisks you from Paddington to Heathrow Central in just 15 minutes. I say Heathrow Central rather than Heathrow T123 because, well, Terminal 2 is no more: it's being completely rebuilt, and will eventually replace the existing Terminal 1 as well.

I checked in for my United Airlines flight direct to San Francisco, and headed through security. As we were getting a meal on the plane, I decided to not have anything to eat, so I just browsed the shops for an hour or so before heading to Gate 49.

While officially in terminal 1, I think Gate 49 must be part of the new Terminal 2 that will eventually be connected: for one, it is visibly new and spacious, bedecked in wooden panelling, in contrast to the grey plastic and painted metal which are more familiar in Heathrow. More importantly, however, the walk to get from the lounge to gate 49 was seemingly interminable; I cannot recall a longer walk in an airport ever. At least I got there eventually, and boarded my plane:

Flight UA931: 1410 London Heathrow T1 to San Francisco, arr 1714
Operated by United Airlines using a Boeing 777, seat 44B
Pushback: 1430, takeoff 1502, landing 1727, on stand 1732

We boarded in good time and had the doors closed by 2:10pm, our nominal departure time, but unfortunately there were some air traffic control delays and we didn't push back until 2:30.

We then sat in a queue for runway 27R for half an hour, seemingly not moving much, with little visible sign of other planes taking off. Usually, Heathrow's two runways are used one for takeoffs, one for landings. However, prior to our use of 27R for takeoff, I saw at least three planes land, and I didn't notice many take off (though I was reading my book).

Eventually we took off at 3:02pm; just before we did I caught a glimpse of a queue of at least a dozen planes all waiting to take off; I know ATC delays at Heathrow are relatively common but it did seem slightly unusual.

On taking off we undertook a standard "Daventry departure": very shortly after taking off westbound out of Heathrow, over the M25 and Windsor Castle, we turned sharply right and headed north towards Daventry, in Northamptonshire, one of the standard waypoints for departing planes towards the USA.

Thanks to flying great circle routes (because the shortest route between two points on a sphere is usually not a straight line on a flat map), our route to San Francisco took us north, over Nottingham, Carlisle, Stornoway, gradually curving west, skirting over the north-east tip of Iceland, and crossing the centre of Greenland.

From there we crossed the Northwest Territory skirting just north of Hudson Bay, before gradually passing south-west over Canada. Just north-west of Edmonton we turned very slightly south, headed over the Rockies and came down into the US towards the east of Washington and Oregon states, and down into California.

Of course, most of the journey passed unnoticed: the lights were dimmed between the two meal services and, save for a few pockets of turbulence, the cruise was pretty uneventful; I whiled away the time watching Yes, Minister and writing this blog.

We were served two meals on the plane. The first came a couple of hours after takeoff, and was a hot lunch/dinner: there were two options, a vegetarian lasagne, and a roast chicken breast. Being in the second row from the back, however, by the time i was served they had run out of the vegetarian option, so I had the chicken breast.

By this stage it was about 5pm British time (though only 9am in California), and having not eaten since breakfast at 9am I was ravenous. The food was quite nice, especially for airline food; the chicken breast was served with some potato wedges and some broccoli, as well as a some unidentifiable brown sauce, which tasted like gravy but had the consistency of honey.

In addition, there was a bread roll, a "salad" - really a small box of green leaves, with a solitary tomato - of which I ate the tomato, and a dessert; the dessert was a slice of chocolate cake covered in a fruit topping, which was very tasty. A pretty good meal; just a shame there wasn't a little more of it.

The second meal service came about an hour before landing in San Francisco, about 4:30pm Pacific time (about 12:30am British time). It was basically a snack pack, consisting of a small ham and cheese sandwich, a bag of crisps, and a Twix. By this stage my stomach was feeling a bit worse for wear due to the odd timings and quantities of food, so I ate the sandwich but saved the crisps and the chocolate for later.

We approached San Francisco from the north: we got superb views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and of Oakland before coming down the bay and turning right to head west into the airport. The approach is somewhat nerve-racking: at 800ft we were still over water; at 200ft we could something up ahead, but the land didn't seem to start until about 20ft before the beginning of runway 28R.

We landed after 11 hours and 25 minutes of flying time, travelling about 5400 miles, at 5:27pm local time. We were on stand in just five minutes, and while there was a short wait for immigration it was nothing like as bad as I was expecting, and I only had to wait about ten minutes.

After having done so, I retrieved my bag, which had already made itself to the carousel, it finally hit me: I saw a sign saying "Welcome to the United States".

I headed for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, universally known as BART, for which the station was just a short walk inside the terminal building. I used one machine to change my $20 bill for four $5 bills, before using a ticket machine to give me a ticket to the value of $8.10, for a single to Civic Center/UN Plaza. I made it onto the train just 40 minutes after landing:

BART Yellow Line: 1807 San Francisco International Airport to Civic Center/UN Plaza, 1835

I got the train nine stops to the Civic Center station, from which Robert's apartment is a short five-minute walk. There, we chatted and had some pasta before all heading to bed at about 10pm. In my case I had been up for 22 hours, and it was already 6am Sunday morning.

I've said it before, and I've said it again: timezones are weird.

Bank Holiday Engineering Works: Bus Substitution vs. Diverted Trains

2011-09-07T22:13:00.002+01:00

On the recent August bank holiday weekend, I dared to travel by train from Coventry to Edinburgh on the Sunday: three colleagues and I were heading for a conference starting on the Monday. This meant contending with "engineering works", which has brought travel misery to thousands trying to get around on bank holiday weekends.

Engineering works, of course, can mean many things, from simply replacing track - which, while simple on plain line between stations, can actually be very complicated when there are lots of points involved - to complex upgrade works, such as renewing the signalling system, putting up overhead wires for electric trains, or realigning the track to permit the trains to run faster.

Over recent years we have become accustomed to trains being cancelled or substituted with buses on bank holiday weekends, because of "engineering works". While a lot of work is done overnight - particularly on Saturday night and Sunday morning, when the trains finish earlier and start later - for the more complicated jobs, it is often necessary to block lines for a longer period.

It is thus often very convenient to take the opportunity afforded by a long bank holiday weekend to undertake some of the larger jobs. For the largest jobs, the quiet period between Christmas and New Year affords the possibility of blocking lines for as much as a week or ten days.

While bank holidays have many fewer commuters, and thus regular travellers are usually not significantly affected, there is of course a large surge in leisure traffic. As such, those people who only travel by train occasionally, and who often do so only around such holiday periods, unfortunately come away thinking that the railway network is always shut for works, which is far from true.

It is probably true, however, that more of the railway is shut more often than it used to be in the past. In the days of British Rail, right up to the early 1990s, there were small armies of maintenance workers employed by the railways, many of whom would see little work for much of the time. They were employed so that when there was a big job to be done, they could throw men at it and have it done in an eight-hour overnight window.

Nowadays, there are fewer maintenance employees, ensuring a steady stream of work for those who are employed, but at the price of requiring a weekend to do something which twenty years ago would have taken a few hours. Other factors, such as more stringent health and safety laws, have also helped to push up the length of time it takes to get anything done.

As an example, let us look back to January 1990. The Thameslink line, joining north and south London by means of a previously disused tunnel, had opened in 1988, running through the western edge of the City of London. It proved an immediate success, and the City of London wished to capitalise on it by building an extra station in the Ludgate Hill area. Unfortunately, the line in the area was on a viaduct, and it would have been very difficult to build a station there.

Someone had the bright idea that by demolishing the viaduct and burying the line in a tunnel, a new station could be provided underground, which would be easier to build, and would also release valuable land in the City. In an incredible feat of planning, during January and February 1990 the viaduct was demolished and the line buried in tunnel in just ten days (though, by the time the engineers tested the signalling and the electrification, it ran half an hour late); the resulting City Thameslink station was opened a few months later.

By contrast, more recent upgrade works have taken much longer. The West Coast Route Modernisation, started in 1999, was originally planned to be completed by 2002, but that proved to be far too ambitious, and the project was eventually finished in December 2008.

In order to ensure everything was done in time, instead of relying on bank holidays or Christmas blockades, a completely different approach was taken, in which sections of the WCML were blocked for months at a time. This got the job done, but at the price of lost traffic in the meantime. What's more, it was not without its problems: for example, the blockade between Crewe and Wilmslow, scheduled for December 2005 to March 2006, actually lasted double that, and even when the line was finally reopened in June the signalling system still didn't work properly, meaning another six months of a reduced service.

Nonetheless, the railway industry learned a lot from the West Coast Route Modernisation, and thankfully some of the lessons lost on privatisation are slowly being rediscovered. Chief among these is the art of diverting trains. For the upgrade of the Trent Valley line between Rugby and Stafford, the line was not blocked permanently, but instead saw about four years of weekend closures: every weekend, the line would be closed and trains diverted via Coventry and Birmingham.

When a section of line is completely closed, there is little that can be done with short-distance services, other than substituting them with buses. But for long-distance services, there is enough redundancy in the network that we should be able to find a diversionary route to ensure that trains still run.

In some cases, this can be trickier than it sounds. At various points when upgrading the Rugby area - most notably during the infamous Christmas upgrade works at Rugby over 2007/8 (the ones that ran horribly late) - the closure of Rugby meant that there was no way for electric trains to run between London and the north west.

Instead, the service was split in two: a "blockade buster" service of 15-car diesel Voyager trains was run between Euston and Birmingham International, diverting via the Chiltern lines, with electric Pendolinos running from there to Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. This did mean longer journey times - sometimes over six hours for London to Glasgow - but it did ensure that the trains ran and that long-distance passengers were not subjected to buses.

Part of the reason this was possible was the foresight of the engineers in the 1960s when the WCML was originally electrified: there are so many electrified diversionary routes around Birmingham and south of Manchester, that there are no fewer than 76 electrified routes from Euston to Manchester. (By contrast, there are exactly two electrified routes from King's Cross to Leeds; the normal route, and via the Hertford loop.)

This foresight helped us considerably on our journey to Edinburgh this bank holiday Sunday (August 28th). While we had to make an extra change of trains in Preston, and the journey did take six hours rather than the usual four and a half, we didn't have to contend with buses at all, and to be honest the half-hour stop in Preston for lunch served us quite well.

1024 Coventry to Birmingham New St, arr 1102
Headcode: 1G02, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390012

The first piece of engineering works we had to negotiate was at Birmingham New Street: they were replacing the points at Proof House Junction, at the Coventry end of the station, so our train couldn't take the normal route. Thanks to the foresight of the 1960s engineers, we were able to divert via a complex network of chords and alternative routes and go into New Street from the other end.

At Stechford, we turned right, and took the line direct to Aston, which is usually only used by freight trains. At Aston, we joined one of the two routes from Birmingham to Walsall, and followed that to Perry Barr. From Perry Barr, we took a left turn, round one side of a quite small railway triangle, to join the other route from Walsall to Birmingham, and came into New Street station via Soho and Smethwick, on the line usually used by trains in the opposite direction from Wolverhampton.

As such, our first train to Birmingham took considerably longer than normal: the usual 20-minute journey instead took 38 minutes. Unfortunately the lack of capacity on that side of New Street meant that only two trains an hour could operate towards Coventry, and both were taken by Virgin Trains; this thus left London Midland only able to run as far as Birmingham International, with local services (perhaps unnecessarily) being replaced with buses between there and New Street.

1120 Birmingham New St to Preston, arr 1319
Headcode: 1P55, operated by Virgin Trains using Voyager 221106

Our second train was where the real diversion action happened. Between Crewe and Preston, the WCML was closed in order to replace the points at Winwick Junction, between Warrington and Wigan, as well as to do other work in the Warrington and Wigan areas. Passengers for Warrington and Wigan were provided with subtitute buses between Crewe and Preston. Long-distance services, however, including ours, were diverted on a torturously complicated route through Manchester.

Our train thus ran on its normal route from New Street as far as Crewe, calling at Wolverhampton and passing non-stop through Stafford. From Crewe, we turned right, passing through Sandbach and Wilmslow, before we took a left turn to avoid Stockport, heading instead through Heald Green to Manchester Piccadilly. There, we passed through one of only two through platforms, heading on through Manchester Oxford Road, Deansgate, Salford Crescent, and out through Bolton, rejoining the WCML at Euxton Junction, a few miles south of Preston.

Unfortunately, while we left New Street on time, we gradually got later until we left Crewe a full seven minutes late. As a result, at Heald Green an on-time Transpennine Express service from Manchester Airport to Blackpool North was let out in front of us. I was worried we'd be stuck behind it all the way to Preston - it being due into Preston 13 minutes after us - but fortunately it was held at Manchester Oxford Road so that we could have a clear run (indeed, this was pretty much the only place in which we could overtake it).

Curiously, in spite of being diverted via Manchester Piccadilly station, we didn't stop between Crewe and Preston; for one, Virgin Trains don't have rights to run trains between Manchester and Preston, so doing so would require special permission from the DfT and the other operators on the route. This gave rise to the very unusual event of passing non-stop through Manchester Piccadilly platform 14!

Thanks to using up some of the padding time we had, we got back to only one minute late through Salford Crescent, but slipped gradually back to arrive at Preston four minutes late: this is probably at least in part due to the signalling through Bolton, which is three-aspect rather than four-aspect, thus forcing trains to stay further apart than they would on other lines.

As the line between Manchester and Preston is not electrified, this leg of our journey was provided by a diesel Voyager. Nothing unusual there, though, since all of Virgin Trains's services between Birmingham and Scotland are usually run by Voyagers, in spite of the fact that the whole route is electrified, due to a shortage of suitable electric trains.

1353 Preston to Edinburgh Waverley, arr 1619
Headcode: 1S60, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390045

After grabbing some lunch in Preston, we boarded our third and final train of the day. This train would normally have started at Birmingham, but owing to the nature of the engineering works the service was split in two, with diesel trains running the Birmingham-Preston leg (due to the diversion via Manchester) and electric trains running the Preston-Scotland leg. As such, we were treated to a Pendolino instead of a Voyager for the run over the summits of Shap (in the Lake District) and Beattock (in the Southern Uplands of Scotland) to Edinburgh.

Both Shap and Beattock are the only mountain passes for miles around, and as such we share them with the M6 and the M74 respectively. I've always thought Shap looks better by road than by rail, since from the train it is difficult to look straight ahead, but for Beattock the train affords passengers the best views of the wonderful green countryside.

One unexpected benefit of running in a Pendolino instead of a Voyager meant that we had more power to negotiate the summits, and thus ran early, to the point of arriving a full five minutes early into Haymarket, and three minutes early into Edinburgh, where, of course, we were given a typical Scottish welcome: it having been dry and bright for most of the journey, the heavens opened just half an hour away from Edinburgh and didn't stop for hours.

For me, the most interesting part of the day was getting to go on several rarely-used parts of the network (I'd done all but about a mile or two of the journey before); more importantly, though, it shows that, where there is a sensible way to divert trains, (most of the time) it will be done.

Nonetheless, when you're working on the line between Warrington and Wigan, say, it is pretty difficult to do other than run bus subtitution services between the affected places: while long-distance services can be diverted, diverting short-distance trains would end up with them going on such complicated routes as to no longer be worthwhile.

In certain circumstances, single-line running could help. It wouldn't be any use in cases where an entire junction is closed to replace some points, or where a new signalling system is being installed across a whole area at once; but when dealing with plain line (track with no points, etc.), it should be possible to work on one of two parallel lines while keeping the other open.

However, this poses safety risks - working on a line adjacent to moving trains is, at best, a little scary - as well as being a much bigger operational headache: unless the signalling is set up to run trains in both directions along a line, temporary arrangements must be made, which often limit the capacity of the line to the point that it's easier and cheaper to divert trains away from the line anyway.

One final question arises: why is the work necessary in the first place? Part of the work is routine maintenance: without careful inspections and repairs, the tracks can become dangerous (as was so disastrously shown by a string of accidents in the last decade at Hatfield, Potters Bar and Grayrigg). Much of the work, however, is about increasing capacity: Britain's railways are as busy now as they have been for over 50 years, and passenger numbers are increasing year on year. If we are to accommodate all these passengers, we must build into our network the ability to handle more (and longer) trains.

So, next time you get a train on a bank holiday and you're shuffled onto a bus subtitution service, or your train is diverted and your journey lengthened, spare a thought for why the work is happening: without all these major upgrade works, the trains are only going to get more crowded.

Freedom of Scotland: Reflections

2011-07-31T22:12:00.003+01:00

In this blog post I thought I'd reflect on a wonderful ten days in Scotland, and try and summarise what we did and point out some of the highlights and some of the lowlights. First, a summary of where we went, with links to the posts about each day:

Day 1: Coventry - London - Edinburgh
Day 2: return trips from Edinburgh to Newcraighall, North Berwick, and Inverness
Day 3: tourism round Edinburgh
Day 4: Edinburgh - Glasgow - Edinburgh - Fife Circle - Inverkeithing - Aberdeen - Inverness
Day 5: Inverness - John O'Groats - Wick - Inverness
Day 6: Inverness - Kyle of Lochalsh - Skye - Armadale - Mallaig - Fort William
Day 7: Fort William - Crianlarich - Oban - Glasgow, plus an evening in Balloch
Day 8: Glasgow suburban lines, Glasgow Transport Museum, Glasgow Subway
Day 9: Glasgow - Falkirk - Polmont - Glasgow - Alloa - Stirling - Dundee - Haymarket - Milngavie - Lanark - Glasgow
Day 10: Glasgow - London - Coventry

Over the course of the eight days wholly in Scotland, we spent exactly two days on trains, buses and ferries (i.e., 48 hours and 0 minutes), and travelled 1886.25 miles. The ticket cost us each £107.80; had we had to pay walk-up singles, it would have cost us £294.25.

Including the journeys to and from Coventry, I travelled 2868.25 miles, for a total of 2 days, 11 hours, and 21 minutes out of the ten days (Ian and Matt will have travelled slightly less), and the cost each came to £235.50; walk-up fares would have meant paying £479.45, or £578.30 if we'd insisted on first class on the journey from London to Edinburgh.

This is very good value, though perhaps it isn't as much of a reduction as I've got from other such tickets: this is partially due to the very good subsidised fares in Scotland, particularly on the remote lines in the Highlands. For example, a single from Wick to Inverness, a distance of 175 miles, costs just £11.20 (with railcard), and at 6p a mile must represent one of the best-value walk-up fares in the country.

Nonetheless, we covered a huge amount of distance in ten days: we have now been on every line in Scotland north of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Indeed, outside of the Glasgow suburban area, the only major lines we didn't go on were the lines from Glasgow to Stranraer, and Glasgow to Carlisle via Kilmarnock (though both Ian and I have done Stranraer-Carlisle via Kilmarnock in the past).

At some point in the ten days we used most of the major stations in Scotland, and it's difficult to pick a favourite: I think, however, that Glasgow Central stands out as the best, with its magnificient roof, lots of space for people to circulate, and lots of shops with pretty much everything you'd need.

Neilston, however, easily stands out as the worst station we visited: well, perhaps "the worst" is the wrong way of putting it, but it was almost entirely devoid of... everything. The area around the station was completely dead, with some houses and no sight of any kind of shop, so we ended up with 26 minutes in which to do... exactly nothing.

Stemming from that, it's fairly easy to pick the least enjoyable day: Day 8 was a bit of a damp squib, in many ways. We deliberately didn't plan it, and benefitted from a good lie-in, but that meant that we didn't necessarily do the most interesting things; either we should have picked some more scenic lines (and some of the lines to the south-west of Glasgow are reputedly very nice indeed), or perhaps we should have done more things like the Transport Museum and had a day off trains entirely, like we did in Edinburgh on Day 3.

On the other hand, it's very difficult to pick which day was most enjoyable. If judged entirely on the trains, then Day 9 was very enjoyable for many reasons. For one, we went on 11 trains and thus had lots of connections to make (and we did!). More importantly, though, we got to see two of the newest additions to the railway network, and saw for ourselves that Scotland's railway network is flourishing.

If judged entirely on the scenery, on the other hand, I think Day 6 just wins: going from Inverness to Fort William, going across Skye and back to the mainland by ferry, and on over the awesome Glenfinnan Viaduct was just beautiful. That said, Day 7, going over Rannoch Moor, and spending the evening in Balloch, comes a very close second.

All things considered, however, I think the most satisfying day was Day 5: we got to John O'Groats, and back, by public transport, and saw some of the most barren scenery anywhere in the country. While the scenery further west was more lush (and personally I found it even more beautiful), the satisfaction of getting to the end of the country without a car was immense.

All told, we were very lucky indeed to get such good weather in the Highlands: aside from a shower of rain in Inverness on Day 2, we didn't get any serious rain at all until Day 8, by which time we were back in Glasgow with things to do. All of the lines in the Highlands had their own particular beauty, and in many ways there's no point in choosing a favourite; nonetheless, my favourite moment of the holiday was realising on Day 7, while atop Rannoch Moor in blazing sunshine, that it was the middle of the rush hour in London.

Our overall impression of the Scottish transport system was that it was much more holistic than the rest of the country: thought has been put in to designing a network which is well-connected and serves pretty much every community in Scotland. From the well-used Glasgow suburban network, to lines to the middle of nowhere in the Highlands, all the trains were well-used; none, however, were horribly overcrowded (though we did avoid the rush hour most of the time), except the London-Aberdeen train we used on Day 4 from Inverkeithing (never before has an HST felt small).

Here, then, is a network with capacity for growth, and, unlike the English, the Scottish government has been very willing to invest in new railway lines, such as the Alloa line and the Airdrie-Bathgate project we saw on Day 9, but they also have plans to upgrade much of the network in the central belt (see also Day 9), with the Edinburgh-Glasgow Main Line soon to be electrified, and plans afoot for extensions onwards to Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, and maybe even Inverness.

As if Scotland itself wasn't wonderful enough, it was also particularly nice to be able to do both long-distance main lines to Scotland, on Day 1 and Day 10; not since doing the All-Line Rover have I had the opportunity to travel so long on one train. Indeed, even on the All-Line Rover, going from London to Aberdeen, I changed twice: the Glasgow-London train thus represents the longest journey on a single train I've ever done.

What's next? In the immediate future, I'm planning a trip to California in September, which I hope to be blogging about as well. In terms of trains, well, we've been to John O'Groats, so I suppose a trip to Land's End is now obligatory. That said, on the subject of long journeys on a single train, one idea was floated which was even more insane than usual: there is one train a day from Aberdeen to Penzance, and it takes 13 hours; almost no-one ever does the whole journey... One of these days...

Freedom of Scotland, Day 10

2011-07-31T18:35:00.002+01:00

On Sunday 17th, we finally said goodbye to Scotland, and headed home. We travelled the length of the West Coast Main Line, from Glasgow Central to London Euston, before going our separate ways.

1034 Glasgow Central to London Euston, arr 1515 (actual 1525)
Headcode: 1M07, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390004
Distance: 401 miles; walk-up price to Carlisle: £13.15, our advance price (from Carlisle): £25.10, walk-up price Glasgow-London: £75.05

The West Coast Main Line is the backbone of Britain's railway network, linking London to Glasgow, with branches to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. It is for that reason that the WCML was the first inter-city line to be electrified, with the line south of Liverpool and Manchester being electrified by 1965, and the line north from there to Glasgow following by 1974.

The WCML itself actually avoids most of the big cities in the southern section of the route: the largest city on the WCML proper is Preston, whose urban area has just 264,000 people. (For comparison, London has 8.27 million; the West Midlands and Greater Manchester each have about 2.25 million, and Greater Glasgow has about 1.17 million.)

The route of the WCML takes us south-east from Glasgow, through Motherwell, our first call, before following the Clyde valley as far as Abington. From there we run parallel to the A74(M) (the motorway between Carlisle and Glasgow), to the first summit at Beattock, in the Southern Uplands, after which we follow Annandale down through Lockerbie, skirting Gretna, before crossing the border and arriving at Carlisle, our second stop.

Between Carlisle and Lancaster we have the small matter of the Lake District to navigate. The railway runs parallel to the M6 for most of the way, heading first for Penrith (our third stop) before going over the beautiful summit at Shap. On our way back down, we skirt past Kendal, stopping at the nearby station of Oxenholme, before continuing south to Lancaster (our fifth stop).

Just north of Lancaster, at Hest Bank, near Morecambe, there is a remarkable sight: the coast! The West Coast Main Line is completely mis-named, but was named as a counterpart to the East Coast Main Line (which itself doesn't hit the coast until Morpeth). On a journey from London to Mallaig, via Glasgow, you meet the coast just three times in 607 miles: once at Hest Bank, once at Arisaig - two stops south of Mallaig! - and finally at Mallaig itself.

South of Lancaster, the line starts to change character: from here, we hit the industrialised north-west of England, calling at Preston, Wigan and Warrington. From there we run non-stop to London Euston, running at a relatively slow 80mph through Crewe, before continuing through Stafford, Rugby, Milton Keynes and into London.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see very much of the scenery: it rained for most of the journey, sometimes quite heavily, particularly through the Lake District. While it was a little brighter south of Crewe, it remained overcast all day. That said, it's not like you can see much out of the Pendolino windows even on a bright day, with them being so small.

The whole of the WCML - and many of its branches - was subjected to a comprehensive upgrade between 2000 and 2008, with almost every rail, sleeper, overhead wire and signal replaced and upgraded. The net effect has been a considerable increase in speed, as well as capacity: our tilting Pendolino trains (introduced in 2002) can now run at 125mph, even though the WCML is much twistier than the ECML.

In 1999, just before the upgrade started, the fastest train between London Euston and Glasgow Central took 4 hours, 54 minutes, with just three stops at Preston, Oxenholme and Carlisle; there were eight trains per direction each weekday, with all but the fastest taking over five hours. By contrast, today's timetable has 14 trains in each direction, of which nine in each direction take 4 hours, 35 minutes or less, most with about six stops; today's fastest train takes just 4 hours and 8 minutes, stopping only at Preston.

For most of the upgrade period, weekend services were horrific: they would either be subjected to lengthy diversions, adding hours to journey times, or else they would often end up with bits of line completely closed and replaced with buses. Today, however, the Saturday timetable is nearly as full as the weekday timetable, as is the Sunday afternoon timetable.

However, to ensure sufficient time for maintenance and track inspections, Saturday night and Sunday morning services are much reduced; journey times are also a little longer on Sundays to account for any necessary engineering works. Thus, our Sunday morning train was booked at 4 hours, 41 minutes, with eight stops. Whereas on weekdays and Saturdays the corresponding train would be the seventh departure for London, our train was only the second departure out of Glasgow on Sunday morning.

As a result, it was a bit busy. Four of the five coaches in standard class were completely reserved, and the fifth coach was rapidly filled. We used the final day's validity of our Freedom of Scotland ticket to get us to Carlisle; from there, we had booked advance singles from Carlisle to London, with three seats round a table reserved. Unfortunately one of three seats had also been reserved by someone else as far as Carlisle, so Ian volunteered to stand for the first hour.

Unfortunately, the timetable - particularly the length of station stops - is planned around standard weekday loadings, and couldn't quite cope with the huge loadings this Sunday morning train was taking. We left Glasgow on time, but gradually got later: 2 late at Motherwell, 3 late at Carlisle, 4 late at Penrith, and 6 late at Oxenholme (though that last one may have been due to a temporary speed restriction).

At this point, however, Preston signal box clearly had it in for us, because they put an on-time local service from Leeds out in front of us at Carnforth, when we were booked in front. Because that could only manage 75mph, we were 9 minutes late at Lancaster, while the local train had 17 minutes to reverse at Lancaster before heading to Morecambe. We made up a minute on the run to Preston, but by long stops at Wigan and Warrington put us back at about 10 minutes late.

For the purposes of punctuality statistics, most trains are counted as "late" when they arrive 5 or more minutes after their booked arrival at their final destination; for inter-city trains, they are allowed 10 minutes instead of 5. Note that this only counts the time at the final destination: thus, as we saw on the ECML, trains are subject to "public adjustment", so the public arrival time is advertised as being five minutes after the working timetable. In our case, the working timetable said we were due at Euston at 15:12, but the public arrival time is 15:15.

Unfortunately, this Public Performance Measure, or PPM, has led to particular methods of regulating trains - that is, deciding what order to run them in once one or more is running late, which is where signallers earn their money. The prevailing attitude is that, once a train is more than 5 (or 10) minutes late, it is considered as a "PPM failure" - that is, it will fail to be on time and is thus late - it is shunned in priority to anything and everything which is on time, and shoved to the back of the queue.

In other words, once we had fallen outside PPM - by being 10 minutes late out of Warrington - we were not given any kind of priority to get us back on time, because that would risk more trains being late and Virgin Trains' PPM percentage being worse. Thus, the three-minute delay due to following the local train at Carnforth may seem insignificant, but it drastically changed the way signallers treated us.

As such, we followed the 13:15 from Manchester Piccadilly - due into London Euston a full 12 minutes after us - all the way from Colwich Junction, just south of Stafford. Both trains had to slow down in order to let a train from Birmingham out in front at Rugby, meaning we crawled through Rugby instead of taking it at the full 125mph, which was disappointing.

More disappointing still, though, was that because the Manchester train was due to call at Milton Keynes, we stood for a full three minutes outside Milton Keynes to wait for it to clear the platform instead of taking that at 125mph. This was in spite of the fact that the signallers could have diverted the Manchester train into the adjacent empty platform, and given us a clear run in an attempt to get back on time; however, that would have risked the Manchester train being late.

As such, the Manchester train arrived four minutes early into Euston, at 15:23, while we followed it in, arriving at 15:25. Given that we were due in at 15:15, we were thus exactly 10 minutes late; if we had been given a clear run through Milton Keynes, it would have meant the Manchester train was at most 3 minutes late (and probably on time), and we would probably have been only 7 minutes late, and thus not counted as late by PPM.

It thus felt, in hindsight, like the it's-failed-PPM-so-shove-it-to-the-back-of-the-queue approach actually led to a worse PPM than if we'd been swapped at Milton Keynes; however, we did not have the full picture and it would be wrong of us to try and apportion blame for our delay without more information. Nonetheless, being deprived of a full 125mph pedal-to-the-metal non-stop dash from Warrington to London was rather disappointing.

In being late, the signallers swapped us from our booked arrival into platform 13, and instead we arrived in platform 1. This was rather convenient for Ian and I, since our train to Milton Keynes and Coventry was sitting in platform 2. Ian and I said our goodbyes to Matt, who was heading home to south London, and boarded our final train:

1538 London Euston to Coventry, arr 1640
Headcode: 1G32, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390021
Distance: 94 miles; walk-up return: £27.15 (price included in Day 1)

While they say that familiarity breeds indifference, the WCML at full speed never ceases to put a smile on my face, even on this, my seventh return trip from Coventry to London in a year.

Aside from the unnerving sensation of turning left at Rugby at 125mph, something impossible until the upgrade a few years ago, one of my favourite sections is the patch through Leighton Buzzard, in Buckinghamshire. Going north, the line curves right through Leighton Buzzard station, before immediately curving left, and slamming into Linslade tunnel.

The effect is magnified by the arrangement of the tunnels: when the line was widened from two-track to four-track in the 1880s, the middle two lines shared the old tunnel, while two new single-track tunnels were bored on either side. Northbound trains on the fast lines use the westernmost single-bore tunnel, so trains tilt one way, then the other, and then slam into the tight tunnel at Linslade, which is almost ear-popping.

All this is done at the full 125mph, and I rarely get to do it in broad daylight, since I'm usually heading home from London late in the evening; on this occasion, even though it was overcast, it still made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Ian headed off at Milton Keynes, and half an hour later I arrived in Coventry, and caught a bus home, after 5 hours, 43 minutes and 495 miles on trains, beating by eight miles my first day going from Coventry to Edinburgh via London. Stay tuned for one final blog post summarising what we did, and looking back at the highs and lows of our ten days in Scotland.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 9

2011-07-27T21:49:00.001+01:00

Our final full day in Scotland, Saturday 16th, was planned so we could complete everything outside the Glasgow suburban network; we thus had a busy day of no fewer than 11 trains, with our attention focussed on the network of lines in central Scotland, through Falkirk and Stirling.

0921 Glasgow Queen Street to Falkirk Grahamston (via Cumbernauld), arr 1010
Headcode: 2J44, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 158782
Distance: 24 miles; walk-up price: £4.35

There are two routes from Glasgow to Falkirk: one is the Edinburgh and Glasgow Main Line via Falkirk High, and the other is the line to Falkirk Grahamston via Cumbernauld. We started Saturday with the latter, a route cobbled together out of a number of different lines, with the mileposts jumping around from 1, to 103, down to 97, then back up to 109, before falling from 26 to 24. This route, along with the shuttle to Anniesland we used on Thursday, are pretty much the only two genuine suburban routes which still operate out of Glasgow Queen Street high level.

The train was lightly used, but it was a Saturday morning, and we were heading out of Glasgow rather than into Glasgow, so that is to be expected. The line was rather scenic, though relatively slow; it functions as the main diversionary route for Edinburgh-Glasgow Queen Street trains, but otherwise sees a relatively light service.

At Falkirk, there are two stations: Falkirk High lives up to its name by being on a hill to the south of the station, and is served by trains on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Main Line every 15 minutes. The second is Falkirk Grahamston, which is rather closer to the city centre, but is served only by the half-hourly Edinburgh-Dunblane service, and by our stopping service via Cumbernauld (although it does see one train a day to and from London King's Cross, the Highland Chieftain, which runs all the way to Inverness and back).

1024 Falkirk Grahamston to Polmont, arr 1030
Headcode: 2P80, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 158732
Distance: 3.25 miles; walk-up price: £1.30

On arrival at Falkirk Grahamston, we hopped on a Dunblane-Edinburgh stopping service for precisely one stop, in order to get to Polmont and back onto the main line. The conductor on the service was impressed by our tickets, and how good value they were; I was impressed by the fact that she knew about the ticket, since these kinds of rover tickets are not normally well-advertised. We were pleased, therefore, to discover that Scotrail do, in fact, produce a leaflet about their rover tickets - the only other company to do so is Northern Rail.

1039 Polmont to Glasgow Queen Street, arr 1105
Headcode: 1R61, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170406
Distance: 25 miles; walk-up price: £5.10

The Edinburgh and Glasgow Main Line - usually the E&G - is Scotrail's flagship service, with trains between Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Queen Street taking just 50 minutes, and running every 15 minutes all day on weekdays and Saturdays, with a half-hourly service in the evenings and on Sundays. The train was very well-used, with the three-car Turbostar having very few seats left by the time we got on at Polmont. What's more, the trolley service - not something we expected on a relatively short journey - was well-used as well.

Scotland's next big railway investment programme is EGIP, or Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme. Under the £1bn programme, the line between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh will be electrified, as well as the lines to Falkirk, Stirling, Dunblane and Alloa, with completion due for December 2016. From then, trains on the E&G will run every 10 minutes, contributing to a total of 13 trains per hour between the two cities (up from 7tph at present).

Clearly, the benefits of electrification have not been lost on the Scots as they have the English and the Welsh; while London's suburban network is almost all electrified, and the two principal InterCity lines (the West Coast and East Coast Main Lines) are electrified, the rest of the network is still largely the kingdom of diesel trains. However, Glasgow's suburban network is the most dense pocket of electrification outside London, and EGIP looks set to increase that still further.

While the Department for Transport is starting to wake up to the idea of electrification - with a triangle of lines between Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and Blackpool to be electrified by 2016, and the Great Western Main Line from London to Oxford, Newbury, Bristol and Cardiff to be electrified by 2017, we still lag way behind the rest of Europe, largely thanks to decades of underinvestment.

When everyone else started building new electric high-speed lines in the 1970s, we built the High-Speed Train (HST): the world's fastest diesel train. It is no coincidence that we still hold the world speed records for steam and diesel trains: we kept using them long after everyone else had moved on! Just 32.9% of our network was electrified as of 2005 (and that number has changed little since), compared to 50% in France, 56% in Germany, 69% in Italy and 73% in the Netherlands. Only the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Albania and the Baltic states lag behind us.

Put it this way: all of our first five trains today would be electric if we were doing this journey in six years' time. I can only hope the same kind of thinking eventually makes its way south of Hadrian's Wall.

We returned to Glasgow Queen Street less than two hours after leaving it, only to head back out on a train to Alloa:

1118 Glasgow Queen Street to Alloa, arr 1213
Headcode: 2N67, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170395
Distance: 29 miles; walk-up price: £5.15

The line between Stirling and Alloa was reopened just three years ago, in May 2008, for two reasons. One of the reasons was to provide a new route for freight trains: Longannet power station, in south Fife, was previously only accessible via the Forth Bridge; however, with the line from Stirling through Alloa to Kincardine re-opened, freight trains were able to be diverted via Stirling instead of via the Forth Bridge, thus releasing capacity on the Forth Bridge.

Secondly, and more importantly for us, it provided Alloa with a train service for the first time since 1968, with an hourly service running between Glasgow, Stirling and Alloa. The services are well-used: passenger numbers on the line have far exceeded all estimates, and the line is one of a number of success stories on the Scottish rail network.

We had 20 minutes in Alloa to grab a newspaper and marvel at the over-complicated automatic door system in Alloa station - the buttons to open the door were nowhere near the doors! - before heading back to Stirling:

1236 Alloa to Stirling, arr 1245
Headcode: 2N58, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170395
Distance: 6.75 miles; walk-up price: £1.90

The trains on this line provide a much-needed passenger service between Alloa, Stirling and Glasgow, but they also provide good onward connections at Stirling to Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness - well, pretty much all of Scotland really (north of the central belt, anyway). In our case, we headed on to Dundee:

1307 Stirling to Dundee, arr 1400
Headcode: 1A63, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170426
Distance: 54.75 miles; walk-up price: £11.05

The line from Stirling to Perth forms part of the grandly-named Scottish Central Main Line, which connected Carlisle and Motherwell to Perth and points beyond without passing through Edinburgh or Glasgow. In fact, the southern part of the Scottish Central Main Line passes through Cumbernauld, and was part of the route we used earlier in the day between Glasgow and Falkirk.

There are no longer any passenger services which avoid Glasgow and Edinburgh - in fact, all the services between England and the northern parts of Scotland pass through Edinburgh, since Glasgow Central is a terminus and trains would have to reverse. However, the whole of the Scottish Central Main Line is still used by freight trains, and Mossend Yard, near Coatbridge, is the nexus of all freight in Scotland, being a major container terminal.

North from Stirling, the line runs through open countryside, but once we hit Perth the line curves sharply through the city, over the River Tay on a long, curved viaduct. We hug the north bank of what is by now the Firth of Tay for the twenty miles to Dundee. On approach to Dundee, the line joins with the line over the Tay Bridge from Edinburgh, and we got very good views of the viaduct itself.

1417 Dundee to Haymarket, arr 1522
Headcode: 1B32, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170429
Distance: 58 miles; walk-up price: £14.15

After a short change of trains at Dundee, we got to head back over the Tay Bridge. The original Tay Bridge was subject to one of the oldest and most infamous railway disasters: the original bridge collapsed in high winds on the evening of December 28th, 1879, and a passenger train fell into the firth below, with all 75 people on board losing their lives; the event was the subject of William McGonagall's most (in)famous poem, which starts

"Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last sabbath day of 1879
Which shall be remembered for a very long time."

The bridge was reconstructed to a much sturdier design, using the original foundations; it was completed in 1887, and the bridge, over two miles long, stands today as one of the finest bridges in the country. A little further downstream is the Tay Road Bridge, which while a little shorter is still one of the longest road bridges in Europe.

We headed back to Edinburgh via Kirkcaldy, Inverkeithing, and back over one of the other spectacular bridges: the Forth Bridge. The designer of the original Tay Bridge, Sir Thomas Bouch, had got as far as laying the foundations for a similar bridge over the Firth of Forth before the Tay Bridge disaster occurred; after that incident, he was sacked from the job. Instead, Sir Benjamin Baker designed the current magnificent cantilevered bridge we have today, spanning 1.6 miles and over 100m tall; the structure has stood the test of time as one of our great engineering marvels.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the nearby Forth Road Bridge, a 1.5 mile-long suspension bridge built in 1964 to the west of the rail bridge. The planned capacity of 30,000 vehicles per day is routinely exceeded these days, with 40,000 being about average and 60,000 being not uncommon, which has, unfortunately, taken its toll on the structure of the bridge itself.

Moreover, the cables holding the Forth Road Bridge up have been found to be subject to corrosion: a study in 2005 showed the bridge had lost about 10% of its strength. As a result, it is predicted that traffic and weight restrictions will need to be in place by 2014, and the bridge could need to be closed as early as 2020.

This would be a disaster for transport in the local area, since commuters from Fife are all but dependent on the Forth Road Bridge, as the next crossing upstream is the Kincardine Bridge, a full 13 miles upstream. Closure of the Forth Road Bridge would mean that a typical 19-mile commute from Dunfermline to Edinburgh would be more than doubled to 40 miles. Hopefully something will be done - but probably not soon enough.

Our route to Edinburgh took us past Edinburgh Airport, with the railway line running right beside the end of the runway, with tripwires set up to protect trains in case a plane runs off the end of the runway. We saw planes landing at very close quarters indeed, and it beggars belief that, as yet, there is no railway station at Edinburgh Airport.

An ambitious plan to divert all train services in the area via a new station, known as the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (or EARL), was cancelled by the SNP government in 2007. However, a new tram line between Edinburgh Airport and the city centre is under construction, but has run massively over-budget and is in a state of limbo, awaiting either further funding or cancellation - though the latter would involve ripping tram rails up out of the ground. Hopefully, the tram line will be completed, but a final decision has yet to be taken; if it is, an interchange is planned at Gogar, which would permit swift interchange between tram and train not far from the airport.

Instead of changing at Edinburgh, we turned back at Haymarket, on the western edge of Edinburgh city centre, to head onto Britain's newest railway line:

1542 Haymarket to Milngavie, arr 1707
Headcode: 2M33, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 334001 + 334002
Distance: 52 miles; walk-up price: £8.85

Until last year, this line was two completely unconnected bits of track: the Edinburgh to Bathgate line, and the Airdrie branch of the North Clyde commuter lines through Glasgow Queen Street. The A2B project reopened the 14-mile stretch in between, from Airdrie to Bathgate. As a result, Edinburgh is now part of the Glasgow suburban network!

Remarkably, the Scottish government prioritised the reopening of Airdrie-Bathgate - and the general improvement of Edinburgh-Glasgow services - as more important than completing the last missing link in the M8: the motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow is complete but for a short nine-mile stretch of A8 dual carriageway near Coatbridge; this is just one example of the Scottish government repeatedly prioritising public transport over road investment.

The new line was due to open in full in December 2010, but the snow caused a few teething problems; combined with late deliveries of the class 380 trains, this led to the full service only being introduced in May 2011. The class 380s have now been put into full service on the Ayrshire coast lines, permitting the class 334s to be redeployed to the Airdrie-Bathgate line.

Both ends of the line feel like commuter lines, but the new middle section still feels quite rural, with a number of stretches of open land between the stations. However, new railway lines inevitably change the pattern of housing in the area, and I have no doubt that within a few years the stations on the route will be the focus of much development, since they have the enviable position of having direct, frequent, electric commuter services to both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

As with all services through Glasgow Queen Street low-level station, the trains from Edinburgh via Bathgate run through to destinations on the north bank of the River Clyde, usually either to Helensburgh Central or to Milngavie. Our train took us to the latter, where we had a quick change to the other platform to head back the other way:

1713 Milngavie to Hyndland, arr 1726
Headcode: 2F40, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318264
Distance: 5.75 miles; walk-up price: £1.70

Between Hyndland and Partick, fourteen trains an hour run in each direction: this section of line is the only part shared by all the services running through the low-level stations at Central and Queen Street, and is thus the busiest in Scotland, and one of the busiest in the whole of the UK. We took advantage of this to change between the North Clyde services via Queen Street, and the Argyle line services via Central.

1737 Hyndland to Lanark, arr 1842
Headcode: 2B62, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318255 + 318262
Distance: 32.75 miles; walk-up price: £3.95

The Argyle Line re-opened in 1979, having been closed for 15 years, to divert suburban services from Motherwell and Hamilton away from the high-level platforms at Glasgow Central and into the low-level platforms. Trains run on a number of routes serving Hamilton, Larkhall, Motherwell, Wishaw, and Lanark.

The Lanark branch is particularly curious: it is a two-mile long single-track branch line off the West Coast Main Line, and it's very weird to be sharing track with Pendolinos and other long-distance trains on a commuter train: unlike at the London end, where the WCML is six-track to Watford and four-track thence to Rugby, the Glasgow end is still largely two-track.

However, there are enough loops and branches to ensure that commuter trains don't tend to stay on the WCML itself for very long. The Argyle Line joins the WCML at Rutherglen; our train then followed the WCML for five miles, before heading off to serve Bellshill, coming back on at Motherwell. We then proceeded along the WCML for just two miles before turning off again to serve Wishaw; our final spell on the WCML of seven miles then took us to Lanark Junction.

1853 Lanark to Glasgow Central, arr 1956
Headcode: 2F15, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318262 + 318255
Distance: 33.25 miles; walk-up price: £3.85

Having stretched our legs in Lanark, we headed straight back on the same train. However, it wasn't going back the same way; oh, no, that would be too easy. Half the services to Lanark run via Bellshill, as detailed above. The other half, however, run via Hamilton, Motherwell, and Holytown.

We ran back to Wishaw, but instead of rejoining the WCML we proveeded round a different loop through Holytown, then passed through Motherwell in the "wrong" direction - i.e., the same way we passed through it less than an hour earlier! We then ran round the loop through Hamilton and Newton, and rejoined the standard route just north of Newton.

After 8 hours, 9 minutes on 11 trains, covering 324.5 miles, we were pretty hungry for some dinner. On arrival at Glasgow Central, we walked the short distance to the Bella Italia round the corner, and reflected on an excellent final day in Scotland, before heading back to the hotel to get packed and ready for the journey back to London on Sunday.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 8

2011-07-24T23:55:00.001+01:00

After a good lie-in on Friday to recover from a few early starts and late nights, we headed for Glasgow Central station with a simple plan: look at the departure board, and get on whatever the first train was, as long as it wasn't going too far afield. So we did:

1045 Glasgow Central to Newton, arr 1114
Headcode: 2M90, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 314216
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £1.80

The Cathcart Circle Lines form one of the younger parts of Glasgow's commuter network, opening between 1886 and 1894, but were among the earliest to be electrified, with the wires going up in 1962. The Cathcart Circle itself is, in fact, pear-shaped, with trains running from Glasgow Central round the loop (either clockwise or anticlockwise) back to Glasgow Central.

In addition, there are two branches, one to Newton and one to Neilston. All trains to Neilston run along the eastern side of the loop, via Mount Florida (surely one of the most interesting names of any station in the country!), while trains to Newton can go along either the eastern side or the western side to reach the triangle at Cathcart, where they proceed on to Newton. Our train headed via the western side, via Langside, to Newton.

The arrangement of the triangle at Cathcart is such that trains to and from Newton cannot call at Cathcart - no matter whether they run via the east or the west side of the loop - but we passed within metres of the platforms at Cathcart while traversing the triangle. (Cathcart station itself is served by the circle trains, and trains to and from Neilston.)

If you're not already confused enough, you may wish to look at the diagram here, which may help explain the topology of the lines.

1123 Newton to Hamilton Central, arr 1133
Headcode: 2S38, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318265
Distance: 5.25 miles; walk-up return Newton-Lanark: £2.45
1150 Hamilton Central to Larkhall, arr 1200
Headcode: 2L22, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318263
Distance: 5.25 miles; walk-up price included above
1207 Larkhall to Blantyre, arr 1222
Headcode: 2L01, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318263
Distance: 8 miles; walk-up price included above
1234 Blantyre to Newton, arr 1238
Headcode: 2F11, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318259
Distance: 2.5 miles; walk-up price included above

After arriving in Newton, we headed for Larkhall; trains to Larkhall pass through Newton but do not stop, thus necessitating a change at Hamilton Central. Trains to and from Hamilton continue along the Argyle Line, the low-level line through Glasgow Central.

From Hamilton Central we headed onto the Larkhall branch, which reopened in 2005. The line is mostly single-track, partly due to a tunnel near Hamilton and partly due to the low level of service on a short branch line, with trains running to Larkhall every half an hour from Glasgow Central low level and beyond. We got to Larkhall, stayed right on the same train, and headed back to Newton, changing at Blantyre on the way back for variety's sake.

1250 Newton to Mount Florida, arr 1304
Headcode: 2P03, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 314210
Distance: 5.5 miles; walk-up price: £1.70

Once back at Newton, we headed back onto the Cathcart Circle Lines: we first headed to Mount Florida, on the eastern side of the loop, along the other route trains take between Newton and Glasgow Central.

1315 Mount Florida to Neilston, arr 1334
Headcode: 2N08, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 314207
Distance: 8.5 miles; walk-up price: £1.90

At Mount Florida, we changed and headed down the branch to Neilston. What is now a short branch line to Neilston originally extended all the way to the Ayrshire coast at Ardrossan, but "rationalisation" - i.e., removal of effectively duplicate lines - led to the line beyond Neilston being closed shortly after the electrification to Neilston was completed in 1962.

With a 26-minute gap between each train arriving at Neilston and departing again to head back to Glasgow, we had hoped to find somewhere to grab some lunch, but the area around the station in Neilston was decidedly lacking in almost everything, so we waited patiently on the platform for our train back to Glasgow.

1400 Neilston to Glasgow Central, arr 1429
Headcode: 2N13, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 314207
Distance: 11.75 miles; walk-up price: £2.10

We headed back to Glasgow, via Mount Florida and the eastern side of the loop. Most of the trains so far today had been quite quiet, but this was well-used with people going into Glasgow for a Friday afternoon. Amusingly, in going to Newton and back and Neilston and back in the manner which we did, we found that we had actually covered all the track on which the Cathcart Circle trains run, without ever actually travelling on the Cathcart Circle!

1437 (actual 1443) Glasgow Central (low level) to Partick, arr 1444 (actual 1450)
Headcode: 2L09, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 318260
Distance: 2.25 miles; walk-up price: £1.05

Having each grabbed some lunch from different places and reconvened at Glasgow Central low level platforms, we headed to Partick. The rain was threatening coming down quite heavily, so we headed for the Riverside Museum, Glasgow's museum of transport.

The Riverside Museum contains a wide variety of old cars, motorbikes, bicycles, trams, trolleybuses, train locomotives, and much else besides. The trouble is that, while each item is interesting in its own right, the organisation of the museum is rather haphazard, with train locomotives right next to bicycles right next to trams.

The layout means that people are forced to look around the whole museum instead of being able to, say, just look at the trains or the cars. I can see why they've done what they've done, and it certainly meant I saw more than I might otherwise have seen, but it did make it very difficult to find any particular item that you wanted to see.

Nonetheless, the museum is very interesting and has many enjoyable interactive exhibits. It has a mock-up of a Sinclair C5, Clive Sinclair's ill-fated electric tricycle, where you can "ride" one on a computer-simulated course. The museum also makes considerable use of touch-screen computers to display information, as well as for games designed for you to learn about the various exhibits, including one game of "top trumps" for the collection of motorcycles.

One of the best exhibits was about the Glasgow Subway and its construction. The subway, a single circular line under the city centre, was originally cable-hauled: the train driver would use a "gripper" to, effectively, grip or release the cable in order to move or stop. While the subway is now powered by more conventional third-rail electric trains, the subway retains its unusual four-foot gauge track - that is, the rails are just 4ft (1.22m) apart instead of the conventional 4ft 8.5in (1.435m) apart - to this day.

Having spent a good two hours seeing the exhibits, we then experienced the subway for ourselves:

Glasgow Subway: Partick to Cowcaddens (outer rail, one complete loop)

We went clockwise round a full one-and-a-half loops of the subway circuit, from Partick, all the way round back to Partick, and on to Cowcaddens (the nearest stop to our hotel). The subway, lovingly known to locals as the Clockwork Orange thanks to circular nature and colourful livery, operates with just three-carriage trains, and even though it was a Friday evening at 5pm there was room for everyone to sit down.

Admittedly it is the summer holidays, but the subway - with trains in each direction every 3-4 minutes - seems rather underused. One of the reasons may be its lack of connections: aside from Partick, which is fully integrated with the mainline station, the only "connection" to Scotrail services is a travelator from Buchanan Street subway station to Queen Street station. St Enoch station is a five-minute walk from Glasgow Central station, but its name belies that it originally served the station at St Enoch which was closed in the 1960s.

After a brief rest in the hotel, we dined at Wagamama in the city centre: it was nice to return to Wagamama in Glasgow, my first ever visit to Wagamama having been to that in Glasgow in 2007, since when I have been an instant convert to their brand of clean, crisp, oriental-influenced food.

After dinner, we wandered down to the Clyde, where we could see the bridge carrying the lines into and out of Glasgow Central station: even at 10pm they were remarkably busy with trains (although there are seven parallel tracks!). We ambled slowly up Buchanan Street back to our hotel, ready for our final packed day in Scotland on Saturday.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 7

2011-07-20T00:30:00.001+01:00

On Thursday, for the first time in my life, I enjoyed getting up at 6:30am. We checked out of our hostel and headed for the first train of the day out of Fort William:

0742 Fort William to Crianlarich, arr 0930
Headcode: 1Y42, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 156478
Distance: 63 miles; walk-up price: £11.20

The West Highland line from Fort William to Crianlarich is probably my favourite section of the West Highland Line: on the All-Line Rover I didn't manage to see Fort William to Mallaig, but I did manage a return trip from Glasgow to Fort William on day 14; that post gives a pretty full account of the history of the line, so forgive me if I don't go into quite as much detail here.

The natural route for the West Highland Line to take would be to follow what is now the A82, which heads south along the coast from Fort William as far as Ballachulish, before climbing up Glen Coe and across the southern part of Rannoch Moor to Bridge of Orchy, and on to Crianlarich. However, that would have involved building a bridge at Ballachulish, and the West Highland Line was being built on a shoestring budget.

So, instead, the builders chose the cheaper option of simply building over the top of Rannoch Moor. Out of Fort William, we head north-east parallel to the road to Aviemore as far as Tulloch station, before turning south and climbing past Loch Treig, onto Rannoch Moor. Here, the route goes truly through the middle of nowhere, with some of the most beautiful, most barren, most wild scenery in the country.

Amazingly, there are not one but two stations in the middle of Rannoch Moor: we come first to the curious station at Corrour - the highest station anywhere in the country - which has no road access whatsoever. Nonetheless, about a mile from Corrour station is Loch Ossian Youth Hostel, which has become an essential base for walkers, as Corrour station is in easy walking distance of half a dozen Munros (mountains over 3000ft, of which there are 283 in Scotland).

The second station on Rannoch Moor is Rannoch station, where we meet our only road for 30 miles: however, that road comes from the east, a narrow single-track road leading towards Pitlochry and Perth. To drive from Rannoch station to Tulloch station, at the north end of the moor, a distance of 17 miles by rail, is a 76-mile, two-hour drive via the pass of Drumochter on the A9 far to the east.

At Rannoch station, we crossed paths with the sleeper train from London, which had left just under twelve hours earlier: yes, you can board a train in London at 21:15, and arrive the next morning in Fort William at 09:50. The sleeper train is nicknamed the "Deerstalker": imagine being able to go to sleep in London and wake up, having travelled nearly 500 miles, on top of Rannoch Moor. That one is definitely still on my to-do list.

It was at this point we realised just how lucky we were: we were on a train, in the middle of nowhere, looking out over the most glorious scenery in the country, under bright blue skies and blazing sunshine, right in the middle of the rush-hour in London. Very satisfying, and well worth the early start.

What is particularly nice about the trains on the West Highland lines is that they have undergone only minimal refurbishment, and they retain their low-backed seats, only coming up to about shoulder-height, thus providing everyone with a good view from the good-sized windows, something which is sadly lacking on newer trains. On this line, however, visibility is not optional, it is the reason for going on the line.

We continued south through Bridge of Orchy - where we rejoined the A82 - and Tyndrum, and got off at Crianlarich, where the lines from Oban and Fort William meet. For me, being up and outside at 9:30am is rare enough; being up, outside and having travelled 63 miles to Crianlarich was rare indeed. We had 45 minutes to wait for the next train to Oban; amazingly, this station in the middle of nowhere had a tea room, which we availed ourselves in the meantime.

1015 Crianlarich to Oban, arr 1127
Headcode: 1Y21, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 156493 + 156465
Distance: 41.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.80

Oban is just 100 miles from Glasgow, and though the journey takes three hours, the line is wonderfully scenic as to make day-tripping from Glasgow to Oban quite popular, and so our four-car train from Crianlarich to Oban was well-used. The line itself is less pioneering than the route to Fort William - it parallels the A85 road to Oban for most of the way - but still provides its share of wonderful scenery, past Loch Awe and Loch Etive.

An interesting feature are the Pass of Brander "stone signals": due to rockfalls, the line between Dalmally and Taynuilt, past Loch Awe, is protected by automatic signals which stop the driver if there has been a rockfall that would endanger the line. This is done using a system of wires: if rocks fall, the wires will be stretched or broken, and the semaphore signals will fall to show "danger".

The signals were installed in 1882, shortly after the line was opened, and have survived ever since. They are remarkable in being entirely mechanical, unlike most modern electrical tripwire systems, such as those installed at the end of the runways at Gatwick and Edinburgh airports (both of which have railway lines running past them). They did not, unfortunately, prevent a serious derailment in June 2010, when boulders fell below the wires; fortunately no-one was seriously injured.

At Connel, we pass the cantilever bridge which takes the road north along the coast to Ballachulish and Fort William. The name of the nearby station - Connel Ferry - betrays that originally there was no road bridge: the bridge was in fact originally a railway bridge, built in 1903 for the branch to Ballachulish; in 1914, the bridge was converted to have a parallel roadway, and when the railway closed in 1966 the bridge was dedicated entirely to road traffic.

With 20,000 people, the town of Oban is the largest on the western seaboard north of Glasgow, and is the base for the CalMac ferries to the outer Hebrides - with sailings to Castlebay and Lochboisdale taking five hours - as well as shorter ferry journeys to the nearby isles of Mull, Tiree and Coll. We spent an hour and a half looking round the town and getting some lunch, before heading back to the station for our train all the way back to Glasgow.

1256 Oban to Glasgow Queen Street, arr 1600 (actual 1618)
Headcode: 1Y24, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 156465 + 156493
Distance: 101.5 miles; walk-up price: £13.45

Our train took us back past Loch Etive and Loch Awe to Crianlarich, then south to Ardlui, where we hit the banks of Loch Lomond, before crossing the isthmus at Arrochar to Loch Long. We then cross another isthmus at Garelochhead to follow Gare Loch as far as Helensburgh, where we then follow the Clyde estuary through Dumbarton into Glasgow.

The four-car train was again well-loaded, but the journey wasn't quite as smooth as we had been hoping: after three stops we called at Loch Awe, where we stood for 15 minutes. The driver and conductor were evidently trying to fix a problem, which seemed to be something to do with the doors in the third carriage; eventually we proceeded, but we only got two stops further to Tyndrum Lower before stopping for another five minutes.

At this point the conductor asked all passengers in the rear two coaches to proceed forwards to the front two coaches: the problems were evidently severe enough that the rear unit could not be relied upon for safety, and so all the passengers were bundled into the front two coaches. Fortunately, the train was not too busy, and while there was quite a lot of luggage around, everyone got a seat.

By the time we got to Crianlarich, we were 17 minutes late, and holding up the next train in the other direction which had portions heading for Oban and Mallaig. The train to Mallaig formed the last train back from Mallaig to Fort William, which provided a connecting service into the sleeper train back to London, and the delay could potentially have rippled through all those services; it was amusing to think that one small door problem at a remote location in the highlands could have effects on the following morning's rush-hour services into London Euston.

Beyond Crianlarich, the journey was uneventful, in more sense than one. By now the cloud had started to roll in from the west - the weather forecast being the key factor in our deciding to travel earlier, rather than later - but it remained dry for the whole journey.

However, just south of Crianlarich, we passed from Highland council area into Argyll and Bute; the change in local authority marked a noticeable change in visibility. While Highland council have undertaken to clear as many trees as possible from the line, thus aiding visibility and making the ride more attractive, Argyll and Bute have not yet done the same, meaning any view of Loch Lomond that we had was obscured by trees.

Having made up a little time, being only 11 minutes late at Dumbarton, we then had to follow a couple of on-time stopping trains, and thus arrived in Glasgow 18 minutes late, where we proceeded to our hotel - a slightly older Travelodge, with a subtly different layout - to dump our stuff and relax for an hour or two.

For dinner, we decided to head to the nearby town of Balloch, at the south end of Loch Lomond. Of course, we decided to go and come back by different routes, using various parts of Glasgow's dense suburban network.

1756 Glasgow Queen Street to Anniesland, arr 1816
Headcode: 2W73, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 158735
Distance: 6.25 miles; walk-up price: £1.40

We started with the short shuttle service to Anniesland, which was delayed by ten minutes awaiting a driver. For a suburban service in the evening peak it was busy, but by no means full; the short distance is probably better suited to buses than trains, but the line survives nonetheless.

1835 Anniesland to Balloch, arr 1910
Headcode: 2E73, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 320307 + 320322
Distance: 15.5 miles; walk-up price: £2.50

At Anniesland, we joined the main electric suburban lines. There are two east-west tunnels through central Glasgow, one via Queen Street and one via Central. On the west side of the city, they join up at Partick, before splitting again at Hyndland (the next station), with two routes to Dalmuir, one via Anniesland and Westerton, and the other via Garscadden and Yoker. From Dalmuir, the line continues on to Dumbarton, before splitting for Helensburgh and Balloch. And, if you're not confused by now, there's also a branch to Milngavie which splits off at Westerton.

To cut a long story short, our route took us from Anniesland, through Westerton, Dalmuir and Dumbarton, to Balloch. The contrast with suburban lines in London was stark: while even the outer reaches of London are noticeably affluent, here prefabricated concrete structures abound, and much of the city feels poor.

Balloch, on the other hand, is a real treat: Loch Lomond is just a short walk from Balloch station. Almost no other city in the country allows you to spend just half an hour on a suburban train, walk for ten minutes, and find yourself in a National Park looking out over a beautiful loch; by now there was still a little sunshine left, and while the cloud had well and truly arrived, in fact it only added to the atmosphere.

The walk from the station to the loch and back provided us with plenty of appetite for a good pub dinner at the Tullie Inn, right next to Balloch station, which was excellent and which we'd highly recommend. If you're ever in Glasgow and want to get out of the city briefly, spend an evening in Balloch; you won't regret it.

2123 Balloch to Dumbarton East, arr 2134
Headcode: 2E64, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 320317
Distance: 4.75 miles; walk-up price: £1.65

We headed back as far as Dumbarton East, where we changed trains; we could have changed at a number of places, but we chose Dumbarton East for its views of Dumbarton Castle, a castle built on a hill perfectly shaped, with steep sides, for a fortification.

2157 Dumbarton East to Glasgow Queen Street (low level), arr 2229
Headcode: 2H16, operated by First Scotrail using EMU 334037 + 334027
Distance: 15 miles; walk-up price: £2.45

Our final train took us back to Queen Street via Dalmuir and Yoker, the other route to the one we went to Balloch on, and we arrived not in the high-level platforms we left at Queen Street but rather the underground low-level platforms.

London has had one cross-city suburban line - Thameslink - since 1988 and is currently building another in the shape of Crossrail; by contrast, the line through Glasgow Queen Street has been open since 1886, and that through Glasgow Central opened in 1896 (though it closed between 1964 and 1979).

These tunnels mean that most of the suburban trains do not simply run between Glasgow city centre and the suburbs, but rather they run through the city centre, from suburbs on one side to suburbs on the other side. This permits more than one station in the city centre, thus spreading the load and giving passengers more choice, as well as needing much fewer platforms in the city centre (albeit at the expense of tunnels).

In our case, the train we got from Balloch was heading to Springburn, and the train we changed onto at Dumbarton East started in Helensburgh Central, and was in fact heading all the way to Edinburgh via the newly-reopened Airdrie-Bathgate line.

Indeed, the complexity and density of the Glasgow suburban network led to us allowing Friday and Saturday to explore the network and try and better understand the services and their use. We got back to our hotel after a long day - nearly fifteen hours from first train to last - and decided to have a lie-in on Friday, ready for two days in Glasgow.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 6

2011-07-17T17:34:00.002+01:00

We awoke on Wednesday to a rare sight in the highlands: blue skies and sunshine, broken only by a few puffs of white cloud. We couldn't have got a better day for what are probably the two most scenic lines in the whole country: that from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh, and from Mallaig to Fort William. We would get from Kyle to Mallaig by a bus across the bridge to the Isle of Skye, followed by a ferry back to the mainland.

0900 Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh, arr 1128
Headcode: 2H81, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 158717
Distance: 82.25 miles; walk-up price: £12.75

To get to Kyle of Lochalsh, trains run along the Far North Line to Wick as far as Dingwall, where the line to Kyle of Lochalsh curves off. The line, while remote, is more verdant than the Far North Line, climbing Strath Bran to Achnasheen, before descending down Glen Carron to the coast at Stromeferry, and then hugs the coast via Plockton into Kyle. The scenery is less barren than the line to Wick, with many lochs and forests lining the route through the glens, with many mountains lining their sides.

Once the line hits the coast at Stromeferry, however, the scenery becomes even more incredible, with the line literally cut into the cliff-face; at one point the line has been covered over and effectively put in a tunnel in order to protect it from rockfalls. The line was one of the most difficult to build in the whole country, and was the second line ever to receive government subsidy to build it (not just to operate it).

It's difficult to describe in words how picturesque the line is; the whole line is simply beautiful, and not so long as to leave you weary at the end of it, the journey taking two and a half hours from Inverness, and we arrived in Kyle of Lochalsh just before lunchtime. The area beside the harbour is a wonderful area to sit and relax, and we duly did so while eating fish and chips for lunch.

Kyle of Lochalsh was, until fairly recently, an important ferry terminal: all the ferries to the outer Hebrides used to go from Kyle, but in 1973 the main service to Stornoway was diverted to Ullapool (which has no rail connection), and the line was threatened with closure. Fortunately, however, the line's incredible scenic qualities has saved it on more than one occasion, and closure is no longer a serious suggestion.

Until recently, Kyle had a very profitable ferry service across the very short distance to the Isle of Skye, but in 1995 the Skye Bridge opened, about a mile west of Kyle, removing the need for any ferry services. We were thus able to get a bus across the bridge, and onto the Isle of Skye:

1335 Kyle bus terminal to Armadale, arr 1418
Bus number: 51, operated by Stagecoach Inverness using bus 20946
Distance: approx 9.25 miles

Our bus route took us down the eastern side of the Isle of Skye, in glorious sunshine. The Isle of Skye is the biggest of the islands in the Hebrides on the western coast of Scotland, though whether it is still an "island" - after the building of the bridge - is now a matter of some debate. In the centre of the island is the fierce Cuillin mountain ridge, jagged and pointy mountains unlike the rolling hills of the mainland, dominating the skyline for miles around.

I have twice spent wonderful family holidays on the Isle of Skye; this time, however, we were only passing through, but a few fleeting glimpses of the Cuillin and of the Isle of Raasay were more than enough to remind me of the great unspoilt beauty of the Hebrides.

We arrived in Armadale, the other main ferry port on the east side of the Isle of Skye, where a frequent car ferry service operates to Mallaig on the mainland. Until the opening of the Skye bridge, this was nearly as popular a route to the Isle of Skye as the route via Kyle; while the bridge now takes the bulk of the traffic, this route via Mallaig is still my all-time favourite ferry ride, this being my third time on the route:

1430 Armadale to Mallaig, arr 1500
Ferry operated by Caledonian MacBrayne using MV Coruisk
Distance: approx 5 miles

Our ferry was pretty full; although there was space for a few more vehicles, there were two coach parties on board the ferry, which took up a sizable chunk of the passenger capacity. We stood on deck and admired the wonderful views of the surrounding area.

Caledonian Macbrayne, abbreviated to CalMac, operate pretty much all the lifeline ferry routes between the mainland and the various islands of the Hebrides. Some of these are short five-minute hops between islands, but some are three-hour long sailings between Oban and the Outer Hebrides. They are utterly vital to life on the islands, though CalMac do have something of a monopoly: there is a local poem, based loosely on Psalm 24, which goes

The Earth belongs unto the Lord, and all that it contains;
Except the Western Isles, which do belong unto Macbrayne's.

From the ferry, we could see across to the remote peninsula of Kintail: while part of the mainland, there is no road access whatsoever, and the only ways to get to the tiny village of Inverie are by 17-mile hike from Kinloch Hourn, or by a tiny little boat from Mallaig.

We could also see south to the peninsula of Ardnamurchan, the westernmost point on mainland Britain (even west of Land's End!), and south-west to the so-called "Small Isles" of Eigg and Rum. Slowly, Mallaig, on the mainland, came into view to the south-east, and we docked and disembarked after half an hour on the ferry. We had an hour before our final journey of the day, the train from Mallaig to Fort William, the "Iron Road to the Isles":

1605 Mallaig to Fort William, arr 1727
Headcode: 1Y48, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 156493 + 156453
Distance: 41.5 miles; walk-up price: £6.85

The line between Mallaig and Fort William, the final part of the West Highland Line and the westernmost railway in the country, is widely regarded as (one of) the most scenic line(s) in the world, featuring some of the most incredible railway engineering with viaducts over deep valleys and tunnels and cuttings through impossibly steep hills.

The line opened in 1901, built by Sir Robert McAlpine, as the first line built with government subsidy in the UK (and possibly in the whole world). The government invested £45,000 - a huge sum for the 1890s - in the line from Fort William to Mallaig and the line from Stromeferry to Kyle, as well as building better port facilities at Kyle and Mallaig to provide better connections to the Western Isles. Their expense is our reward: both lines offer probably the best scenery of any line in the UK, if not the world.

The most famous structure on the line is the Glenfinnan viaduct, featured in (among other things) the Harry Potter films. The line curves round the head of a valley, crossing the river below on the viaduct, which is itself curved; even with our four-car train we could easily see the back of the train from the front carriage.

Nearby is the memorial to Bonnie Prince Charlie, the grandson of the deposed King James II who returned from hiding in Italy to the Western Isles to gather an army in Glenfinnan. The song "Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing / O'er the sea to Skye" refers not to heading west from the mainland to Skye, but to Bonnie Prince Charlie's journey east from the outer Hebrides to Skye, and onward to the mainland.

Having gathered an army in Glenfinnan, Bonnie Prince Charlie marched all the way south as far as Derby, before hearing rumours of a large force being mustered by King George II and turning back; while the rumours were false, the retreat gave the English time to muster an actual army, which caught up with the Jacobites at Culloden, just south of Inverness, and defeated them there in the last battle on British soil, in 1746, thus ending the Jacobite challenge to the throne.

The whole stretch of line is breathtakingly beautiful, and we had the privilege of seeing it in dappled sunshine; by now the clouds were starting to roll in, but it was still bright and sunny for the most part, and it made the experience just magical.

We arrived in Fort William at 17:27, an early finish to a wonderful day involving two trains, a bus and a ferry, and headed to the Bank Street Lodge, our hostel for the night. We headed to the Nevis pub by the coast for dinner, before retiring ready for a very early start on Thursday.

Note: Edited on Friday 22nd July to correct the statement that Bonnie Prince Charlie was the illegitimate son of King James II; he was, in fact, his legitimate grandson.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 5

2011-07-13T23:32:00.001+01:00

Our original plan for Tuesday had been to head to Wick and come back. However, we decided that getting all the way to Wick without going to John O'Groats was like turning back 200 yards from the summit, so we sought a way to get to John O'Groats and back in a day.

We had initially planned to get the 10:38 train out of Inverness to Wick, but to get to John O'Groats using buses between Wick and John O'Groats would have meant getting the 07:00 train. In an effort not to have a hideously early start, we found that we could get a bus all the way from Inverness to John O'Groats which left later. So we did that:

0940 Inverness to Dunbeath war memorial, arr 1156
Bus number: X99, operated by Stagecoach Inverness using bus 52429
Distance: approx 83 miles

The X99 bus route, run by Stagecoach and essentially using pretty comfortable 49-seater coaches, connects Inverness to John O'Groats along the A9 road. We weren't quite sure if the bus was included in our ticket (further examination suggests it probably wasn't) but the driver let us on anyway.

The A9 essentially follows the coast up from Inverness to Thurso, but the railway line comes much further inland at times to go up one side of a firth and down the other, rather than going over a bridge at the bottom of the firth. As such, the bus route from Inverness to John O'Groats is a full 40 miles shorter than the railway line, and thus takes just over three hours rather than nearly five hours.

This means that the road and the railway line take, at times, completely different routes, with completely different scenery, meaning that by going both ways we saw much more varied and interesting scenery than we would have otherwise. What's more, we were very lucky in getting dry (though overcast) weather.

Most of the route was along fairly normal single-carriageway roads, albeit it set against a beautiful North Sea coastline. However, between Helmsdale and Wick, the railway line curves inland away from the steep coast, while the road follows the coast with 13% gradients and numerous hairpins. It was probably the most exciting coach ride I've ever been on - we were going round corners rather faster than I would have expected in a car, let alone a coach - but we all enjoyed it immensely.

Our first bus was heading for Thurso and on to Scrabster, the ferry terminal for the Orkney Islands, and was surprisingly busy, picking up people at a number of the intermediate towns such as Tain, Dornoch, Golspie and Helsmdale. For passengers heading to Wick and John O'Groats, there is a connecting bus from Dunbeath, just south of the junction for Wick and Thurso, which was waiting for us:

1201 Dunbeath war memorial to John O'Groats, arr 1254
Bus number: X99, operated by Stagecoach Inverness using bus 52528
Distance: approx 37 miles

Changing at Dunbeath war memorial to the other X99 was probably the weirdest place any of us have ever changed buses, but we were not alone. Well... we weren't alone to Wick, anyway; Wick is the second-biggest town (behind Thurso) north of Inverness, and many people were heading there to do their shopping. But after Wick, we were the only people left on the bus.

The bus dropped us at the end of the road down to John O'Groats, so we walked the last five minutes down to the famous sign - which, contrary to popular belief, is not run by the local council but rather by a photographic business, who will post out framed photographs of you posing in front of the sign. We duly posed for a photograph - with the distance to the University of Warwick (where we met), some 595 miles away, on the signpost - though not before getting some lunch in one of the two cafes in John O'Groats.

It really is an amazing feeling getting to the "end" of the country - and by public transport at that! - not least because of the barren scenery we pass through to get there. The journey takes a full three hours to cover the 130 miles from Inverness, which is itself nearly 200 miles from Edinburgh and Glasgow. John O'Groats is, in fact, further from Edinburgh than Coventry is, which really gives an idea of just how remote a place it is.

Having come up by bus and spent a couple of hours wandering around John O'Groats, we took another bus back to Wick station to head back to Inverness by train:

1445 John O'Groats to Wick station, arr 1514
Bus number: 77, operated by Stagecoach Inverness using bus 27590
Distance: approx 16 miles

On this bus we were not quite alone - there was one other passenger to Wick - but the emptiness of the bus is reflected in the emptiness of the scenery. The short half-hour journey to Wick left us with time to buy a drink before boarding our train to take us on the 175 miles back to Inverness:

1600 Wick to Inverness, arr 2009
Headcode: 2H64, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 158705
Distance: 175 miles; walk-up price: £11.20

The railway line between Inverness and Wick is undoubtedly the most remote line in the country: ostensibly it provides a rail connection for the Orkney and Shetland islands, but more importantly it serves the small communities along the line - none of which has more than 9000 people.

In order to serve both Wick and Thurso, trains from Inverness run to Georgemas Junction, from where there are two branches to Thurso and Wick. Because the branch to Thurso is only six miles, the trains from Inverness run to Georgemas Junction, reverse to head to Thurso, reverse again to head back to Georgemas Junction, and head on to Wick. For our train, heading to Inverness, we did the reverse: we headed west to Georgemas Junction, then due north to Thurso, back south to Georgemas Junction, and finally south-west on the long slog to Inverness.

But what a slog: the scenery, especially north of Helmsdale, is so remote and barren as to look like no-one has touched it since the making of the earth, other than to put down a railway line. Instead of hairpin bends and steep gradients along the coast from Wick, we start heading due west, coming miles and miles inland, in order to follow a valley down to Helmsdale, finally rejoining the coast and the A9 there.

And what a day: by the time we left Wick, the overcast weather we had started with in Inverness had cleared and turned to bright, warm sunshine, with clear blue skies and superb visibility. From the coast between Helmsdale and Golspie, we were heading south-west, and could see very clearly across to the south-east to the north coast of Aberdeenshire, nearly 40 miles away.

South of Golspie we turned north-west up the valley to Lairg, before following the valley down to Tain. Until 1991, the A9 road took a similar route, but since then the A9 has taken a new bridge across the Dornoch Firth, cutting 25 miles off the journey north; there were initially proposals to double-deck the bridge for trains as well, but funding could not be found and the railway thus loses out quite badly to the road in journey time.

On hitting Tain, we finally started to return to some semblance of civilisation; the countryside north of Inverness is so empty and devoid of human activity that it's hard to convey in words just how barren and desolate it was. But gradually we chugged along back to Inverness.

Due to "poor performance of the train" (that is, the engine wasn't quite at full power for the summits) we ended up back in Inverness about nine minutes late, at 20:18 instead of 20:09. There was a connecting train at 20:15 to Glasgow Queen Street which, aside from the sleeper train to London, was the last train to Perth for connections to Edinburgh; the conductor had asked passengers to see if there were any making onward journeys, and radioed ahead to say there were passengers heading for the Glasgow train.

Those passengers were duly instructed to head to platform 4 for the 20:15 to Glasgow, but when we pulled into platform 6 there was no train to be seen in platform 4. It transpired that Inverness station had changed their plans and instead of holding the connection by three minutes they decided to make the poor passengers heading for the Glasgow train take the sleeper train to Perth or Stirling and then, since that would be the last train through those stations, presumably onward to Glasgow by taxi.

We were very surprised to see that the last connection of the day was not held - and only by three or four minutes - simply for the purpose of making punctuality statistics look better. It is a sad day when it is cheaper for a train company to taxi passengers and get them home hours late than it is to pay the fine for having one of their trains run late and get passengers home five minutes late; in contrast to Saturday's excellent work by Scotrail in diverting trains after the Forth Bridge lightning strike, this was the disjointed railway network at its absolute worst.

I lay no fault at the conductor of the train; I am ashamed at Inverness station, and Scotrail management, for deciding that helping a dozen passengers make the last connection of the day wasn't worth doing. Shame on you, Scotrail; whatever happened to the idea of never leaving a man down?

That incident, however, did little to tarnish the beautiful day we'd had going to John O'Groats and back. In retrospect, we should have planned to go there by bus and come back by train from the beginning: both have completely different scenery, and it was really nice to see both routes in one day.

On arrival in Inverness, we grabbed some dinner in McDonalds and ate in the glorious evening sunshine on the banks of the River Ness, before heading back to our hotel ready for an epic day on Wednesday, travelling to Fort William via the Isle of Skye.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 4

2011-07-13T00:13:00.001+01:00

On Monday morning, we said goodbye to our hotel in Edinburgh and headed first on a return trip to Glasgow. There are no fewer than four direct routes between Edinburgh and Glasgow, two of which serve Glasgow Central (high level), one of which serves Glasgow Queen Street high level, and one of which serves Glasgow Queen Street low level. In order to cover all four of them eventually, this morning we took a return trip to Glasgow Central:

0911 Edinburgh Waverley to Glasgow Central (via Carstairs), arr 1026
Headcode: 1S99, operated by CrossCountry using Voyager 221121
Distance: 57.25 miles; walk-up return: £13.05

Our first route to Glasgow is also the longest, and until recently was the only one which was electrified. However, the fourth route, via Airdrie and Bathgate, which opened earlier this year, is now also electrified; ironically, all bar one of the trains on this route via Carstairs are operated by diesel trains!

Until the new East Coast timetable was brought in in May, this route was served every two hours or so by East Coast trains to London King's Cross via Newcastle and York, and these were almost always run by electric trains. However, in order to have enough trains to run the rest of their proposed service, all but one of the East Coast trains to Glasgow was withdrawn.

In order to maintain the level of service between York, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, CrossCountry were called upon to extend their hourly service between Plymouth and Edinburgh to run to Glasgow every two hours. Since most of the lines CrossCountry run over are not electrified, this means the Edinburgh-Glasgow service via Carstairs is no longer provided by electric trains but by diesel Voyagers.

So it was that we ended up on a CrossCountry Voyager for the hour-and-a-quarter long trip to Glasgow Central. The route via Carstairs essentially manages to avoid almost all of the built-up areas near Edinburgh, and only when you get to Motherwell and the outer suburbs of Glasgow does the route become urban; the line is otherwise in open countryside.

Indeed, it was never really intended as an Edinburgh to Glasgow route; in reality, Carstairs is a triangle junction: the three legs of the triangle lead towards Edinburgh, Glasgow, and south to Carlisle and on towards Preston and London. The original intended use of the lines was for trains from Carlisle to head to Edinburgh and Glasgow; this third side of the triangle between Edinburgh and Glasgow was a later addition.

(In order to get round the fact that the ticket was valid from 09:15 on weekdays, but our train left at 09:11, we bought a single to Haymarket - which, valid on CrossCountry only, cost just 85p with a railcard! - because our train left Haymarket at 09:16 and our rover ticket was thus valid from Haymarket. Not that the ticket inspector seemed to care, but never mind.)

We approached Glasgow through the busy approaches on the West Coast Main Line through Motherwell, and got held for not one but two suburban trains to cross our path at Newton; we arrived in Glasgow Central on time, and I suspect this is down to the CrossCountry path having some slack in it for exactly that purpose. In this case, however, given the complexity of the Glasgow suburban network - something which we will undoubtedly discover for ourselves later in the week - it's hard to imagine being able to substantially improve the timetable without ending up breaking something else.

We arrived in Glasgow Central station with a half-hour wait to our next train to go back along one of the other routes to Edinburgh. Glasgow Central one of the nicest big stations in the country: while it's not as architecturally stunning as, say, London St Pancras or even Manchester Piccadilly, it is nonetheless a rather nice station, with lots of air and space, lots of amenities, and no automatic ticket barriers.

Our train from Edinburgh formed one of the most distant departures from GlasgoW: it became the 10:59 to Penzance, calling at no fewer than 35 calling points along the way, taking very nearly 12 hours. Of course, almost no-one uses the whole length, but it provides so many overlapping opportunities that would be lost if the train were simply to run to Birmingham and have a separate train from Birmingham to Penzance. Nonetheless, it's still slightly disorienting to see Penzance on the departure board at Glasgow Central.

Our train back to Edinburgh duly arrived, and we boarded:

1105 Glasgow Central to Edinburgh Waverley (via Shotts), arr 1210
Headcode: 1Y80, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 156433
Distance: 47.25 miles; walk-up return included above

The route via Shotts essentially forms a cut-off of the route via Carstairs: it shortens the distance to Edinburgh by a full ten miles, while passing through areas of significant population in Lanarkshire and West Lothian, most notably Livingston and Shotts. This route diverges from the West Coast Main Line north of Motherwell, thus avoiding Motherwell in favour of Bellshill and other suburbs, and rejoins the route via Carstairs near Calder.

The ends of the route - those parts shared with the Carstairs route - are thus electrified, but the portion in the middle is not, although the Scottish government is considering "filling in" all the routes in the central belt with electric wires.

In comparison to the previous train, this was a small two-car diesel multiple unit and was definitely a local train rather than a long-distance train, but it was well-used (probably better-used than the five-car Voyager). The Shotts route is served twice an hour; one train an hour which, like ours, is semi-fast, calling only at about six stations en route, and one train an hour which calls at all 17 stations but takes a bit longer. The fact that we were on a semi-fast train meant that we were back in Edinburgh in just an hour and five minutes, with ample time to make our next connection.

I started out thinking that Edinburgh Waverley was, at first glance, confusing and oddly laid-out. However, in practice, to the layman who doesn't care about the track layout, it's actually a very well laid-out station, with the majority of platforms having level access from the concourse, and good and convenient amenities. The one drawback is that the layout constrains the amount of circulation space available, but Network Rail are working on improving both space and access to the station.

We left Edinburgh for the last time (at least for a few days) on the last of the major suburban lines around Edinburgh which we hadn't done, the so-called Fife Circle:

1239 Fife Circle Inner Rail, Edinburgh Waverley to Inverkeithing (via Glenrothes), arr 1411
Headcode: 2K01, operated by First Scotrail using Sprinter 158741
Distance: 58.25 miles; walk-up price: £5.60

The Fife Circle is a not-quite-circle-shaped collection of suburban lines in, unsurprisingly, Fife. The line runs north from Edinburgh across the Forth Bridge to Inverkeithing, where the line splits in two. The western branch heads through Dunfermline and Cowdenbeath, while the eastern branch heads through Burntisland and Kirkcaldy, before meeting at Glenrothes.

Trains therefore run in a teardrop shape: from Edinburgh trains head to Inverkeithing, before running either clockwise or anticlockwise around the loop and back to Inverkeithing, before heading back to Edinburgh. In our case, we went anticlockwise, so we thus passed through Inverkeithing, then Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes, Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline and back to Inverkeithing.

The Forth Bridge is one of the iconic railway bridges in the country, and in the clear sunshine we got very good views from the bridge over to the Forth Road Bridge. Better still, the line towards Kirkcaldy curves to the east, giving a view back to the Forth Rail Bridge further along the line.

The rest of the line was actually a fairly bland suburban line, with towns relatively sparse through fairly open countryside, and a few showers of rain interrupting an otherwise relatively fine day.

We went round the loop all the way back to Inverkeithing, where we alighted to join our next train to Aberdeen; we ended up with half an hour to wait because we couldn't quite have made it to Edinburgh in time to pick up the train there.

1447 Inverkeithing to Aberdeen, arr 1709
Headcode: 1S11, operated by East Coast using HST 43296 + 43306
Distance: 117.25 miles; walk-up price: £25.95

We opted to take an East Coast train up the coast to Aberdeen, on the basis that, given it was a nine-coach train, there should be plenty of room. Boy, were we wrong.

This is one of three through trains a day between London and Aberdeen: given it leaves London at 10:00 and arrives at Aberdeen at 17:09, it is the perfect train for everyone heading north for a holiday to catch, and this was borne out by the fact that every seat was taken, people were standing in the vestibules, with some even resorting to sitting on their luggage, since every luggage rack, vestibule, corner, nook and cranny was overflowing with cases and bags of every inconvenient shape and size conceivable.

And to think that the Chief Executive of East Coast, Elaine Holt, wants to end through trains between London and anywhere north of Edinburgh! Scotland does not end at the central belt!

Through trains to Aberdeen and Inverness lead to far more people heading north, simply because it avoids having to change trains. People do not, in general, like having to change trains, especially at huge stations at Edinburgh Waverley, and even having three through trains to Aberdeen and one through to Inverness each day is of huge benefit to all those heading to Scotland on holiday or on business.

Not only was every seat taken, most of the seats were reserved. There were seats reserved from London to Montrose (just two stations south of Aberdeen), from York to Aberdeen, from Newcastle to Dundee, from London to Leuchars (for St Andrews), and many other such through journeys across Edinburgh. There were six coaches of standard class; I suspect if there had been ten coaches of standard class we would still have felt cramped. Never before have an HST has felt small.

So for an hour and a half, until Montrose, the three of us stood in the vestibule between the last coach of standard class and the buffet car. This was actually quite a good decision, since this meant we were by the doors, and - this being a slam-door train - the doors had push-down windows, meaning we could get good clear photographs.

The route passes over the Tay Bridge just south of Dundee, which opened in 1887 to replace the original bridge which collapsed in 1879. The bridge is over two miles long, and was described by Ulysses S. Grant as "a big bridge for a small city". Last time I did this route, on the All-Line Rover, the weather was so bad that I couldn't even see the Tay Road Bridge just a couple of miles away; this time, however, the visibility was good, even if it was a little overcast, and we got some very good views of both bridges.

We finally got a table to sit at after Montrose, for the last half-hour of the journey. However, in another demonstration of how much slack East Coast's new timetable has, having run five minutes late the whole way from York, we arrived five minutes early at Aberdeen - or rather, on time thanks to the five minutes public adjustment that most trains seem to have.

We had an hour at Aberdeen before catching our next train, so we headed to the adjacent shopping centre for dinner in Nando's, before returning for our final onward train to Inverness:

1820 Aberdeen to Inverness, arr 2033
Headcode: 1H39, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170404 + Sprinter 158721
Distance: 108.25 miles; walk-up price: £17.30

The Aberdeen-Inverness line is the second route to Inverness, built by the very grandiose-sounding Great North of Scotland Railway. The line is, like Perth-Inverness, single track with passing loops, with only one five-mile loop and the rest only short loops at stations.

Strangely, the Aberdeen-Inverness route is busier, with 11 trains a day to just nine on Perth-Inverness; both get roughly two-hourly services with odd extra trains and irregular patterns, and, in an ideal world, both would have an hourly service, but the constraints of the single-track sections make this, at present, impossible to timetable.

Our train was, remarkably, five cars long, with a three-car Turbostar unceremoniously juxtaposed with a two-car Sprinter; the Sprinters have doors on the ends in order to provide a gangway between coupled units, but the Turbostars do not, instead having rounded noses, meaning our train looked a bit odd. Moreover, the lack of connection meant that the trolley could only operate in the three-car Turbostar, which we gladly found ourselves in.

While the scenery on the line was undoubtedly very nice, we were all a bit tired at the end of a long day and managed somehow not to pay that much attention, and dozed, chatted, and discussed plans for the following day, with the two-and-a-quarter hour journey to Inverness seemingly passing quite quickly.

We arrived in Inverness after a long day and got a taxi to our hotel, another Travelodge, this time a rather quieter one near the retail park on the eastern outskirts of the city centre, and retired ready for Tuesday: a day trip on the Far North Line to Wick.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 3

2011-07-11T22:38:00.003+01:00

On Sunday, we took a day off from trains to see the city of Edinburgh. The railway line runs east-west through the centre of Edinburgh, in a valley separating the Old Town, to the south, and the New Town, to the north. Our hotel was in the old town, just a few minutes walk from the railway station, so we walked across to the New Town to get some breakfast.

From there, we walked down to Princes Street Gardens, which line the side of the hill next to the railway line up to the New Town. We then crossed the railway line on a small footbridge, and walked back up the other side of the hill to Edinburgh Castle.

Edinburgh Castle, which sits high atop a hill on the south-west side of the city centre, was the royal residence of Scotland until the union of the crowns in 1603, and is still home to the Scottish Crown Jewels, including the Crown, Sword and Sceptre, and the Stone of Destiny (traditionally known as the Stone of Scone). The Castle is home to the oldest building in Edinburgh, the twelfth-century St Margaret's Chapel, as well as the Great Hall and the Royal Residences.

One of the more unusual buildings in the Castle is the Scottish National War Memorial, which was added in 1927; the memorial is not merely a simple statue or pillar, but an entire cathedral-like building, with more than a dozen wall-sized plaques to each of the battalions in Scotland who suffered losses in World War I.

In the centre is a metal casket, presented by King George V, a sealed container with a roll of honour with all 140,000 names; each of the plaques also had an associated book containing the roll of honour for that battalion. One of the panels had quotation of Thucydides, which I particularly liked:

"The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men, and their story is not graven only on stone over their clay, but abides everywhere without visible symbol woven into the stuff of other men's lives."

After having some lunch, we headed back down into the Old Town, where we took an open-top tour bus round the city; we did slightly more than the full loop in order to end up near our hotel. The tour took us past Arthur's Seat, the Scottish Parliament building, and the statue of Greyfriars Bobby.

We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the hotel, before heading out for dinner at Pizza Express, and retiring ready for a long day on trains on Monday.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 2

2011-07-10T19:29:00.001+01:00

Our first full day in Scotland consisted, essentially, of three return trips from our Edinburgh base: two short suburban lines in the morning, to Newcraighall and North Berwick, followed by a return trip along the Highland Main Line from Edinburgh to Inverness via Perth.

0921 Edinburgh Waverley to Newcraighall, arr 0933
and
0947 Newcraighall to Edinburgh Waverley, arr 0957

Headcodes: 2G01 and 2K67 resp., operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170394
Distance: 4.75 miles; walk-up return: £2.30

We started with the short 12-minute trip to Newcraighall. Newcraighall was opened in 2002 as part of a project with the grand title of Edinburgh Crossrail, whereby trains from the suburban Fife Circle lines run through to Newcraighall, on the south-east side of Edinburgh, instead of terminating in Edinburgh, thus freeing up platform capacity at Edinburgh Waverley.

No new track was required for the Edinburgh Crossrail, save for a new siding at Newcraighall for turning back trains, since the lines were already used for freight trains via Millerhill yard. The line is a short and relatively bland suburban line; we'd ended up starting with this in order for the rest of our plan to work. We started from Edinburgh platform 1, went to Newcraighall, spent ten minutes sat in the platform, went straight back to Edinburgh, and arrived back at... platform 1.

That said, the line is due to be extended by a whopping 35 miles to Galashiels, reopening part of one of the most contentious of the Beeching closures, the Waverley Line between Edinburgh and Carlisle via Galashiels. This closure essentially left the Scottish Borders with no rail lines between Lockerbie and Berwick, and the re-opening has been campaigned for pretty much since the day and hour the line was closed. Construction is due to start this year, with a projected re-opening set for 2014.

Until then, however, the line is a short 5-mile stub, and we returned to Edinburgh less than 40 minutes after we left it. We jumped straight on the other suburban line on the east side of Edinburgh, that out to North Berwick:

1012 Edinburgh Waverley to North Berwick, arr 1045
and
1050 North Berwick to Edinburgh Waverley, arr 1123

Headcodes: 2Y18 and 2Y17 resp., operated by First Scotrail using Desiro 380104
Distance: 22.25 miles; walk-up return: £4.05

The North Berwick branch has been the problem child of Edinburgh's railway network for many years. Trains to North Berwick run along the East Coast Main Line as far as Drem, 18 miles outside Edinburgh, before turning onto a five mile long single-track branch line out to North Berwick. These provide the only stopping services to Musselburgh and a number of other suburbs of Edinburgh, and the line was electrified as part of the ECML electrification in the early 1990s.

However, as a suburban line tacked on to a long-distance electrification project, there was no natural candidate for stock to run the suburban services, and the lines have ended up, over the years, with hand-me-downs from almost every other line in the country. Over the year since electrification, they have been served by class 305 slam-door stock, by old mark 3 coaches from Virgin Trains with class 90 locomotives, by Class 170 Turbostars (diesel trains under an entirely electrified route!) eventually used by Hull Trains, and by Class 322s.

At long last, however, someone has had the sense to tack an extra few trains onto another order, and so the North Berwick line is going to be served by brand new Class 380 Desiros built by Siemens. The first of these was delivered just a month ago, and we got lucky with one out to North Berwick on this occasion. That said, a number of the other North Berwick services had to be cancelled, due to a class 322 having broken down; we saw it receiving attention from the fitters in the usual platform for North Berwick services (platform 4) at Edinburgh Waverley.

The line is actually quite a nice, scenic run out to the coast at North Berwick, and the new Class 380s are pretty nippy, with very good acceleration and braking. The run takes just over half an hour; we spent just five minutes in the platform at North Berwick before coming back to Edinburgh.

Satisfied with our two short suburban jaunts as toes-in-the-water, we plunged in head-first and headed on a 350-mile round trip to Inverness, via Perth:

1135 Edinburgh Waverley to Inverness, arr 1506
Headcode: 1H11, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170412
Distance: 175 miles; walk-up return: £34.80

The line from Edinburgh to Inverness is a beautiful route through what is really quite mountainous territory: we essentially pass through the only north-south route across the Cairngorms. The fast-flowing rivers (often nearly torrential) which we run parallel to for much of the route only add to the beauty of the rolling mountains.

We headed out of Edinburgh to the north, over the Forth Rail Bridge in glorious sunshine. The view from the bridge is really quite impressive: you can see right across the Firth of Forth, with Edinburgh city in one direction and the Forth Road Bridge in the other. We then hugged the coast along to Kirkcaldy, and got some very good views back to the bridges from further down the Firth of Forth.

The route is double-track as far as Ladybank, where the lines to Dundee and Perth split; the Ladybank-Perth line is single-track. North of Perth, aside from a 23-mile stretch of double track between Blair Atholl and Dalwhinnie, the whole 118-mile line to Inverness is single track, albeit with reasonably frequent passing loops. Twice we were delayed by a minute or two waiting for trains to clear the single line, once at Ladybank and once at Dalwhinnie. Nonetheless, we only ran a few minutes late to Inverness.

That said, once you're north of Perth it's pretty obvious why it's largely single-track. The line is pretty twisty, running parallel to the A9 almost the entire way, twisting and turning parallel first to the River Tay, then to its tributary the River Tummel, before leading to a fifteen-mile slow climb up Glen Garry. This brings us to the summit: Druimuachdar (or Drumochter) is the highest point on the whole British railway network, at 1484 feet (452m) above sea level.

We fall slowly back, before climbing once more to Slochd summit at a mere 1315 feet (401m) above sea level, and then gradually descending back to sea level at Inverness. The climbs and descents do not go unnoticed: while climbing the trains invariably run at full power, not getting any faster (and sometimes even slowing!), but while descending we can simply coast and still sometimes pick up speed.

The line between Perth and Inverness is served usually only once every two hours, with services usually alternating between Edinburgh and Inverness. The long single-track sections, however, constrain the timetable and mean the service pattern is somewhat irregular; nonetheless, on this relatively sunny summer Saturday, the train from Edinburgh to Inverness was pretty full.

We were lucky to get a table of four seats to ourselves most of the way, and there was a noticeable lack of luggage space, with the overhead racks full to (almost) overflowing with bags that would have been better suited to the luggage spaces at the end of the carriages, if they had not themselves been full. Nonetheless, the linespeed isn't that high, with a top speed of around 75mph even along the coast of the Firth of Forth, so the three-car Turbostar was relatively adequate for the journey.

The weather held up nicely for most of the journey, with some sunshine all the way north as far as Aviemore. From thereon in, however, the rain descended and stayed with us all the way to Inverness. Matt, being an optimist from London (and not an optimist in the sense of Harold Wilson), had come to Scotland without a waterproof, so on arrival at Inverness we promptly found an outdoors shop and, much to the laughter of the shop assistants, bought a waterproof.

Inverness itself is a rather nice little city, although it was only granted city status in 2000 as a "millennium city". The city itself is home to only around 56,000 people, but as it is by far the largest settlement for nearly a hundred miles, the city is better-equipped with large shops than many larger cities in England. We took a wander round, first down to the full and fast-flowing River Ness, before heading up to the castle, now in use as the council buildings and the Sheriff Court.

We returned to Inverness station to head back to Edinburgh on the same route:

1653 (actual 1710) Inverness to Edinburgh Waverley, arr 2029 (actual 2040)
Headcode: 1B34, operated by First Scotrail using Turbostar 170424
Distance: booked 175 miles, actual 188.75 miles; walk-up return included above

The trains out of Inverness are busy enough that a queue started to form a full 20 minutes before departure time, which we duly joined, and boarded our train. The departure time of 16:53 came and went, and the guard soon told us that the train had failed and we were awaiting fitters to come over from the depot to fix the train. Inverness depot being nearby, the fitters soon came, and before long the guard came over the tannoy again and announced that our train (170455) was a failure.

Fortunately, with Inverness depot being nearby, they soon had a spare train (170424) in the platform, and we piled into that and found seats; we left just 17 minutes late, which actually isn't too bad for a failed train, especially somewhere as remote as Inverness.

What's more, we hit a stroke of luck: the Highland Chieftain (the once-daily service from London King's Cross to Inverness, which takes eight hours end-to-end), which we were due to pass in the loop at Pitlochry, was also running about 15 minutes late, and so rather than having to wait for it at some point we ended up both waiting very little time in Pitlochry, as intended!

However, the journey was not quite plain sailing. Not long into the journey the guard came down the carriage asking if there were any passengers for Fife (we were booked to call at Markinch and Kirkcaldy). This piqued our curiosity, and a quick check on National Rail Enquiries on our phone showed that there were "signalling problems in the North Queensferry area", which we conjectured meant there were problems on the Forth Bridge. The logical conclusion to draw, thus, was that, given the problems on the Forth Bridge, we were being diverted via Stirling, the only other logical route to Edinburgh, and thus not calling at Markinch and Kirkcaldy.

Given we were running (by now) 13 minutes late, the five-minute connection at Perth to the next train to Glasgow would be missed. In a rare example of joined-up thinking on the part of Scotrail, after Perth our train, which we had initially expected to be diverted through Stirling non-stop, did in fact stop at Stirling, and we were signalled through ahead of the stopping train from Alloa to Glasgow.

This allowed passengers for Glasgow to change at Stirling and get to Glasgow just 20 minutes later than the Perth connection would have allowed, instead of the hour-long wait at Perth they would have had otherwise. Indeed, Stirling signalbox was kind enough to re-platform the Glasgow train to the adjacent platform 6, rather than forcing passengers to cross the footbridge to platform 9 as timetabled.

(It was quite satisfying that, after the guard had asked for passengers to Fife, we were able to figure out what was going on, advise our fellow passengers heading for Glasgow of the problems, and having done so asked the conductor "are we being diverted via Stirling?" and got the unequivocal response "yes".)

We arrived in Edinburgh just 11 minutes late, in spite of the diversion being nearly 14 miles longer. We were aided not just by getting a clear run almost all the way to Edinburgh by the signallers, but we also benefitted from the linespeed via Stirling being higher than the booked route via Kirkcaldy; the diversion didn't really delay us at all, with the delay being almost entirely due to the breakdown at Inverness.

Scotrail showed the kind of joined-up thinking that is sadly lacking on the rest of the network: trains diverted rather than cancelled outright, and not just holding booked connections but adding stops to make up for lost connections. There were a number of passengers on our train heading for Glasgow, and it was clear that the guard's (and, indeed, Scotrail's) priority was not merely ensuring that the train was simply on time but that all the passengers got where they needed to go, an attitude sadly lacking on much of our railway network.

Well done, Scotrail, but also well done to Network Rail's Scotland Route: Scotrail run the trains, but Network Rail man the signalboxes and run the tracks, so recovering from disruption requires close co-operation between track and train, something made much, much harder by the fragmentation introduced into the network by the Byzantine method of privatisation opted for by John Major's government in 1993, which seemingly amounted to throwing all the various bits of the railway network in the air, seeing where they landed, and hoping for the best.

The McNulty report, published recently with a view to getting better value-for-money from the railway network, has recommended "vertical integration", where train operating companies take over the tracks they're running on and manage both track and train. Scotland is a perfect example of where vertical integration makes sense: almost all the trains in Scotland are run by Scotrail, with only a few trains run by Virgin Trains, East Coast and CrossCountry.

Indeed, on today's evidence, it seems that vertical integration is already working in practice (if not in theory): both with the train breakdown at Inverness and the diversion via Stirling required train operators to work together with Network Rail, something which can go spectacularly wrong at times south of the border.

That said, while vertical integration is a good idea in areas where one operator dominates the vast majority of the trains - Scotland and southern England being two good examples - in much of the midlands and the north of England there are far too many operators (not least freight operators) sharing tracks for vertical integration to work, and it seems to me that the only way to ensure vertical integration in all areas is to simply reunify the network into one company. We could even call it British Rail.

---

Saturday was a really exciting day on trains, with not just beautiful scenery but interesting diversions (well, most people wouldn't think they're interesting but we enjoyed it no end!). Our statistics for the day:

Total time spent on trains: 8 hours, 35 minutes.
Distance travelled: 417.75 miles.
Walk-up price: £41.15.

We grabbed some dinner in Burger King in Edinburgh Waverley station, and headed back to the hotel for a relaxing night, before a day of tourism in Edinburgh on Sunday.

Freedom of Scotland, Day 1

2011-07-09T22:19:00.002+01:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom of Scotland, Day 0

2011-07-07T21:43:00.003+01:00

Good news, everyone: I'm going to Scotland tomorrow!

Scotland is a place I've always loved, particularly thanks two family holidays in the Highlands in 2004 and 2007, and one of my biggest regrets about the All-Line Rover was not doing more lines in Scotland. To put that error right, over the next ten days, Friday 8th-Sunday 17th July, I'm going to be travelling round Scotland by train with Ian and Matt, two friends of mine who are nearly as mad about trains as I am.

We're using a Freedom of Scotland 8 in 15 Day Travelpass, which permits travel on all lines in Scotland (as far south as Carlisle and Berwick), after 0915 on weekdays and any time at weekends (though the time restrictions do not apply between Glasgow and Oban/Fort William/Mallaig and between Inverness and Wick/Thurso/Kyle of Lochalsh).

Unlike with the All-Line Rover, we have a fairly careful plan laid out. On Friday 8th, we meet up in London and head north on the East Coast Main Line to Edinburgh. We're spending three nights in Edinburgh, with a day on trains around Edinburgh on Saturday 9th, and a day looking around Edinburgh as a city on Sunday 10th (since none of us have been since we were quite young).

After that, we undertake a great circuit of the Highlands: on Monday 11th, we'll head north from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, and then across to Inverness. We'll spend two nights in Inverness, with a day trip to Wick and back on Tuesday 12th.

Then on Wednesday 13th, we'll head across to Kyle of Lochalsh, then get a bus across the Isle of Skye to the port of Armadale, where we get a Calmac ferry to Mallaig, and find ourselves at the end of the West Highland line from Glasgow, which we'll take as far as Fort William, before spending one night there.

On Thursday 14th, we plan to head south from Fort William to Glasgow, probably via Oban, to spend three nights in Glasgow. Friday 15th and Saturday 16th will be spent exploring the suburban network around Glasgow - while we have ideas we have no firm plans for these two days - and then on Sunday 17th we head home via the West Coast Main Line from Glasgow to London, and go our separate ways home from there.

We've planned this trip relatively carefully because most of the long, scenic lines in the Highlands, which are ultimately the point of doing this trip, are served only three or four times a day, and trying to do it ad hoc would inevitably result in an unexpected four-hour wait. We really want to have covered all of them by the end of the rover. Also, we wanted to arrange accommodation well in advance, since we're doing this in high summer and the Scottish Highlands do get booked up.

As I said, though, we don't have firm plans for everything: while the days in the Highlands are tied to the infrequent trains, and while we've planned what we'll do on suburban trains in the Edinburgh area, there's enough lines in the Glasgow area that we're just going to plan those on the day.

Inevitably, the weather forecast is rather changeable, but it could be a lot worse and to be honest is to be expected for this time of year; hopefully we'll get some sunshine in the Highlands.

It's been a busy year at university (I've been doing an MSc in 2010/11 as a prelude to a PhD), and I'll be very glad to get a good break from work for a while; I can't think of a better way to spend ten days than travelling round Scotland on trains with two good friends.

As usual, I'll be blogging about every day, hopefully no more than 24 hours behind real time, but that will be dependent on how much internet access we have and so on. So stay tuned!

East Midlands Rover: Summary

2011-04-24T15:16:00.006+01:00

Here I thought I'd summarise what I did on my East Midlands Rover (EMR). I don't plan to go into as much detail as the All-Line Rover Awards but certainly a few comparisons are worthwhile. First, a summary of where I went:

Day 1: Coventry - Rugby - Stoke-on-Trent - Derby - Matlock - Derby - Kettering (via Corby) - Leicester - Nottingham - Sheffield

Day 2: Sheffield - Doncaster - Grimsby - Barton-on-Humber - Cleethorpes - Sheffield (via Brigg) - Worksop - Nottingham - Leicester - Nuneaton - Coventry

Day 3: Coventry - Nuneaton - Peterborough - Doncaster (via Lincoln) - Barnetby - Newark North Gate (via Lincoln) - Collingham - Leicester - Nuneaton - Coventry

Over the course of the three days, I spent 22 hours and 57 minutes on a total of 28 different trains, covering 935.5 miles of the East Midlands. As I linked to in my initial post, this map shows the area of validity of the ticket, which is pretty generous.

I certainly covered the majority of that area, and though I would have needed another day to completely cover the area, in the end pretty much the only lines that I didn't get to travel on that I haven't been on before are the Bletchley-Bedford line (which I did plan to go on but had to skip in order to get to Sheffield) and the line to Skegness.

The ticket cost just £44.20, but had I just walk-up single tickets each time I would have paid £184.65. (I could probably get that down a bit by being creative with the ticketing, but that's a can of worms I don't want to go into right now!) As such, I averaged 4.7p per mile - even better value than the All-Line Rover!

Of course, unlike the All-Line Rover (ALR), where I spent most of the time taking longer journeys and seeing the sights of various lines, most of the journeys on this East Midlands Rover were quite short and rather more rural in nature.

The key difference was that I avoided one of the pitfalls I fell into on the ALR by planning ahead. I had a pretty firm plan laid out before I started, and while my insomnia the night before I started led to me swapping a couple of days over and cutting one bit, other than that I pretty much kept to the entire plan completely.

Indeed, I planned the EMR explicitly to cover as much of the territory of the ticket as possible; given the nature of the services in Lincolnshire (as I mentioned in Day 3's post) it took a considerable degree of planning to get the plan to work. Had I missed my connection at Peterborough I couldn't have just picked up the train an hour later, but would have had to re-plan everything.

On the one hand, it's immensely satisfying to see a long-held plan come to fruition; on the other hand, it removes some of the excitement of planning it on the spot. However, given the nature of the ticket and the limited routes by which I could get home, a little forward planning was essential, especially given it wasn't valid via Birmingham. I still find it slightly weird spending a weekend on trains in the midlands without even coming close to Birmingham New Street station...

One effect of going round the more rural lines in the region was that I changed trains a lot more than on the ALR; whereas I never exceeded seven trains a day on the ALR (and averaged about five), on each of the three days of the EMR I did nine or ten trains. Some of that stems from the lack of direct trains in the region, some of it stems from the nature of the lines I wished to cover, and some of it stems from my determination to cover everything, even if it means changing three times!

In some ways, in fact, changing trains so many times added to the excitement. Is it going to be late? Am I going to miss my connection? Will I have to sprint? I was pretty lucky that over the course of the weekend I never missed a connection that I was aiming for; the tightest connection I had was the three-minute dash across the footbridge at Kettering on Friday evening.

With going round almost all the rural lines in the area, I got to see pretty much every kind of train that's used. The Sprinters remain my favourite: while the seats are often a little bit hard, they are the workhorse of the rural lines, and without them many of the lines I was on simply wouldn't have a service.

While I've moaned about the Pacers, I can't say I've ever thought they're terrible, but they're not great, certainly for long journeys. My least favourite kind of train remains the class 170 Turbostars, which are a bad copy of the Sprinters and manage to be even less comfortable than a Pacer!

As for the stations I passed through, I must single out Sheffield for some worthy praise. While I've used the station before on a couple of occasions, Saturday morning was the first time I'd noticed how well laid-out it is, and how good the amenities are compared to other stations. What's more, it's fortunate not to have been blighted by automatic ticket barriers (yet!), so Jonathan was able to meet me on the platform, rather than on the concourse.

I used both East Midlands Trains and Northern Rail extensively, and while I like both, I think my preference is still in favour of Northern Rail, for two reasons: one, their trains tend to be more comfortable (even when they're the same kind of train as EMT have), and two, they seem to make better use of their stock and avoid the poor planning that Lincoln suffers from at the hands of EMT.

That said, of the longer-distance services I used, East Midlands Trains wins hands-down: Northern Rail don't really operate any, and CrossCountry and TPE run long-distance services with trains which are too short.

The best scenery was definitely on the Matlock branch: the line climbs through the Peak District, crossing the River Derwent many times, through some of the best countryside in England. I only wish the line still extended all the way to Manchester.

All three days had something to recommend them, but I think my favourite day was probably the Friday, thanks to being able to see both the WCML and the MML in full swing, as well as seeing the beautiful Matlock branch. Saturday was a lovely sunny day in north Lincolnshire, and Monday was particularly interesting for the freight at Barnetby, but I think Friday just pips them to the post.

WHAT'S NEXT?

This East Midlands Rover marks the start of a concerted attempt on my part to have travelled on the whole of the British railway network by the time I'm, say, 30. (I would say 25 but that only gives me another fifteen months!) Of course, one can argue at great length as to what exactly "the whole of the British railway network" actually means, but for the time being I'm thinking of it as colouring in my map.

Having done the East Midlands Rover, there are now only a few lines in the whole of the midlands - Grantham-Skegness, Oxford-Hereford, Chester-Crewe-Stoke, and some of the suburban lines around Birmingham - that I haven't travelled on. By contrast, there are some areas which I haven't touched at all - most notably Kent (which, aside from a Eurostar to Paris in 2002 I've never even passed through).

So what further plans do I have? I hope to do a Heart of England Rover - similar to the East Midlands Rover but covering the West Midlands - sometime in May or June, to finish off most of the West Midlands. After that, I'm planning on spending ten days in Scotland in July with Ian and Matt doing a Freedom of Scotland Travelpass, with the intention of going on all the lines in the highlands. I will, of course, be blogging about both.

You may ask: why not another All-Line Rover? There are a number of reasons: for one, as you've seen, the regional rovers are often better value (though there are areas which don't have one, particularly in the south-east). They also allow you to focus on one particular area, rather than touching on lots of different areas.

Most importantly, however, the ALR is only available in one- and two-week passes; being able to use 3-in-7 or 4-in-8 rovers to do a weekend here or a few days there means that I'm able to spread it out, so that it's more relaxing, and indeed so I enjoy it more! While the ALR was undoubtedly brilliant, it was also a bit exhausting.

There are, however, a whole host of rover (and also day ranger) tickets out there, all of which are extraordinarily good value. By chance, the current editions of Rail (issue 668, April 20-May 3) and of Today's Railways UK (issue 113, May 2011, on sale until May 6th) both have comprehensive guides to all the rover tickets currently available, and if you are even slightly interested in doing one I wholeheartedly recommend buying one (both should be available from most good WH Smith's). Failing that, you can look at the list on the National Rail website, though that includes a number of other things lumped in with it and can be a little more confusing to navigate.

Until my next adventure, then, happy travelling, and thank you for reading.

East Midlands Rover, Day 3

2011-04-24T15:13:00.003+01:00

After a rest on the Sunday, I started early on Monday morning to head for another day exploring the railways of Lincolnshire.

0906 Coventry to Nuneaton, arr 0925
Headcode: 2K09, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £1.45

I began as I finished on Saturday night with a trip on the shuttle to Nuneaton, on exactly the same train as before, though this time rather more lightly used.

It's a pity that the dash for speed (or, more accurately, capacity) on the WCML has led to the loss of direct Coventry-Leicester trains; while the Coventry-Nuneaton line itself is not in danger of closure, as it is much-used by freight trains, the passenger service is a far cry from what used to be provided, or indeed what Coventry or Nuneaton (or Leicester) deserve.

While a bridge now exists to take Birmingham-Leicester trains over the WCML, this is not usable by Coventry-Leicester trains; either another bridge, or else a reversing siding beyond the bridge (on the line towards Birmingham) would need to be provided in order to avoid having to cross the WCML on the flat.

Unlike Saturday night's brisk seven minute connection, on this occasion I had a full half hour to wait in the quiet airiness of Nuneaton station, to head east to Peterborough:

0952 Nuneaton to Peterborough, arr 1116
Headcode: 1L34, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170112
Distance: 71.25 miles; walk-up price: £16.90

The Birmingham-Stansted service is one of just a handful of east-west cross-country services in the whole of England: it is easy to get into and out of London, or to go north or south, but east or west are that bit more difficult; I suppose it's a natural side-effect of having a long, thin country.

The trains used - Turbostars - are only two carriages long (well, some are three carriages), and as such have to have fairly high-density seating with not much legroom, which doesn't quite seem to befit a long cross-country journey with an end-to-end time of over three hours.

The key difference with true InterCity trains is that not many travel the whole length, most being confined to shorter journeys; but the act of tying all these short local journeys together creates a very useful long-distance link.

On this occasion, we were delayed at Melton Mowbray for about ten minutes while an ambulance attended; a passenger appeared to have been feeling faint, and while they brought the stretcher out in the end he was able to walk - albeit slowly - off the train. He was taken off to hospital and we proceeded without further interruption, arriving at Peterborough only about six minutes late.

I noticed that our late running caused some unusual platforming at Peterborough: we had been booked to use platform 5, but that was occupied by a Norwich-Liverpool service, so we had to occupy platform 4. That meant both platforms on the west side of Peterborough were occupied, so the London-Leeds train which had been due to use platform 4 but now couldn't was instead sent across to use platform 3, on the east side of the station.

This may not sound like much to worry about, but it's an important reminder of the knock-on consequences that small disruptions can have. One of the key reasons we seem to have more disruption than, say, railways on the continent is that we run much closer to maximum capacity: the British are, in many ways, masters of wringing the most out of the network we have.

After buying some lunch in Peterborough, I duly boarded my next train, a stopping service to Doncaster via Lincoln:

1148 Peterborough to Doncaster, arr 1413
Headcode: 2K42, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 156404
Distance: 93.5 miles; walk-up price: £25.10

The main event of the day was to travel the so-called "Joint Line" from Peterborough to Doncaster via Lincoln. By contrast to the direct fast trains on the East Coast Main Line (via Newark), which take as little as 47 minutes, this service takes nearly two and a half hours. Indeed, it was advertised as the service to Gainsborough Lea Road (our penultimate stop) to avoid unwitting passengers for Doncaster being stuck on it for so long!

On this line we have the perfect example of how the make-do-and-mend approach, which in places means that the British railway network is one of the most efficient in the world, can lead to a really second-rate service for passengers. A perpetuation of timetable cuts in the 1980s, designed to cut costs, compounded by a latter-day shortage of available trains, lead to Lincolnshire (and Lincoln in particular) having one of the most irregular and unfriendly passenger timetables in the country.

The service between Peterborough and Lincoln is approximately hourly between 0830 and 1630. Because the journey time between Peterborough and Lincoln is just under an hour and a half, doing a round trip is a bit tight in three hours; but since they only have three units to use, the service is irregular and occasionally has a gap of an hour and a half.

However, because there are so many level crossings between Spalding and Sleaford, most of which require a local crossing-keeper, that section between Spalding and Sleaford is only open between 0830 and 1715, so that only one shift per day (and not two) is required. This means that the first arrival from Spalding into Lincoln is at 0959, and the last departure is at 1601, which is pretty much useless for commuters.

The Lincoln-Doncaster line, however, is even worse off, with just five trains a day in each direction, at irregular intervals: the next train after this one left five hours after this one. Had I missed my connection at Peterborough I would probably have been required to completely reinvent my plans as a result.

Again, this is mainly due to trying to run the service on fewer trains than are needed for a regular service. In fairness, the services are fairly lightly used, but whether that's a cause or an effect of the sparse train service is not clear.

The train I got is a rare case where the two services are tied together, so we went straight through Lincoln rather than having to change. That said, spending two-and-a-half hours at an average speed of 38mph, partly along jointed track, in a fairly old and relatively uncomfortable Sprinter, looking out over flat countryside, is not perhaps the most enjoyable train ride I have ever had. However, it was an experience, and if nothing else I can tick the line off my list.

I say two-and-a-half hours, but while the timetable said we were due at 1413, the guard announced that we were due to arrive at Doncaster at 1404, and indeed we arrived at 1404, meaning that it was only a little over two and a quarter hours. A curious discrepancy, but not one I can shed any light on.

On arrival at Doncaster I bought a snack, and some drinks, since I didn't expect to have another opportunity to do so for most of the rest of the day. After a half hour observing a remarkably busy station and many trains passing through, I headed east.

1442 Doncaster to Barnetby, arr 1522
Headcode: 1B78, operated by Transpennine Express using Turbostar 170302
Distance: 34.5 miles; walk-up price: £9.65

I repeated the same journey I made on Saturday as far as Barnetby, only this time the usual class 185 Desiro was substituted with a class 170 Turbostar. As detailed above, Turbostars are not my favourite kind of train. A three-car 185 would have been pretty busy with how many people we had; as it was, the two-car 170 was rammed, at least as far as Scunthorpe.

Anyone who thinks that freight trains are a thing of the past should stand at Barnetby for an hour and witness the sheer volume of freight trains passing by: in my hour at Barnetby I counted more than a dozen freight trains coming and going, all heading to or from the docks at Immingham. Most are coal, oil and steel trains, while container trains are very rare.

Barnetby is also a very good place to witness how old mechanical signalling works. While most mainlines have been converted to run on modern colour-light signals, some of the branches of the network remain under the control of semaphore signals controlled by lever frames, and communicating between each other by telegraph wires and bell codes.

Wrawby Junction signal box, just east of Barnetby, is the second-largest mechanical signalbox still operating in the UK today, with 137 levers. (The largest is Severn Bridge Junction box in Shrewsbury.)

Wrawby Junction is where three lines converge for the run towards Grimsby. On Saturday I travelled the lines from Doncaster via Scunthorpe, and from Sheffield via Gainsborough. After an hour or so taking photographs at Barnetby, I completed the trio by taking the line towards Lincoln:

1621 Barnetby to Newark North Gate, arr 1725
Headcode: 2T56, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153374
Distance: 45.75 miles; walk-up price: £8.30

This line is another demonstration that none of the four lines radiating from Lincoln have a regular service. The service between Lincoln and Grimsby - a journey of under an hour between the two biggest towns in Lincolnshire - is approximately two hourly (but again fails to be nicely regular).

In this case, the train ran through Lincoln again to Newark North Gate. Newark has two stations: Newark North Gate on the ECML, with direct trains to London King's Cross, and Newark Castle, on the line between Nottingham and Lincoln. There is a curve to connect North Gate station to Lincoln, and we used that curve to get to Newark North Gate.

The service from Lincoln to Newark North Gate is, again, irregular, being sometimes two-hourly and sometimes hourly. Nonetheless, it provides the principal connection between Lincoln and London. There are not currently any through services, though there will be one service a day between Lincoln and London from the timetable change in May. The rest of the time, however, Lincoln has to put up with lousy connections, often being just too tight to be useful or else requiring a long wait at Newark.

We had been running about five minutes late all the way from Barnetby to Lincoln, but the usual padding time put us into Newark just half a minute late. I stepped off the platform, took a breath of fresh air, and got straight back on the same train:

1734 Newark North Gate to Collingham, arr 1742
Headcode: 2T53, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153374
Distance: 5 miles; walk-up price: £1.45

In this case, I wanted to make sure I'd been through both stations at Newark, so I headed back towards Lincoln, and changed trains at the first station, Collingham, to come back the other way and head through Newark Castle to Nottingham and on to Leicester.

This was probably the maddest moment of the whole weekend: I changed trains at a station in a sleepy village in the middle of nowhere in Nottinghamshire in order to have travelled on a bit of track that I hadn't been on before. Incidentally, I checked the statistics, and no-one is recorded as interchanging at Collingham in 2009/10, which shows just how mad this particular interchange was.

It was only a five minute connection, and indeed the line was so straight I could see my train coming the whole time, but I made the connection no problem, and settled down for a stopping train all the way back to Leicester.

1747 Collingham to Leicester, arr 1922
Headcode: 2L74, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153381+153379
Distance: 49.5 miles; walk-up price: £7.15

Aside from the Sheffield-Lincoln service, which is hourly, the Nottingham-Lincoln service is closest to being a "regular" timetable; there is about one train every hour, but because some of them have only three stops to Nottingham and others have twelve, the departures from Lincoln are a bit unevenly spaced.

Nonetheless, the timetable is considerably better than the other lines radiating from Lincoln, and indeed it was particularly well-used, even if I did chance upon one which did all twelve stops.

Most of the Lincoln-Nottingham services (including this one) continue on to Leicester as stopping trains; I could have gone home via Derby and Tamworth, but I decided that I'd had enough adventure for one weekend so I stayed on the train to head home via Leicester, an hour earlier than I did on Saturday, even if it did mean a full hour-and-a-half on a noisy class 153.

After nearly half an hour in Leicester, which I whiled away chatting on the phone, I boarded my penultimate train of the day:

1949 Leicester to Nuneaton, arr 2008
Headcode: 1N65, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170519
Distance: 18.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.00

Another Turbostar. Fortunately I wasn't on it for long; once again, I had a seven-minute connection at Nuneaton, though again both trains rather quieter than on Saturday night.

2015 Nuneaton to Coventry, arr 2034
Headcode: 2G60, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £1.45

My ninth and final train of the day was uneventful, and I headed home by bus to get some dinner and collapse in a heap. Monday's statistics, then:

Total time on trains: 8h 13m.
Total distance travelled: 338.25 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £77.45.

This was, by some distance, the longest day in both time and distance, largely thanks to the early start. It was an enjoyable and interesting day, not least for the hour stood at Barnetby watching freight go by. In my next blog post, I'll summarise the whole East Midlands Rover, and tell you what's next...

East Midlands Rover, Day 2

2011-04-21T02:05:00.005+01:00

After spending the night with Jonathan in Sheffield, on Saturday morning I headed to the station to set out for the second day of my East Midlands Rover: a tour of north Lincolnshire (or south Humberside, depending on your point of view).

1057 Sheffield to Doncaster, arr 1135
Headcode: 2R11, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 142087
Distance: 19 miles; walk-up price: £2.70

The lines around Sheffield are an example of where multiple lines have been "rationalised" to avoid duplication and save money. There were once two parallel routes out of Sheffield to the north-east, one built by the Midland Railway and one built by the Great Central. What is currently used is a complicated amalgam of the two, in order to best serve the various towns along the route.

This local train took us out of Sheffield on the Midland line through Meadowhall, before turning off and curving down onto the Great Central route at Rotherham Central, back up to the Midland route at Aldwarke, and finally turning right back onto the Grand Central route at Swinton to head for Doncaster.

While the whole Midland route remains, and is used by express trains between Sheffield and Leeds or Doncaster, only parts of the Great Central route survive; most notably, Sheffield used to have a second station (Victoria station) for Great Central trains, before they were re-routed onto the Midland route in the 1970s. Indeed, the lines were, originally, completely separate, and were only connected up in the 1960s.

On arrival at Doncaster - a few minutes late, awaiting a platform - I changed to the following train, and headed east:

1142 Doncaster to Grimsby Town, arr 1244
Headcode: 1B72, operated by Transpennine Express using Desiro 185133
Distance: 48.75 miles; walk-up price: £10.95

Transpennine Express have sometimes tried to portray themselves as an InterCity rail franchise; in reality, they operate regional express services in the north of England. The name is actually something of a misnomer, since only some of its services actually cross the Pennines. Originally, they operated solely trans-Pennine services, principally between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and York, and between Manchester, Sheffield and Cleethorpes; they later took over services between Manchester, Preston and Scotland which had previously been run by Virgin CrossCountry.

I used their south trans-Pennine route to head east from Doncaster to Grimsby via Scunthorpe. The line, which is limited to 60mph, is a rare example where passenger services are actually in a minority, and freight services actually form the majority on the line. There were even a sizeable number of freight trains running on a Saturday, which is pretty rare in the rest of the country.

There's a simple reason for this: the port of Immingham is the largest in the country (by tonnage), and there are a huge variety of freight trains running to and from the docks. Heavy industry dominates the area, and the vast majority of the freight traffic consists of movements of coal, oil and steel, from the docks to power stations and refineries.

When not running through heavy industry, however, the line runs through very nice Lincolnshire countryside - even if it is a bit flat for my taste. Between Doncaster and Scunthorpe, we more or less closely follow the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, before crossing it on a sliding bridge - when a large boat needs to pass down the canal, the railway line over the canal can be slid to one side to create the necessary space! A swing bridge would be more traditional, but this sliding solution was chosen because the railway crosses the canal at an angle.

The train was about ten minutes late due to a previous delay near Sheffield. On our eventual arrival at Grimsby, I crossed the footbridge to head back along a branch line to Barton-on-Humber:

1308 Grimsby Town to Barton-on-Humber, arr 1348
Headcode: 2F89, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 153304
Distance: 19.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.50
and
1358 Barton-on-Humber to Cleethorpes, arr 1449
Headcode: 2F90, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 153304
Distance: 22.75 miles; walk-up price: £3.90

The Barton-on-Humber branch is a short little branch which was cobbled together from a number of lines which used to lead to various docks at Immingham and New Holland, some of which still exist and some of which do not. The line has a very sleepy, rural feel, being as in-the-middle-of-nowhere while still being pretty close to the Humber Estuary. Indeed, having eaten lunch, the heat of the day made me quite sleepy and I dozed off on the way back to Cleethorpes.

The ends of the line, however, are not quite so rural. Barton-on-Humber is within spitting distance of the south end of the Humber Bridge, connecting north Lincolnshire to Hull. At the other end, the line between Grimsby and Cleethorpes runs right through the town and the docks, and feels at times more like a tram due to the sharp curves.

On arriving at Cleethorpes, I witnessed a rare moment where there were three trains in Cleethorpes station at once (that should give you an idea of how busy the place is). After a very short walk to the seafront - literally yards from the station - I had an ice-cream, before heading back to catch my next train:

1521 Cleethorpes to Sheffield, arr 1723
Headcode: 2H01, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 142088
Distance: 71.5 miles; walk-up price: £12.00

The Great Central Railway was something of a latecomer to the railways; it was originally named the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, before building an "extension" from Sheffield to London Marylebone, the now-closed route running via Nottingham, Leicester, Rugby and Aylesbury. Its original mainline ran, as its name suggested, from Manchester to Cleethorpes. However, the original route between Sheffield and Cleethorpes avoided Doncaster and the heavy industry at Scunthorpe, instead running via Worksop, Retford, Gainsborough and Brigg.

The Great Central's second line via Doncaster and Scunthorpe has supplanted this one as the main line to Grimsby, and the route via Brigg has been run down considerably in recent years; while there is still some freight on the line, the passenger service has been reduced to just three trains each way every Saturday, and nothing during the week. This fulfills the obligation to provide some service on the line, while neither reducing weekday freight capacity nor removing passenger trains from other, busier lines during the week.

The line was a nice run through the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire countryside, but was little-used until we got to Retford (where there are regular hourly Sheffield-Lincoln services in addition). I don't know whether this is because there aren't many services, or if this is the reason there aren't many services; I suppose it's a bit of a chicken-and egg problem, but I doubt there's much demand for such services.

Unfortunately, while it was a nice run, it did entail spending two hours in a Pacer.

The Pacer was a cost-cutting exercise, with a simple brief: build a train using almost nothing but parts from buses, thus saving money on making bespoke parts. Undoubtedly the cost-cutting helped to save a number of rural routes from closure, but at the price of a horrible ride, unsuitable seats, and a distinct lack of speed. What's more, they are frequently deployed on busy commuter routes, like this one, and are almost universally loathed throughout the industry.

As with the HSTs, however, they are not compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act, and thus must be withdrawn by 2019. Fortunately, the Department for Transport has a plan.

There are two major infrastructure projects underway in London which will revolutionise commuting to the capital: the building of Crossrail, and the upgrade of Thameslink. Both have a simple principle: since the main constraint on running more services into London is platform capacity in London, connect the services into opposite sides of London and run services through the city instead of terminating them in the centre.

Thameslink was created on a shoestring budget in the 1980s to connect north and south London via Farringdon and Blackfriars, and was such a good idea that it was quickly a victim of its own success, and so a huge £6 billion upgrade will vastly increase capacity. Its success also spawned Crossrail, a similar project to connect Paddington and Liverpool Street on an east-west axis. Unlike Thameslink, which used a tunnel between King's Cross and Blackfriars that was disused in the early 20th century, Crossrail will be completely new-build, and comes with a whopping £15 billion price tag.

Both Thameslink and Crossrail are due for completion in 2018, and will require lots of new trains, but they will take over services currently run by existing trains. That will leave a lot of trains (principally class 165s and class 319s) displaced, with nothing to do.

So, at the same time, two projects will see lines electrified in order that the electric trains currently running on the Thameslink network can be put to good use elsewhere. The Great Western Main Line will be electrified from London to Oxford, Newbury, Bristol and Cardiff by 2017, and a triangle of lines in the north-west of England, connecting Liverpool, Manchester and Preston, plus the line from Preston to Blackpool, will be electrified by 2016.

Of course, there are already diesel trains running these services, so what will happen to those? They will be moved to other services, in a huge cascade effect. The net effect will be to permit the withdrawal from service of Britain's oldest DMUs, the Pacers!

The ultimate credit for this plan must go to Andrew Adonis, the last Secretary of State for Transport under Labour. It was so intricate and well put-together that, when Philip Hammond came along having pledged not to cancel Crossrail, they were compelled to follow the plan through in its entirety, to avoid the ridiculous situation of having perfectly good trains from Thameslink which no-one could use because there weren't enough wires.

Anyway, having endured two hours on a Pacer (as well as the journey from Sheffield to Doncaster in the morning), we sat waiting for a platform at Sheffield for a few minutes, and then, glutton for punishment, I joined a third Pacer to head back to Worksop:

1744 Sheffield to Worksop, arr 1813
Headcode: 2P79, operated by Northern Rail using Pacer 144013
Distance: 15.75 miles; walk-up price: £3.35

This Pacer, unlike the others, had been refurbished, and the seats actually felt like train seats, and not bus seats. Nonetheless, it displayed the reliability typical of a Pacer, and we were stopped for a few minutes at one of the intermediate stations while the driver and conductor sorted out a problem with one of the doors not closing properly.

After the short trip back to Worksop, I changed to head to Nottingham on the Robin Hood Line:

1841 Worksop to Nottingham, arr 1947
Headcode: 2D23, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 158773
Distance: 31.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.75

Mansfield was, for about thirty years, one of the largest towns in England with no railway station, the line having been closed in the 1960s. The Robin Hood Line, linking Nottingham to Worksop via Mansfield, re-opened in the mid-1990s (albeit on a slightly different route than the original line). The line runs west of Sherwood Forest (hence the name), and provides a useful commuter route into Nottingham and connections for points beyond.

By this stage I was quite tired and heading for home via Nottingham and Leicester, but I'd seen in checking disruptions that there was a signalling problem at Leicester. I inquired to the guard when he checked my ticket, and he very kindly phoned ahead to Nottingham station, who were able to advise him that the earlier problems had now been fixed, and trains were running relatively normally.

On arrival at Nottingham I grabbed a panini and a muffin for tea, before heading to Leicester for my connection.

2002 Nottingham to Leicester, arr 2034
Headcode: 1B81, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222008
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £6.00

An uneventful journey led to a nervous fifteen-minute wait for my next train to Nuneaton, where I had a tight connection to get to Coventry:

2049 Leicester to Nuneaton, arr 2108
Headcode: 1N67, operated by CrossCountry using Turbostar 170116
Distance: 18.75 miles; walk-up price: £6.00

Before the remodelling of the West Coast Main Line in 2004 or so, there were direct trains between Coventry and Leicester, which reversed at Nuneaton; unfortunately the upgrade works at Nuneaton made this impossible, so now passengers are forced to change. On this Saturday night there were a considerable number doing just that, and it is a pity that there is no longer a through service.

While the Leicester-Nuneaton-Birmingham service is half-hourly, the Coventry-Nuneaton service has been reduced to a shuttle, which runs approximately hourly. In this case I had approximately seven minutes to make the connection, and while my train was a couple of minutes late (not bad given the earlier disruption) I made the connection comfortably.

That said, Nuneaton station has become a ghost of its former self, with no fast trains stopping except in the peaks, and just an hourly service on the main line between Rugby and Crewe. I was quite glad I only had to spend a few minutes there; connections in the other direction tend to involve waiting for at least 25 minutes (or even 55 minutes), since the Coventry shuttle often arrives just after the train to Leicester leaves.

2115 Nuneaton to Coventry, arr 2134
Headcode: 2G60, operated by London Midland using Sprinter 153371
Distance: 10 miles; walk-up price: £2.85

The East Midlands Rover is only valid from Coventry towards Rugby and Nuneaton, and not towards Birmingham; so had I missed this train I would have had to wait an hour for the next one, rather than being able to go via Birmingham (and probably get home quicker!). That said, it felt rather odd doing an entire weekend on trains in the midlands without going near Birmingham New Street.

After the short trip back to Coventry, and a bus home, I retired for a good night's sleep. Saturday's statistics:

Total time on trains: 7h 58m.
Total distance travelled: 284.75 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £55.00.

Intriguingly I spent longer on trains on Saturday than on Friday, but covered less distance - which says something about the speed of the trains I was on! Next time I'll tell you about Monday, with more exploits in Lincolnshire.

East Midlands Rover, Day 1

2011-04-17T23:09:00.004+01:00

From the outset of the East Midlands Rover, I had three fairly full days planned; however, the night before I was due to start I was so excited that I couldn't sleep. As a result, I decided to swap my plans for Friday and Monday, so that I could start a little later on the Friday. This necessitated a little alteration, as I had planned to spend Friday night in Sheffield with Jonathan (who I stayed with for two nights on the All Line Rover, see my sixth and seventh blog posts).

1101 Coventry to Rugby, arr 1113
Headcode: 2Y58, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350122
Distance: 13.5 miles; walk-up price: £3.15

I began with the short trip to Rugby on a pretty empty Desiro; this was a journey I had done many times before on the way to and from London Euston, but I had never spent any significant amount of time at Rugby. The journey took just nine minutes, at an average speed of 90mph.

Rugby is the nerve centre of the West Coast Main Line: aside from commuter trains closer to London, pretty much everything on the West Coast Main Line will pass through Rugby at some point. It is home to the signalbox which will very soon control the line all the way from Watford Junction to Lichfield. And until you stand at Rugby and see just how close the trains run together, it is difficult to comprehend just how busy the WCML is.

As it is, trains can run on green signals on plain track at less than two minutes apart, though they are only timetabled three minutes apart to allow for some slack. Nonetheless, if one is running a minute late, they can and do run closer together than on any other 125mph main line in the country.

Aside from a plethora of fast Virgin Trains Pendolinos running to and from London Euston, there are a number of London Midland services, and a large amount of freight. The WCML handles a disproportionately large amount of freight compared with the rest of the railway network, not least because it has been recently upgraded to cope with more freight, but also because the rest of the network is still lacking in capacity. From Rugby, freight trains run from as far away as the ports at Southampton and Felixstowe to the container yards at Coatbridge in Scotland, and beyond.

I spent 45 minutes at Rugby this Friday morning watching various freight trains go by; I saw a number of container trains, most notably a Freightliner service (double-headed by 86638/86637) which stopped in platform 6 for what appeared to be a driver comfort break, or possibly a driver change.

In an unusual move, I saw two new Stansted Express units (379014/015) using platform 2 at Rugby. National Express East Anglia are buying 30 new four-car sets for use on the Stansted Express and the other West Anglia lines into and out of London Liverpool Street; this will release older stock for use elsewhere. Before being brought into service, however, they have to be tested and run-in to shake down any faults; it would appear that this testing is happening on the WCML between Rugby and Crewe, where there is some off-peak capacity.

Anyway, while nine Virgin Trains services an hour in each direction pass through Rugby off-peak (that rises to as much as 14 an hour at peak times), only one an hour stops at Rugby; what's more, this extends only to Birmingham. As such, since 2008 Rugby has lost out on stops on services to Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and Glasgow, prolonging journey times in the mad dash for speedy services to and from London. Indeed, Rugby is in the perverse situation where sometimes the fastest way to go north is via Milton Keynes - which is in exactly the wrong direction!

However, at least Rugby still has an hourly fast off-peak service to London; Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield all have no off-peak fast trains, and only a handful of irregular stops in fast trains in the peaks. An hourly London Midland stopping service makes up the shortfall, which I took from Rugby to Stoke-on-Trent:

1204 Rugby to Stoke-on-Trent, arr 1313
Headcode: 1U31, operated by London Midland using Desiro 350241
Distance: 67.25 miles; walk-up price: £8.50

This hourly service is very well-used, and it proved difficult to get a seat, though it gradually thinned out as we got further north. The service in fact stretches all the way from London to Crewe, providing the only (off-peak) direct trains from London to Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield.

However, it goes via Northampton, not the fast route via Weedon, and then gets sent from Stafford to Stoke-on-Trent and then back to Crewe, rather than running direct. End-to-end journey times are not, therefore, spectacular, but the run via Northampton permits it to be overtaken by the one Virgin Trains service which calls at Rugby; as such, it provides a connection from that train to places like Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield.

The best illustration of the lack of speed with which these London Midland stopping trains serve the line is that faster Pendolinos running on the adjacent fast lines passed us not once, not twice, but three times just between Rugby and Stafford. Granted the Desiros are capable of 100mph (which is, in fairness, pretty fast), not the 125mph of the Pendolinos, but it seems a little odd to consign all the stops to just one service, and not provide even Nuneaton (by far the largest of the towns on the Trent Valley) with at least one train an hour to and from London.

There are two types of Desiros operated by London Midland: the 350/1s, which have 2+2 seating for longer-distance services, and the 350/2s, which have 2+3 seating for busy commuter services into London. As is inevitable, though, the two types get exchanged freely between the services, so this fairly long-distance service was unfortunately operated by a 350/2, which had noticeably less width to the seats and slightly less legroom.

The journey to Stoke-on-Trent took just over an hour, where I alighted and bought some lunch, as well as taking a few photographs of the station. My next train was a one-carriage local train to Derby:

1333 Stoke-on-Trent to Derby, arr 1424
Headcode: 1K14, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153381
Distance: 35 miles; walk-up price: £5.10

The North Staffordshire line is something of a railway backwater: it retains jointed track, semaphore signals operated by lever frames, manually worked level crossing gates, and just an hourly passenger service in each direction between Crewe and Derby, via Stoke-on-Trent and Uttoxeter.

Only a few years ago, services on the line extended from Crewe to Skegness via Derby and Nottingham; in 2005 the service was split into two parts at Nottingham, to improve punctuality; soon after, the residual service on the western half was curtailed to just run between Crewe and Derby, thus necessitating two changes to make the journey from Crewe to Skegness today.

This service was provided by a single-carriage Class 153 Sprinter, of which I have talked at length before. They are not the most wonderful trains, but in this case it was perfectly adequate for this local service, which was actually quite well-used.

We arrived in Derby on time, a station with which I'm fairly familiar after a number of visits over the years. Derby is a key hub of the Midland Main Line, having been the original headquarters of the Midland Railway. While not all the trains pass through Derby (for example, the London-Nottingham services), almost all the maintenance is done at Etches Park Depot just outside Derby.

Derby is also the point at which the principal Cross-Country route, the north-east to south-west axis, starts: the Derby-Birmingham-Bristol line, while today operated by CrossCountry, was originally built by the Midland Railway, and so the mileposts count from zero at Derby. Most of the other lines that CrossCountry uses are in fact bits of other main lines; the Derby-Bristol route is possibly the only track on which CrossCountry can claim to be the "main" operator.

On this visit, I caught a rare sight of the Network Rail Measurement Train stopped in platform 3. This train is, essentially, a big yellow HST (in this case it was 43013+43062) fitted with cameras, sensors, and lots of computers to record and monitor the state of the track it's running over. This is used as a means of tracking the state of the rails, looking for breaks and other defects. It runs over most of the mainlines in the UK on a two-week rotating pattern, and is based in Derby.

After half an hour in Derby, where I bought a snack and took a few photographs, I headed for the Derwent Valley line to Matlock:

1454 Derby to Matlock, arr 1528
Headcode: 2A42, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153376+153313
and
1536 Matlock to Derby, arr 1610
Headcode: 2A51, operated by East Midlands Trains using Sprinter 153313+153376
Distance: 17.25 miles each way; walk-up return: £3.50

The Matlock branch was, many decades ago, the Midland Railway's main line to Manchester. Trains ran from London St Pancras, through Leicester, Derby, Ambergate, Matlock, over the Peak District to Buxton, New Mills and Manchester. All except the 20-mile stretch in the middle, between Matlock and Buxton, remains open.

Unfortunately, that closure in 1968 turned the through line into two branches, Manchester-Buxton and Derby-Matlock. Indeed, it is fairly remarkable that both branch lines have survived. Nevertheless, the lack of connections across the Peak District is palpable, and the A6 road has struggled to take the strain imposed on it since the trains ceased to run.

Reopening the Matlock-Buxton line would provide a very useful second route to Manchester. When upgrade works on the WCML in 2003-04 prohibited a through service on the usual route from London Euston to Manchester, an hourly London-Leicester-Manchester service was run, but that used the curve at Dore, near Sheffield, to run between Chesterfield and the Hope Valley, and is quite full already. Such a reopening might also take some of the strain off the WCML, which is liable to be full to bursting within a decade.

Nonetheless, the line that remains is a beautiful (if somewhat slow) line that climbs up the valley of the River Derwent to Matlock. We were in two class 153 Sprinters coupled together, and at Ambergate (where the branch leaves the main Derby-Sheffield line) I heard the train in rear start its engine; while one engine suffices on the flat, the branch is pretty hilly and needed the power to get up the hills.

I hadn't quite appreciated how hilly Derbyshire is until this journey; the line weaves its way up through the valley, crossing the River Derwent a number of times, and passing through a number of tunnels, to Matlock, a small town of 20,000 people or so in north-west Derbyshire. Upon arriving at the terminus, there is little to do in the way of trains but go back whence you came, so after just eight minutes I got back on the train and headed back down the valley to Derby.

After a brief wait for my next train to come out of the sidings, I boarded:

1634 Derby to Kettering (via Corby), arr 1801
Headcode: 1P69, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222102
Distance: 67 miles; walk-up price: £11.50

Almost all services on the Midland Main Line (MML) pass through Leicester. However, there is another route between Kettering and Loughborough, which avoids Leicester but instead passes through Corby, Oakham and Melton Mowbray, and this was the route taken by this train.

Corby was, for many years, the largest town in England without a railway station. It re-opened in 2009, with an hourly service to and from London St Pancras. Melton Mowbray and Oakham are served by the Birmingham-Stansted CrossCountry service, but until recently had no through trains to London, instead requiring a change at Leicester.

However, the track on this line from Kettering to Manton Junction (south of Oakham) was never closed in the first place; it remained in place throughout, used mainly by freight, and occasionally passenger trains diverted due to engineering works. Once Corby station reopened, a few trains a day were extended through Corby to Oakham and Melton Mowbray, with one in each direction extending to Derby, and it is this train that I got.

So consistent is the calling pattern that the conductor, having carefully announced that this train was not calling at Leicester, on departure announced "welcome to the 1634 to London St Pancras, calling at East Midlands Parkway, Loughborough, Leicester--- CORRECTION: calling at East Midlands Parkway, Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Corby, Kettering...". That goes some way to showing that this service is, indeed, something of an oddity.

But a very nice oddity it is: the line provides a much more interesting view of the Leicestershire and Northamptonshire countryside than the usual route through Leicester and Market Harborough, including the spectacular Welland Viaduct, an 82-arch masonry viaduct crossing the River Welland on the Northamptonshire-Rutland border.

Now, my original plan at this point called for continuing to Bedford, heading across to Bletchley and back up the WCML to Coventry. However, in moving the plan to Friday I had to fit in a night halt at Sheffield, in order to be in position for Saturday, so I turned back on myself and headed north, on the conventional MML route to Leicester:

1804 Kettering to Leicester, arr 1830
Headcode: 1F56, operated by East Midlands Trains using Meridian 222016
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £7.00

This train is a rare example (well, rare at least north of London) of portion-working: two Meridians are coupled up and run from London to Kettering, where they split in two; the front portion goes forward to Leicester, Derby and Sheffield, and the rear portion continues to Corby. I had a pretty tight connection to make at Kettering, with just three minutes to charge across the footbridge; I was very glad of the platform staff, one of whom saw me coming and guided me to the correct portion of the train. I thanked her quickly and jumped on the train with a minute or so to spare.

As I say, this train was going to Sheffield; however, there are a number of different routes to get to Sheffield, even on the MML. The trunk of the line runs to Trent Junction, just north of East Midlands Parkway, where the line splits in three. There is the line to Derby, the line to Nottingham, and the Erewash Valley line which heads due north to Alfreton. All three lines join up again just south of Chesterfield.

Few trains use the Erewash Valley line in full, but in its heyday it was the Midland Main Line to Sheffield, being the fastest way there. However, Sheffield on its own wasn't quite enough of a basis to sustain a fast service, especially when it bypasses both Derby and Nottingham, and so except for a few crack expresses in the peaks most trains, then and now, run via either Derby or Nottingham.

Running from London to Sheffield via Nottingham entails a reversal at Nottingham, but running via Derby does not, so almost trains to and from Sheffield today run via Derby; the only exceptions are a few peak London-Nottingham services which are extended to Leeds via Sheffield, in order to access the depot at Neville Hill in Leeds. That said, the best journey time today from Sheffield to London via Derby - two hours, seven minutes - is only one minute slower than when they last ran express services via the Erewash Valley.

I decided that I'd seen Derby enough times for one day, so I decided to change off the train going to Sheffield via Derby, and head via Nottingham instead. This necessitated changing onto the following train at Leicester:

1837 Leicester to Nottingham, arr 1910
Headcode: 1D57, operated by East Midlands Trains using HST 43058+43082
Distance: 27.25 miles; walk-up price: £6.00

Ah, at last, a proper train with locomotives and coaches. The High Speed Train has been on our network since 1976, and very rapidly became the icon of the railway network. The Transport Secretary Philip Hammond recently announced that they would be refurbished in order to work on the Great Western Main Line down to Penzance for another decade or two yet. This will be no mean feat, since they do not comply with the Disability Discrimination Act, because they have manual doors, something the refurbishment will have to correct.

Slam-door trains were, until just a couple of decades ago, the backbone of our network. However, while those of us who know where the handle is (lean out of the window) love them, they aren't so easy to work with for people who are small or even not very strong, and so automatic-door trains are becoming the norm.

One of the reasons people like me love slam-door trains was that, in the days before central locking, they made the whole experience more efficient, because you could be on the platform before the train was fully at a stand, which could easily gain you ten or twenty seconds.

It doesn't sound like much, but the added time it takes for automatic-door trains to have the doors released, open the doors, check there's no-one left in the way, sound the beeper, close the doors and drive off adds 15-30 seconds to every station stop; for instance, when South West Trains revised their timetable in 2004 they added sometimes as much as five or ten minutes to commuter journeys into London. And five or ten minutes is definitely a big deal, especially in train timetabling.

I was expecting a mad dash at Nottingham from platform 4 to platform 3 to catch a five-minute connection; however, our train was redirected into platform 1, meaning that I just had to walk across the island to catch my final train of the day:

1915 Nottingham to Sheffield, arr 2015
Headcode: 1Y56, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158910
Distance: 40.75 miles; walk-up price: £7.45

My last train for Friday was run by Northern Rail, who introduced an hourly service between Nottingham and Leeds in December 2008. While there were already hourly services between Nottingham and Sheffield, and many more between Sheffield and Leeds, this was the first direct service between these two locations for over 25 years.

The journey was largely uneventful, though we were slightly delayed at Dore Junction due to a late-running Transpennine Express service coming from Manchester, which we followed into Sheffield.

By this stage the sun was setting on a long day, and I arrived in Sheffield to meet Jonathan, with whom I went for dinner in Zizzi's in Leopold Square in Sheffield, before retiring to his flat in one of the University of Sheffield halls of residence, where he's now doing a PhD. Friday's statistics, then:

Total time on trains: 6h 46m.
Total distance travelled: 312.5 miles.
Total price for walk-up tickets: £52.20.

For a ticket that cost £44.20, it's impressively good value - though admittedly I had carefully planned my activities to get the maximum value out of it. In my next post, I'll tell you all about Saturday - to Cleethorpes and back!

East Midlands Rover

2011-04-17T17:29:00.005+01:00

Having been rather too busy to do anything much at all - let alone actually go out on some trains and blog - for the last six months, I thought it high time that I rectify this situation.

This weekend (15th-18th April), I'm doing an East Midlands Rover, and in the style of my posts on the All-Line Rover - though perhaps not in quite as much detail - I will be blogging over the next few days about my travels.

The East Midlands Rover permits unlimited travel (after 0900 on weekdays, any time at weekends) with "the East Midlands", which is actually given a very generous definition. The area covered stretches from Coventry to Cleethorpes and from Stoke-on-Trent to Peterborough, including everything in between and much besides; a full map is shown here.

There are two variants of East Midlands Rover: the full seven-day pass, which is valid for seven consecutive days, costs £57.70 with a railcard (£87.40 without), while the "flexi" 3-in-7 pass, which is valid for any choice of three days in a period of seven days, costs £44.20 with a railcard (£67 without). In my case, I'm using a flexi-rover, which is valid for a week from the 15th to the 21st of April, on Friday 15th, Saturday 16th and Monday 18th.

I decided to avoid the Sunday for three reasons: firstly, I wanted a rest, and secondly, Sunday services are pretty sparse and it would have felt like "wasting" a day; most importantly, though, London Midland have had an industrial dispute recently with their drivers which has led to almost no trains on a Sunday, and although the dispute was, in fact, resolved on Wednesday 13th I decided not to change my plans.

Why an East Midlands Rover? Well, it's one of the rovers that's valid to and from Coventry (albeit only towards Nuneaton and Rugby, and not via Birmingham), where I'm now living, and I felt like a long weekend on trains. In many ways these regional rovers (of which there are quite a few, though not very many in the south-east of England) are even better value than the All-Line Rover; they allow you to explore a particular area in depth.

Stay tuned over the next few days as I blog about my travels this weekend.

The Far East: Reflections on Japan

2010-08-03T20:19:00.002+01:00

Firstly, I should apologise for the length of time it's taken to get these final few blog posts up; it's been quite a hectic few weeks at home and it's taken me a while to get back into the mood of writing. Here, then, is a summary of everything I did in the Far East, together with links to the full blog posts:

Day 1: Belfast-London
Day 2: London-Tokyo-Beijing
Day 3: quiet day in Beijing, real Chinese food
Day 4: another quiet day in Beijing
Day 5: Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City, Beijing
Day 6: Summer Palace, Beijing
Day 7: quiet day in Beijing
Day 8: The Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, Beijing
Day 9: Yonghegong and Temple of Heaven, Beijing
Day 10: last day in Beijing, Peking duck
Day 11: Beijing-Tokyo
Day 12: bullet train to Hiroshima and Peace Park
Day 13: Miyajima island
Day 14: bullet train back to Tokyo
Day 15: Nikko and the Tokyo Tower
Day 16: Sushi and relaxing in Tokyo
Day 17: Imperial Gardens, and bullet train to Kyoto
Day 18: Osaka Castle
Day 19: Nijo-jo, Kinkaku-ji, Ryoan-ji and Ninna-ji, Kyoto
Day 20: quiet day in Kyoto reorganising travel plans
Day 21: bullet train to Tokyo
Day 22: Tokyo-London-Belfast

I reflected on Day 10 about China. In this final blog post, I want to reflect a bit on my time in Japan, which was undoubtedly the most enjoyable holiday I've ever had. First, I want to talk about some specific points:

Language and culture: It's undoubtedly a cliche to say that Japan is a crossroads of east and west, but it's true. More than any other foreign country I've been to, Japan felt like home: they drive on the left, they're an island nation, they use public transport in droves, there are recognisable western brands on every street corner (McDonalds and Seven-Eleven are probably the two more prominent ones). But on the other hand it feels foreign enough that you know it's not quite home: the writing is perhaps the most noticeable difference. Nonetheless, I felt at ease in Japan in a way I didn't feel at all in China; China was unremittingly big and alien, and you couldn't get a handle on the language at all.

The Japanese language, in contrast to Mandarin, is quite easy to pick up a few words and phrases. Moreover, most people understood at least a little English: if you asked "Do you speak English?" and they answered "no", they usually understood enough to make yourself understood if you were looking for the toilet or trying to buy a train ticket. If they answer "a little", it means they're basically fluent and you should have no problems. All in all, the language situation made Japan much more hospitable than China as a place to visit, and it was all the more enjoyable as a result.

Public toilets: One major gripe I had with Japan was the state of their public toilets. They were invariably clean and tidy, but at least half the time there was no soap, or no hand dryers, or both. It may be that the Japanese expect each other to carry soap with them, but for a tourist this is a damned inconvenience, and one I wish they would put right. There are certain circumstances in which not washing one's hands is really not an option, and it really annoys (and, frankly, baffles) me how a nation which prides itself on efficiency and cleanliness should fail in such a basic aspect of hygiene.

Vending machines: Until you've been to Japan, you can't quite fathom just how many vending machines they have. They are, quite literally, everywhere. A dozen in a line would be considered perfectly normal for a typical subway station in Tokyo, selling everything from water to green tea to lemonade to beer to sake. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere; they even have vending machines in shrines and temples. Oddly, though, they only ever seem to sell drinks; I don't remember ever seeing a vending machine for chocolate bars, or any food of any kind.

Weather: I suppose it's a peculiarly British thing to go somewhere and complain about the weather, but in this case I think I have licence to. In China, it was pretty hot (occasionally hitting 36C), but not too humid. In Japan, however, even though it wasn't often above about 28C it was stiflingly humid, even at night, and it was much less bearable. There were a few days when it wasn't too bad, but most of the time it was sticky and not all that pleasant to be outside. I guess I picked the wrong month; April or May would have been perfect, or perhaps September; the summer is simply too hot and (nearly) tropical.

---

When it comes to the Japanese trains, where do I start? It's self-evident from the moment you set foot in Japan that, in spite (maybe even because?) of it now being privately operated, the Japanese have running an integrated, efficient, punctual railway network down to a fine art. Perhaps the most important thing from the point of view of a tourist is that nearly everything is signposted in English, even at small stations in the middle of nowhere.

I suppose, before I go on, I should make one caveat: when I say "the Japanese", what I really mean is the Japan Rail Group, which is the collection of six companies that make up what was, until 1987, the nationalised network. There are a myriad of other private companies competing for business on all sorts of other lines; these have no affiliation with JR, and as such they are not valid for use on the JR Pass, and so I didn't use anything other than JR trains.

The sheer size of the (JR) network, and of the trains themselves, is also impressive. The number of different lines operated by JR in the Tokyo area is mind-boggling: there are 36 lines operated by JR East in the Tokyo area, which collect into about five or six main arteries which take commuters into and out of Tokyo city centre. The busiest station in Japan - and, indeed, the world - is not Tokyo station proper, but Shinjuku station on the western edge of the city centre, which is used by a staggering 3.64 million people every day. (For comparison, Britain's busiest station, London Waterloo, is used by about 500,000 people every day, counting both mainline and underground services.)

Even the shortest suburban trains in Tokyo are ten carriages long, with many being 15. And they need to be; even in the middle of the day, most trains are standing-room only, and in well into the evening - even as late as 9pm - trains are breathing-room only. The Shinkansen trains I was on were busy, though not crowded; that said, I was barred from getting the fastest trains between Tokyo and Osaka, and I suspect they would have been pretty busy.

One key difference is that there's enough track that, at most stations, each separate line can have its own platform. At Tokyo station, for example, platforms 4 and 5 are used only by Yamanote Line trains; this is what makes it possible to have a train every three minutes on pretty much every line out of Tokyo. It also means that finding where your train goes from is easy, because you don't have to peer up at a huge departures board, such as at Birmingham New Street, to find which train you need to get and then wait for which platform you need.

The Shinkansen undoubtedly make a huge difference to the railway network: being able to speed across the country in double-decker trains with huge amounts of legroom and hundreds of seats at speeds of up to 186mph means that the train is undoubtedly the most enjoyable way of getting around Japan. More importantly, though, it means there's enough capacity on the old mainlines to run commuter trains every three minutes.

What really impresses me about the Shinkansen network, however, is that they haven't skimped by putting the stations outside the city centres. The tracks have been threaded through the very centre of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and countless other cities to provide stations right in the heart of the urban centres of Japan. When, occasionally, such as in Osaka, they have had to resort to building new stations, they are fully connected with the existing network. It means that getting a Shinkansen train isn't like getting a plane: there isn't endless amounts of hassle in getting to and from the Shinkansen station, it's exactly the same place as you'd get any other train, albeit a different platform which might be a slightly longer walk.

You've probably heard that Japanese trains stop to the nearest centimetre and measure delays in seconds: this is absolutely true. The stopping positions are so accurate that they have barriers along the side of the platform except where the doors are going to be (like platform edge doors, such as on the Jubilee line extension). This makes it easy, for instance, for staff boarding a train to wait at exactly the right place.

You could, pretty much, set your watch by the Shinkansen departures; departures on classic lines are still punctual but I did experience a few delays of no more than two minutes. One other useful feature, though, is that on certain trains - the Yamanote line in particular - they display information of delays on other key lines, and there were clearly lots of delays on one particular day (I can't remember which), they just happened not to affect me.

It did feel, however, that this was all achieved by having more staff than the British railways would; there were always several people on the platforms - which are all very long indeed - at any one time, and not just the conductor but several catering staff on each train. But it does seem to be worth it: it delivers a railway network that is probably the best in the world.

---

Unlike China, I found Japan to be a welcoming and thoroughly enjoyable place to visit, with probably the best trains in the world. Monetarily speaking, I got the value of the JR Pass, in the sense that it was probably about the same price as a return from Tokyo to Hiroshima. However, I could have used it much more than I actually did, and I would have loved to have done so. Next time I go to Japan I intend to spend a few days just train-hopping to get a better feel for the network; in spite of being on 56 JR trains in twelve days, most of those were either Shinkansen trains, or trains between Tokyo and Minami-Senju. (In the meantime, I've got the JR timetable to try and make sense of, so I can be prepared for when I go back!)

There is one experience which stands out above all others: Hiroshima. The Peace Park and Museum had much more of an effect on me than I expected; I didn't walk into the building a nuclear abolitionist, but I did walk out of it one. I truly hope that humanity can work together to get rid of the horrible threat of nuclear weapons (though that's not to say I believe in unilateral disarmament). The park is a beautiful testament to the undying power of the human spirit: in spite of the devastation in Hiroshima, the city came back to life, and was rebuilt from the ashes, and stands as a triumph of peace over war.

There are many other experiences from Japan which I will remember for the rest of my life: the bullet trains, undoubtedly, but also the crush of the very busiest suburban trains; the many beautiful shrines in Nikko; the temples of north-west Kyoto; fresh sushi; and Tokyo Tower by night. Being able to share much of this with Jonathan made the whole experience even more enjoyable, and I thank him for joining me for a week.

Having to come home a couple of days early was disappointing, but I am very glad that I did, and that I was able to attend my grandfather's funeral. Without my grandparents' support, I would not have had the means to go to China and Japan, and for that I thank them both. My grandpa was a civil engineer, and he was the one who first engendered a love of transportation; I regret that I didn't get the chance to share my tales of China and Japan with him.

I have fallen in love with Japan, in a way I haven't fallen in love with anywhere else before. It's foreign enough to be exciting, but not so foreign as to be daunting; the shrines are beautiful and the mountains imposing; the people are welcoming and the language accessible; and the trains are fantastic. It's definitely a matter of when, and not if, I go back to Japan, and until I do I will be itching to return.

The Far East: Day 22

2010-08-03T20:15:00.001+01:00

I awoke on my last day in Japan at 06:30 on Thursday morning. Since I was flying west, this was equivalent to 22:30 the previous night, and I would be effectively staying up for 24 hours. I checked out of Aizuya Inn for the last time, and walked to Minami-Senju, getting the familiar route to Tokyo station.

Joban line, 0723 Minami-Senju to Ueno
Yamanote line, c0740 Ueno to Tokyo

At Tokyo station, I went to the ticket desk to reserve a seat for the Narita Express at 08:00. By this stage it was 07:50, and while it was a bit tight I knew I could make it. By the time I got to a window it was 07:54, and the guy, who didn't speak any English, indicated that I needed 15 minutes to get to the platform. I knew I didn't, and I wanted to be in the airport good and early given I wasn't sure what I'd have to do with my booking given that I'd had to change it over the phone. But he insisted, and so he gave me a reservation for the next Narita Express at 08:30.

Fed up, I headed directly for the Narita Express platforms anyway, and sure enough I was at platform 4 for 07:59, and the 08:00 train still waiting. I showed one of the platform staff my seat reservation, and they waved me on to the train, saying "change it on board". So I got on, and stood for about 20 minutes waiting for the conductor; I said "I think I may have got the wrong train", to which he responded with an understanding "Ah!", tapped at his machine, and said "Find an empty seat, and sit down".

I understand why the guy at the ticket desk thought it was a bit tight, and I wish I'd known enough Japanese to insist that I could have made it. I do think 15 minutes is far too long to walk through the station to get to the Narita Express platforms, though; and he can't have been saying that you can't make reservations less than 15 minutes before departure, because that's simply not true (I'd done it three times previously!). I guess he was only doing his job, and it all worked out alright in the end; still, it was the only black mark against an otherwise perfect operation by the Japanese Railways.

Narita Express #11, 0800 Tokyo to Narita T1, arr 0901

Having eaten some breakfast on the train, I headed to departures to check in for my flight. ANA had introduced self check-in machines for the first time at Narita that morning; while there was a bit of a queue to check in, it all seemed to be going very smoothly, and I used the machine without any problem at all. (I bet you if it had been Heathrow it would have been an absolute nightmare on the first day!)

What's more, the machine coped with my altered booking without any hassle whatsoever; I got a printed receipt of the changed intinerary with my boarding card, but other than that it was completely normal. I headed through security and immigration to the gate, where I found myself in the same part of Narita that I'd used three weeks earlier (on Day 2) while connecting to Beijing. I even used the same computer to check my emails.

All of ANA's boarding gates at Narita are pretty close together: on the way from London to Beijing, I arrived at gate 55, and departed from gate 54; arriving in Tokyo from Beijing I arrived at gate 56; and I left Tokyo to head home from gate 57. I had originally been booked on a Virgin Atlantic flight on Saturday (VS901), on an ANA codeshare, which would have meant flying home on an A340; as it was, however, I was in another ANA Boeing 777:

Flight NH201: 1135 Tokyo Narita T1S to Heathrow T3 arr 1600
Operated by All Nippon Airways (ANA), using a Boeing 777
Pushback 1137, wheels-up 1159, wheels-down 1535, on stand 1547

NH201 ranks as one of the best flights I have ever been on, even if it was a bit confusing. We took off, and they served lunch. After that, they turned the cabin lights down and let us sleep (even though it was broad daylight outside). About three hours before landing, they woke us up, and served... lunch.

The first lunch was again two options: the 'western' option was a classic seafood chowder, but not being a fan of seafood I went for the more 'Japanese' option of a pork cutlet with rice. It was nice, but it was glazed in a strange, gloopy, brown sauce which was quite sweet, and burnt in places. Again there was some sort of inedible salad with it, as well as a few pieces of fruit for dessert. It wasn't the worst meal I've had on an aeroplane, but it wasn't the best either. The second lunch, served over western Sweden, was much better, if lacking in quantity: it consisted of a burger, which was excellent if a little small, a creme caramel, and some kind of salad.

I had a right-hand window seat, and the views were stunning. Not only was Japan fairly clear for the climbout - in which I got some good views of Niigata, on the northern coast of Japan - but the views of Sweden and Denmark were pretty good too. The pièce de resistance, though, was the approach to Heathrow: we flew in a standard Lambourne approach to 27R, with no circling. While this is a perfectly standard route, I hadn't flown it before, and it was a beautifully clear day over London, with very little cloud or haze to block the view.

We came in near enough due west over north London, just south of (and roughly parallel to) the M25, turning in a sweeping left turn through 135 degrees over NW London (roughly Edgware or Potters Bar), headed south-east, and then did a sweeping right turn through 135 degrees just east of Tower Bridge. I got some stunning views of central London, particularly of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, but also of the City, of St Pancras and King's Cross, of Buckingham Palace, and of Hyde Park.

We landed 25 minutes ahead of schedule, and arrived on stand in Terminal 3 in good time. I instantly knew I was back in England: not only did one of the escalators not work, but there was an interminable walk from the gate to immigration and baggage reclaim. (Both Beijing Capital and Tokyo Narita airports were very efficient, despite being huge.) Nevertheless, I made it through immigration, retrieved my bag (which was waiting for me), and exited the arrivals hall four minutes after booked arrival time. Pretty damn good for Heathrow.

I walked with my bag to Terminal 1 to catch my connection over to Belfast. As it turned out I could perhaps have made an earlier flight, but I didn't want to risk it, so I ended up with three hours in Terminal 1 to kill. Annoyingly in all the WH Smith outlets in the terminal I couldn't find a single copy of Private Eye or Rail, so I had to make do with less interesting reading material for the flight home.

I checked in, used the internet to check my emails and catch up with a few people, and eventually headed through security. Once I was through to the huge departures hall, I looked around a bit before getting a pizza in one of the restaurants, which was really good; I hadn't realised just how hungry I'd been since getting off the flight.

Flight BD92: 1935 London Heathrow T1 to Belfast City, arr 2055
Operated by British Midland International (BMI), using an Airbus A319
Pushback 1947, wheels-up 2001, wheels-down 2052, on stand 2055

My flight ended up boarding ten minutes late, due to a late inbound, but we got away very promptly and made our take-off slot. I discovered on board that, in rearranging my flight, I had ended up in flexible economy, and so I could have some free food - which was somewhat superfluous after the big pizza. I had some shortbread and a drink, and went to the toilet. While in the toilet the captain announced "ladies and gentlemen, we'll shortly be commencing our descent..."; it took me a moment to remember that this was a short-haul flight!

I met my dad at the airport, and we went straight to my granny's house. It was good to be home, and I am very glad I got home in time for my grandpa's funeral on the Saturday. While that, in some ways, tarnished the memory of the holiday, the timing could have been a lot worse, and sacrificing two days' holiday for the sake of being able to say goodbye to my grandpa was a sacrifice well worth making.

The Far East: Days 20 and 21

2010-08-03T20:13:00.002+01:00

I awoke on Tuesday morning to the news that my grandpa had died, in an email from my dad. This was not completely unexpected, but it was nonetheless something of a shock; he had been going downhill steadily for the previous year, since a fall while moving house in July 2009, but in the end the prostate cancer which he had warded off for most of the previous decade finally got the better of him, and he slipped away very peacefully at 9:15pm on Monday night (British time). He was surrounded by my dad (his son), my mum, my granny, and my dad's sister, who happened to have come over for a long weekend to visit him; it was serendipity that she was home at the time.

I talked to Jonathan over Skype for an hour (he happened to still be up, it being about 1am British time), before investigating how - if possible - I could change my flights home to come home a bit early. Knowing, however, that it would be several hours before my parents awoke back home, I couldn't really do all that much. I didn't feel like doing any tourism, so I just headed towards the station in Kyoto and got a few things I needed for the journey home.

Once my parents were awake, I talked to them and explained that I should be able to change the Tokyo-London flight free of charge, due to the circumstances, but would probably need a new London-Belfast ticket. Since that wouldn't be too expensive, we agreed that I would fly back on Thursday, instead of Saturday (due to my being in Kyoto, not Tokyo, I couldn't head for the Wednesday flight), and the funeral would be arranged for Friday or Saturday.

I then spent the next hour or so on the phone, first to ANA to change the Tokyo-London flight. ANA not only waived the change of fare, but also the administration fee; I am very grateful to ANA for being so kind and generous (though I suppose if I hadn't booked so last-minute I might have had a cheaper ticket and been unable to do so). I then phoned BMI, who charged me £215 for a new London-Belfast ticket, which was a bit steep but given the circumstances I just didn't care. I paid for it on MasterCard, and couldn't help but think of it like one of those ads:

Skype credit: £10.
Changing your flights home: £215.
Attending your grandfather's funeral: priceless.

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

Lacking in imagination, I headed for a nearby branch of Nakau, one of the Japanese fast-food places, and had a remarkably enjoyable meal of beef and rice, along with kara age, deep-fried chicken pieces which I have enjoyed many times in Wagamama's but which I'd never had the chance to try in Japan. They were excellent, and not too expensive either.

On Tuesday night I spend my final night in Ikoi-no-ie in Kyoto. On Wednesday morning, I talked to Tim Sullivan over Skype; it was 9am Wednesday in Tokyo, 1am Wednesday back home, but 5pm Tuesday in Los Angeles - aren't timezones weird? I then packed up and headed for one last Shinkansen ride back to Tokyo:

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 470: 1156 Kyoto to Tokyo, arr 1441

I got a late lunch in Tokyo station, once again having an over-priced but excellent spaghetti carbonara, before heading for the Aizuya Inn in Minami-Senju once more.

Yamanote line, 1526 Tokyo to Ueno
Joban line, 1542 Ueno to Minami-Senju

On Wednesday evening, I headed into Akihabara to take one last look at the lights of Tokyo, and get some food. In the end I settled for McDonalds, after a quick look round Yodabashi Camera to see the new iPhone 4.

Joban line, 2001 Minami-Senju to Ueno
Yamanote line, c2011 Ueno to Akihabara

Yamanote line, c2115 Akihabara to Ueno
Joban line, 2125 Ueno to Minami-Senju

Back in Aizuya Inn for the last time, I settled down for my last night's sleep in Japan; in spite of how much I was loving Japan, by this stage I just wanted to be home, and I looked forward to a very long day on Thursday flying halfway round the world.

The Far East: Day 19

2010-08-03T20:12:00.000+01:00

On Monday, I headed for a tour of the temples and shrines of north-west Kyoto, taking in four of the city's best sights, including the famous Golden Pavillion (Kinkaku-ji).

Kyoto Metro, Karasuma Line: 1130 Gozo to Karasuma Oike
Kyoto Metro, Tozai Line: 1140 Karasuma Oike to Nijojo-mae

I used the Kyoto Metro to get from my hostel to Nijo-jo; the metro consists, for the time being at least, of just two lines: the Karasuma line runs north-south and the Tozai line runs east-west, meeting each other at Karasuma Oike. I went two stops north and one stop west, which cost just ¥210 (about £1.60) for an efficient and comfortable ride.

Nijo-jo, or Nijo castle, is termed a "flatland castle", a castle built on a plain instead of a hill. It isn't quite a castle in the conventional sense; it consists of a palace surrounded by a moat, which is itself surrounded by some wonderful gardens. The palace is kept in the traditional style it was built in, complete with authentic interiors and mock-ups of how the Tokugawa shoguns would have conducted business in the palace.

Kyoto Bus 101, 1316 Horikawa Oike to Kinkakuji-michi, arr c1338

After looking round Nijo-jo for about an hour, I walked to the bus stop nearby and caught one of Kyoto's buses aimed specifically at tourists out to Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavillion. The bus, like Hiroshima's trams, is operates on a flat-fare pay-on-exit system, with a single costing just ¥220 (about £1.70) for anywhere in the city. Announcements at the key stops are made in English, and all the stop names are listed in romaji (roman characters) so there was no problem finding my way.

Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavillion, is just that: the beautiful temple, whose proper name is in fact Rokuon-ji, is covered in thick gold leaf and looks as if it was hewn out of a single piece of gold. It is magnificent, but also slightly underwhelming; unlike some other temples that's the only building of any real interest, and I spent only just over half an hour there having seen everything there was to see (albeit fairly quickly).

I grabbed a quick lunch in a nearby restaurant before walking further west to the temple of Ryoan-ji. Ryoan-ji is famous for its Rock Garden, one of the simplest and most remarkable pieces of Zen design ever created. It consists simply of a rectangular bed of white gravel, 25m by 10m, with fifteen rocks placed on the gravel at various points. It is constructed in such a way that it is only possible to see fourteen of the fifteen rocks from any given vantage point. At first it seems nice, but bland; sit for a few minutes, however, and you begin to lose yourself in thought, marvelling at the simplicity and complexity at the same time.

The rest of the temple and gardens at Ryoan-ji is not quite as spectacular, but is nonetheless very enjoyable: the temple is set in a wood on the shore of a small lake, and you could easily spend a few hours losing yourself in the grounds. But I didn't have time for that: I had one more temple to visit before closing time.

Ninna-ji is a quiet, unassuming temple about ten minutes walk to the west of Ryoan-ji, and is home to the Omuro School of the Shingon Sect of Buddhism. It was recommended to me by Tim, who visit Japan a few years ago on his gap year. It was undoubtedly the highlight of the day: the lack of bustling tourists made this temple all the more enjoyable. The temple buildings are set in a large, open garden with wide paths and tall trees; the gardens and buildings are simply beautiful, with a surprisingly colourful array of plants and trees.

Kyoto Bus 26, 1646 Omuro Ninnaji to Kyoto station, arr c1740

After a thoroughly enjoyable day, I find a nearby bus-stop and caught a bus back to Kyoto station; thanks to rush-hour traffic the journey took nearly an hour, but at least the seats were comfortable. I couldn't be bothered to think too much about what to eat, so I headed to a nearby McDonald's for a familiar - if rather boring - meal, and headed home for a good night's sleep after a long but very enjoyable day.

The Far East: Day 18

2010-06-29T17:04:00.001+01:00

NOTE: Post updated to include the bit about the England-Germany game - sorry it got left off before!

I awoke on Sunday morning at 9:30, after a nine-hour sleep. I hadn't meant to sleep so long, but I felt better for it; I had been quite tired from the previous few days. After a lazy morning catching up on what was going on in the world, I headed to Osaka for the afternoon. Such is the speed of the Shinkansen that you can make it to Osaka from Kyoto in just fifteen minutes:

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 511: 1416 Kyoto to Shin-Osaka, arr 1430

However, that only gets you to Shin-Osaka, which is across the river from the city centre. Shin-Osaka has three levels: the Shinkansen is elevated two levels above the other tracks, and between them sits the concourse. To get to Osaka, I hopped on a local train on what used to be the mainline before the Shinkansen was built:

Kobe line local service: 1437 Shin-Osaka to Osaka, arr c1441

Osaka station is the nerve centre of a huge commuter network stretching out as far as Kyoto and Kobe and many other places on the plains of Kansai. Osaka's rail network is very similar to Tokyo's, even having a loop line just like the Yamanote line. I used the loop line to head to Osaka-jo, otherwise called Osaka Castle.

Osaka loop line, 1448 Osaka to Morinomiya arr c1458

Osaka Castle was built by Hideyoshi Toyotomi in the 1580s in a bid to reunify Japan after years of civil war. He succeeded in bringing his arch-rival, Tokugawa Ieyasu, into the cabinet, but with Hideyoshi's death the country fractured once more; most of the power fell upon the Tokugawa shogunate, until eventually they relinquished power to the Emperor in 1868.

The castle is a great example of reconstruction: in Japan, and also in China, great structures such as Osaka Castle have been rebuilt many times, as faithfully to the original as possible. This rebuilding is brushed under the carpet: Osaka Castle has only really looked like it does now since 1997, but it is claimed as a masterpiece from 400 years ago. In a sense that's true, and I can understand their point of view; nonetheless, the idea that the castle is an abstract object and not a concrete building is alien to the west.

This is not to detract from the castle: it stands proud in a large park, surrounded by two huge moats, and stretches eight storeys high. From the top there are very nice views over Osaka city, though not anything as spectacular as Tokyo Tower by night. Inside is a nice exhibition about the wars and battles in which the castle played a vital role, including some very detailed tapestries from 1615 depicting the Summer War in Osaka.

Osaka Castle somehow manages to be Japan's most-visited tourist destination - beating the more impressive castle in Himeji (which I only saw from the train), and Mount Fuji. Critics say this is because it's the only thing to do in Osaka; this is unfair since there are many other sights, but the castle was all I had time to do on this particular day. I headed back to Osaka station, going the long way round the loop line for fun:

Osaka loop line, 1734 Morinomiya to Tennoji, arr c1746

Tennoji is the main station for suburban trains into Osaka from the south. It's pretty baffling, with more platforms than Osaka station (18 vs. 11). Some suburban trains arrive at Tennoji, and then head clockwise round the loop back to Tennoji before terminating; this makes up just over half the services on the loop line, the rest being services which go round and round all day.

Osaka loop line, 1753 Tennoji to Osaka (clockwise), arr c1818

At Osaka station, I decided to get some food - after wandering around the station area I settled on pizza and chips, which was cheap(ish) but not brilliant - before heading home.

Kyoto line, 1923 Osaka to Shin-Osaka, arr c1927

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 486: 1940 Shin-Osaka to Kyoto, arr 1954

I had intended to get caught up with the blog, but between following the F1 on live timing screens - not a patch on watching it but the best I could do - and listening to the England-Germany game on Five Live I didn't get to bed till gone 1am. The game was no fun for an England fan, and 4-1 sounded like a reasonably fair scoreline given how bad the defence seemed to be. I have never heard Alan Green so fed up, though: mainly with Sepp Blatter and video refereeing, but also with how badly England were playing.

Lineker was right in 1990, and he still is: twenty-two players run round a field chasing a ball, and in the end the Germans win. English football needs a root-and-branch review: no more can we sustain a top division with English players in the minority if we are to have success as a national side.

I apologise to those of you who didn't come here for a football rant; normal service will be resumed shortly.

The Far East: Day 17

2010-06-29T17:02:00.000+01:00

Saturday started early at 05:50 so Jon could head to Narita Airport to fly home. In fact, it was such an early start that we'd had to check out the night before in order to be out early enough to get to Narita:

Joban line, 0644 Minami-Senju to Ueno

Yamanote line, c0700 Ueno to Tokyo

Narita Express #9, 0731 Tokyo to Narita Airport T1, arr 0836

We arrived at the airport in good time for Jon's flight at 10:30; he was flying back with Air France connecting in Paris CDG (that being, apparently, the cheapest option). He checked in and then we parted, after a very enjoyable week. On the one hand I am sad to see him go, and it seems more lonely without him; but we often egg each other on, and I think we ended up doing more together than either of us would have done on our own; it is nice to be able to go at my own pace again.

Having parted, I got some much-needed breakfast, browsed quickly through the English language magazines (but thought better of it once I saw the prices), and headed back to Tokyo.

Narita Express #14, 1015 Narita Airport T1 to Tokyo, arr 1114

The Narita Express is a wonderful way to arrive in - or leave - Japan. Even on the narrow gauge network there is plenty of room for wide double-decker trains, though the Narita Express is single-decker to make handling luggage easier. It has wide seats and lots of legroom, quite like a Shinkansen. The only downside is the journey time - an hour or so - because it has to fit in with lots of local trains.

A new line is being built to ease the pressure, which opens in July (after I'm home, unforunately!), which will cut the journey time to 38 minutes, but that will be operated by Keisei, not JR - unlike in the UK competition actually seems to work in Japanese railways, though I'm not sure how...

Back in Tokyo, I decided to take a look in one of the city's biggest bookshop, Maruzen. It has four huge floors, and most of the top floor is dedicated to English-language books. In particular there is a huge academic section - on a par with Foyles in London or Blackwells in Oxford - in English, and the maths section in particular was excellent. I guess the Japanese do their university maths in English, which would make sense.

On the second floor I also found the maps section, looking in vain for a bilingual map of Japan - the so-called bilingual map being, in fact, almost entirely in English. I also chanced upon the section on railways, which was much, much bigger than you'd get in any bookshop in the UK - there were track diagrams, timetables, back issues of magazines for the last year, picture books, and even maps designed for you to tick off when you've been on a particular line or through a particular station. If only they'd do that in Britain...

After whiling away an hour and a half browsing the bookshop, I headed back to the Imperial Garden which Jon and I had failed to visit on Friday. It was well worth the return trip, with some lovely trees and buildings as well as some nice ponds and a few flowers. It was clear from the amount of green, though, that summer is not the best time to visit: I can imagine the colours in spring or autumn being simply beautiful. That's not to say it wasn't very nice, but I do want to go back now.

In fact I think that rings true of Japan in general: there is so much more to see, and so many more train journeys to enjoy, that I think it's a matter of when I return to Japan, and not if.

After seeing the Imperial Garden, I headed back to Tokyo station, retrieved my case from the locker I'd put it in earlier to avoid carting it about, and got some lunch; I fell prey to expensive in-station prices, but I did enjoy a proper spaghetti carbonara instead of more noodles. I then headed to get my train to Kyoto, where I had booked a hostel for six nights:

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 519: 1533 Tokyo to Kyoto, arr 1816

I arrived in Kyoto station and was immediately taken by its architectural magnificence; it's more usual for stations to have the concourse under the platforms, but Kyoto has a huge concourse over the suburban platforms, with only the Shinkansen platforms being elevated. It is certainly the nicest-looking station I've been to in Japan; it doesn't hold a candle to St Pancras, though. (On the other hand, Japan has nothing remotely as depressing as Birmingham New Street.)

I left the station armed with directions to the hostel - Ikoi-no-ie - which turned out to be a bit misleading; as a result I spent half an hour or more wandering around in progressively heavier rain trying to find the hostel; in the end I found it, having given up too soon when heading down one of the streets. The hostel is basically an overflow for another hostel a block away, and is pretty quiet; it's set back from the main road by three blocks of houses, all crammed into the city centre. It's quite nice, I suppose, but after the friendly atmosphere in Tokyo it's very quiet indeed, and the rain didn't help my opinion of the place.

After drying off I headed back out into the rain, and found a place to eat - another Japanese fast food place, but by this stage I was too tired to care. Once I'd written some more blog and chatted to a few people online - one good thing about this hostel is that the wireless extends throughout the building - I headed for a good night's sleep.

The Far East: Day 16

2010-06-28T01:57:00.000+01:00

Friday was Jon's last day in Japan, so we decided to do a number of things in Tokyo, before meeting Jon's brother Nick and his girlfriend Tomoe for Tomoe's birthday party. But the best-laid plans gang aft agley, and we endured a few disappointments as well as a stifling 28C heat during the day.

That was probably a blessing in disguise, really, because we had had a very busy Thursday and were more tired than we realised. After sorting out my arrangements for my final week in Japan, we headed out later than we'd intended but glad of the rest.

Joban line, 1120 Minami-Senju to Ueno
Yamanote line, c1142 Ueno to Shimbashi

So thoroughly urban is Tokyo that it can come as a shock to many visitors (and some residents) to discover that the city is actually beside the sea. But its bayside is home to the world-famous Tokyo Central Wholesale Market, where chefs and restaurants bid for the freshest fish from around the world. It's in full swing at 5am, but there's normally still some action mid-morning, so we headed down. However, we were unaware that it shut at noon, and so by the time we got there it had closed.

However, the nearby Tsukiji-Jogai Market provided Jon and I with the opportunity to try fresh sushi. Technically, sushi refers to the rice; the raw fish more commonly associated with that name is properly called sashimi. Whatever you call it, it was raw fish. For ¥2100 (about £16) we shared a tasting platter of raw fish and rice, and it was... interesting.

There was quite a bit of tuna, some of which was very nice indeed; those of you who have had tuna cooked rare can perhaps imagine what it tastes like. There were a number of other things, including shrimp, salmon eggs, shark fin, and various other unidentifiable things. Only one, which was yellow and slimy, was unpleasant; the rest had so much wasabi that you couldn't really taste the fish. I guess it's a bit like oysters: they don't really taste of much, so you have to season them to have them taste of anything at all. I can't say I enjoyed the whole experience all that much, but at leas I can say I've tried sushi.

Tokyo Metro, Hibiya line: c1340 Tsukiji to Hibiya

It being too hot to walk, we took the Tokyo Metro and headed over to the Imperial Palace, still the residence of the Emperor of Japan, who is technically head of state but has less power even than the Queen. We happened to catch an imperial procession taking someone into the palace and back out, but we didn't see who it was. Unfortunately the attached gardens were closed - apparently they're not open on Mondays and Fridays - so we looked around what we could - which isn't much - and then headed round towards the south-west if the city centre, to an area called Shibuya:

Yamanote line, c1550 Tokyo to Harajuku

The Meiji-jingu shrine was created as a memorial to Emperor Meiji, who died in 1912 having reinvented a stagnating empire and moved the capital from Kyoto to Tokyo in 1868. The shrine is set in a park, which provides some much-needed to Tokyo residents and visitors trying to get away from the bustle. The shrine is quite understated, typical of Japanese shrines, and the gardens provide wonderful places to relax.

After doing just that, we headed to the centre of Shibuya, where we were due to meet Nick, Tomoe et al for Tomoe's birthday. We were quite tired, so when we got there with an hour to spare we took a seat in Starbucks above the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. The junction outside Shibuya metro station has to be seen to be believed: for over a minute, all traffic at this crossroads stops, and pedestrians flood the black-and-white stripes; you wonder where they all come from, but a good proportion of them must surely come from the metro station releasing huge numbers of passengers.

Eventually we met up with Nick, Tomoe and several friends of theirs, and the eight of us headed for dinner in The Lockup - a horror-themed restaurant. A great night was had by all, even if I was a bit tired. The other six retired to the pub at 22:30, but Jon had a flight to catch on Saturday morning so we headed home.

Yamanote line, 2242 Shibuya to Ueno

For fun, we went the very slightly longer way round the Yamanote line, thus ensuring that we'd done a complete (clockwise) circuit of the line in a day (with a few overlaps).

Joban line, 2320 Ueno to Minami-Senju

We were sad not to have seen more of Tokyo, but Jon had certainly seen his fair share over three weeks in Japan, and I looked forward to heading west to Kyoto on Saturday.

The Far East: Day 15

2010-06-26T14:06:00.000+01:00

On Thursday, the overcast humid air was replaced by somewhat cooler and clearer air, bringing with it some nice sunshine but leaving temperatures at a very pleasant 24C. To take advantage of the weather, Jonathan and I headed out of Tokyo to the town of Nikko, about 90 miles north of the city.

Joban line, 1025 Minami-Senju to Ueno

Tohoku Shinkansen, Yamabiki 49: 1046 Ueno to Utsunomiya, arr 1130

By way of contrast to the linear Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen, the Shinkansen to the north of Japan's main island of Honshu has no fewer than five separate branches: the Tohoku, Akita, Yamagata, Joetsu and Nagano Shinkansen each serve various cities in the north of the island. It is hard, however, to dispute the notion that the Tohoku Shinkansen is the main route, being the longest and reaching nearly all the way to Hokkaido, the main island in the north of Japan.

We used just 65 miles of this complicated network to get to Utsonomiya, where we would change for Nikko. The line north out of Tokyo was built in 1982; it runs partially underground to get out of the city via Ueno station, the main station for suburban trains to the northern suburbs. Being newer, it offers up a higher maximum speed of 300kph instead of 270kph, which doesn't feel all that much faster but is nice to know.

Nikko Line, local train: 1139 Utsunomiya to Nikko, arr c1224

At Utsonomiya, 65 miles north of Tokyo, we made a nine-minute connection to a local train to Nikko. The metropolis of Tokyo sprawls nearly as far as Utsonomiya - there was little countryside to interrupt our journey - but the branch line was definitely more rural in feel, being single-track with passing loops in each station, of which there were six in our 25-mile, 45-minute journey. It was very nice to get out of the city for a while - it can get a bit oppressive after a while, especially given how many people there are in Japan.

Oddly, though, it appears that even Nikko has commuters to Tokyo; while our route is not considered part of the Tokyo network, there is an alternative route to Nikko which is part of the Tokyo Metro (subway). The Metro, however, is not included in the price of the JR Pass.

Nikko is home to a world heritage site consisting of a number of beautiful shrines set in a national park surrounded by mountains. After a 20-minute walk uphill from the station, you come to the beautiful Shin-kyo bridge, which points the way up to the Rinno-ji, a Buddhist temple, and Tosho-gu, an unusually ostentatious Shinto shrine. A combination ticket for ¥1000 (about £8) provides good value for all the main sights.

The Tosho-gu shrine was established in 1634 by Tokugawa Iemitsu in honour of his grandfather Tokugawa Ieyasu, who died in 1616. Its dazzling beauty stands as a testament to the wealth of the Tokugawa dynasty. Unlike most Shinto shrines, it is fabulously decorated in gold leaf and bright red paint, and has to be seen to be believed. As, in fact, do the crowds: if you thought hoards of Japanese tourists frequenting European tourist sites was bad, you should see them when they visit their own tourist sites.

Two more shrines lie adjacent to Tosho-gu, namely Futarasan-jinja and Taiyuin-byo, neither of which are as extravagant, nor are they as touristy. In fact, after Tosho-gu they came as a bit of a relief. The buddhist temple of Rinno-ji and its large hall of Sanbutsu-do, which hosts three giant gilded statues, rounded off an excellent afternoon.

We hadn't been hungry when we started visiting the shrines, but getting there was uphill so we decided not to go down until we'd seen everything. As a result it was about 4pm by the time we finally got some lunch, which was chicken and meat skewers accompanied by rice and noodles. After that, we headed back down the hill and caught our train back to Tokyo:

Nikko Line, local train: 1707 Nikko to Utsunomiya, arr 1749

Tohoku Shinkansen, Max Yamabiki 122: 1758 Utsunomiya to Tokyo, arr 1848

Again, a nine-minute connection in Utsonomiya. It is a testament to the network that we could comfortably make a very short connection with a relatively long walk in an unfamiliar station with no fuss whatsoever. Imagine doing that at somewhere like Liverpool Lime Street. The key difference is that, as a rule, each line has its own platform, which is signposted as such: as such you only usually need to check departure boards when there's more than one platform or to find out exactly when the next train leaves.

Our train back from Utsonomiya turned out to be a double-decker train. The British tracks don't have big enough tunnels to allow for double-decker trains, but the Japanese ones do, and they are imposingly big: the trains are a full metre taller than normal, and the seats on the upper deck are 3+3 with no loss of space - such is the width of the cabin. Adding the staircases to permit access does reduce the number of seats in each deck, but not so much that the effect of having two decks is lost: double-decker trains typically have up to 50% more seats than a single-decker train of the same length.

We had intended to go back to the hostel before heading on to the Tokyo Tower, but we hadn't planned on starting so late or staying so long in Nikko. So we headed directly to the Tokyo Tower:

Yamanote line, 1857 Tokyo to Hamamatsucho

The Tokyo Tower is a 333m high copy of the Eiffel Tower built in 1958 in an era when the Japanese were producing cheap copies of everything European; it actually manages to be a few metres taller than its French counterpart. We got up to the 150m-high observation deck just as dusk was fading.

Views from tall buildings in cities are always nice, but they're always much of a muchness: one city doesn't look that different to any other city. At least, that's true in the daytime.

At night, though, Tokyo's neon lights make for a spectacle that no other city can match. The moonlight over the Rainbow Bridge in the distance made for a stunning view. I was glad that I'd bought a new lens for my camera that was able to cope with low light a month or so before I left: being able to take hand-held shots in near-darkness is much better than having to use a makeshift tripod, and I have some hopefully rather good photos (which I can't do anything with until I get home)

After that, we headed back to the hostel:

Yamanote line, 2108 Hamamatsucho to Ueno
Joban line, 2133 Ueno to Minami-Senju

We popped out again to get some food, after a rather long day, in a Japanese fast food restaurant: the ramen was alright, but a bit salty. We ended up watching most of the Italy-Slovakia game, which turned out to be a really good game - I was not expecting Italy to go out, and it was made all the more hilarious by the reactions of the Italian staying in our hostel.

Between that and the insane Isner vs. Mahut game at Wimbledon, we eventually got to bed at about 1am, later than planned, ready for our last full day in Tokyo, and Jon's last full day in Japan.

The Far East: Day 14

2010-06-26T14:03:00.001+01:00

After just two nights, it was time to say goodbye to Hiroshima: there's plenty of Japan left to explore and not nearly enough time, so we'd better get cracking. As Jonathan flies home on Saturday, we decided to spend his last three nights based in Tokyo, in part so we could meet up with his brother Nick.

So we packed up and got the streetcar back to Hiroshima station; unfortunately it took longer than we hoped and we missed the 0915. I thought there was another train at 0948, but on closer inspection of the timetable I realised that that only ran on certain holidays, so we were forced to wait until 1015:

Sanyo Shinkansen, Hikari Railstar 550: 1015 Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka arr 1144

I love Japanese trains. They run perfectly on time. They know how many carriages there are before they arrive. They tell you where the unreserved seats are, and they tell you where to stand for each carriage. You never seem to get short-formed trains or cancellations. There are plenty of platforms, plenty of tracks, incredibly long trains which nevertheless are often busy. And, most importantly, everything is signposted in English.

We headed back to Tokyo in basically the same way we had come, changing in Shin-Osaka. The mainline to the west of Japan is the Tokaido Shinkansen from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka, and the Sanyo Shinkansen beyond Osaka to Hakata-Fukuoka. Combined, they stretch 730 miles from end to end; that will increase when the line is extended over Kyushu to Kagoshima. The route is entirely linear, with no branches; this is mainly because we pass through pretty much all the major cities, including Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe.

When they built the Shinkansen, they required new platforms and tracks in every city, because of the wider gauge of track. In many places, more than one might expect, the Shinkansen has been integrated almost seamlessly into the existing main station: this is the case in Hiroshima, as well as in Tokyo. In Osaka, however, there was not enough room near Osaka station to put the Shinkansen, so they built a new station a little to the north for Shinkansen trains to use, with a rail connection to Osaka station. The new station was called Shin-Osaka, literally 'New Osaka' station. We didn't spend much time there, just grabbing a burger before boarding our onward train to Tokyo:

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari 516: 1213 Shin-Osaka to Tokyo, arr 1513

One very noticeable difference between the British and Japanese rail networks is the loading gauge; that is, the maximum size that trains can be in order to fit through tunnels. The British network is hampered from having been the pioneers of the railway: we're stuck with some pretty short-sighted decisions made over a century ago, which basically makes trains bigger than the 'standard' BR passenger train very costly because you have to expand the tunnels.

By contrast, the Japanese either planned ahead or have already altered their network to cope with good-sized trains. The default for a Shinkansen is 3+2 seating. However, in that you get considerably more seat width and much more legroom than you would anywhere in British standard class; I've never tried first class but I can imagine it might well be beaten by the Shinkansen. Not only that but you can stand up and walk down the aisle without hitting your head.

We spent the three-hour journey to Tokyo dozing, and I tried writing some blog to not much success. On arrival at Tokyo, we headed for the Aizuya Inn in Minami-Senju, where we had been meant to stay on Sunday night but for a computer error. In so doing we headed for the Yamanote line again: such is the efficiency of not just the layout but the signage of Tokyo station that we were on a train 9 minutes after arrival.

This is no mean feat in a station with 28 platforms: there are 10 elevated platforms for the Shinkansen (six for the west and four for the north-east), another 10 elevated platforms for suburban trains to much of the Tokyo metropolitan area, and 8 underground platforms (two sets of four) for other suburban services, including services to Narita airport. Those suburbs without services to Tokyo main station have services to one of Ueno, Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, and Shinagawa, all of which are connected by the Yamanote circle line.

Yamanote line, 1522 Tokyo to Ueno

Minami-Senju happens to be one of those suburbs served from Ueno terminus, which is itself pretty big. While Tokyo is the main Shinkansen station, where everything terminates, all services to the west stop at Shinagawa and Shin-Yokohama (Yokohama being the second largest city in Japan, though it basically merges into Tokyo), and all services to the north-east stop at Ueno. So between the Shinkansen and a bewildering array of suburban services, Ueno has 21 platforms: four for the Shinkansen, four for through suburban services to Tokyo, and 13 for terminating trains, including ours:

Joban line, 1542 Ueno to Minami-Senju

The Joban line is a commuter line to the east of Tokyo; we went just three stops (eight minutes) along the line to get to Minami-Senju. We walked the 10-minute walk to our hostel and checked into our twin room, perhaps a little smaller than I'd been expecting but enough room for two. It had Japanese style beds again, with folding mattresses that goes on the tatami-mat floor. After a brief rest to check emails and world cup scores, we headed back out to Akihabara.

Joban line, 1736 Minami-Senju to Ueno
Yamanote line, 1750 Ueno to Akihabara

Akihabara probably represents what most people think of when they think of Tokyo: bright lights and huge shops filled with the latest gadgets. We first headed to Yodabashi Camera, which despite the name now sprawls over seven floors and sells PCs, iPods, mobile phones, air conditioners, hi-fi sets, televisions, DVD recorders, watches, fridges and, yes, cameras. The scale of the shop is hard to appreciate: there is an entire aisle devoted to camera tripods, an entire aisle of computer mice, at least six aisles of iPod accessories - it's just mind-boggling.

They have an incredible selection of cameras and lenses, though not quite as big as I'd expected: it was certainly great fun to get a look at some of the huge telephoto lenses used by photojournalists and paparazzi which can just about fit in the ear of the person standing on the other side of the shop.

In the Apple section they had about ten iPads out for testing, and I have to admit that having used one in the flesh it is rather an enjoyable experience - I found that I could almost touch type, with a few mistakes that I'd probably get used to, which was way better than I was expecting. I realised later that, in some ways, I should have waited until the iPhone 4 came out to visit, though I expect it would have been crammed.

After leaving Yodabashi, we happened to bump into Nick, Jon's brother, which in a city the size of Tokyo is quite a coincidence. Nick had some time to kill, so joined us in looking round Akihabara. I had hoped to visit the Tokyo Anime Center but got there after it closed, so we wandered around the shops, before getting a bite to eat. We then browsed a bookshop - unforunately the English language section was pitifully small, but I did find a nice map of the railways around Tokyo. After that, Nick went back to his girlfriend's house (with whom he is staying for a few weeks) and we returned to the hostel:

Yamanote line, 2108 Akihabara to Ueno
Joban line, 2118 Ueno to Minami-Senju

Across the road from the hostel is a bar, which on Wednesday has a yaki soba party - soba being a kind of thin Japanese noodle - meaning that there was free food. Not that we wish to be called cheapskates, but who are we to pass up an opportunity to eat for free? We got chatting to an American guy who's been travelling round India, China and Japan for six months, and conversation quickly turned to the world cup; appropriately, since on Wednesday group containing England and the USA was to be decided with two games at 23:00 Japan time.

We then retired to the hostel to watch the England-Slovenia game with some other guys, including three guys from Edinburgh University. It was all smiles until the USA scored in the last minute to win the group, which meant that we'd be facing the winners of group D - which transpired to be Germany. But being able to watch the game with some fellow Brits - not to mention an Italian, a Frenchman and an American - made it so much more fun. I was especially glad that the match wasn't at 0330, as the other two England games had been.

We finally retired to bed at about 0100 after a long day, with plans for another busy day on Thursday.

The Far East: Day 13

2010-06-23T08:36:00.001+01:00

First, the bad news. On Monday night, I unfortunately developed diarrhoea: if I'd been at home I would just have let it run its course, but since I had just two nights in Hiroshima that would have been rather annoying. So I was very glad that I'd packed some anti-diarrhoea medication - which stopped it in its tracks within a couple of hours of taking it. I stayed in the hostel for the morning to let it all settle down, so Jonathan went for a walk around Hiroshima.

Once I was feeling better, we went out and got some lunch, this time in Sukiya, which is another Japanese fast food restaurant. For ¥280 (about £2.25) each, a bowl of pork and rice is really good value, even if its nutritional content isn't great. From there we headed back to the train station, and headed for Miyajima, a nearby island.

Sanyo Line, local service 1557M: 1430 Hiroshima to Miyajima-guchi, arr 1457

We took a local train along the Sanyo line, which used to be the mainline prior to the building of the Sanyo Shinkansen. We got off at Miyajima-guchi, the port for Miyajima.

JR West Ferry, service #37: 1510 Miyajima-guchi to Miyajima, arr 1520

A short walk away is the port, where we boarded a ferry over to Miyajima. It was quite reminiscent of Portsmouth Harbour and the Isle of Wight, though Miyajima and the port are both smaller and the journey is only about 10 minutes. We got a clear sunny afternoon for the crossing, which afforded us excellent views out over Hiroshima bay.

Miyajima is most famous for the shrine of Itsukushima-jinja, whose magnificent vermillion O-torii gate appears to float on the sea at high tide, rising sixteen metres above the water. It has been declared as one of the three best views in Japan: it's certainly very nice but I'm sure there are mountaintop views which are more spectacular. It is certainly photogenic, and I took advantage of my new remote control for my camera to take a photo of Jon and me in front of the gate. We had a look round the shrine, and then took a short walk around the island, climbing a little to look at the five-storied pagoda and get some views out over the bay.

We had come to Miyajima with the intention of going up to the top of the 530m-high Mt Misen by cable-car, but unfortunately managed to choose the one week in which the cable-car was closed for maintenance. While the mountain isn't a hard climb, it would have taken more time than we had (especially given the late start), and given how hot it was it could have been pretty unbearable. As it was, we had a nice relaxing time looking round the island for a few hours, before heading back to Hiroshima.

JR West Ferry, service #150: 1845 Miyajima to Miyajima-guchi, arr 1855

Sanyo line, local service 2672M: 1908 Miyajima-guchi to Hiroshima, arr 1936

After getting back to Hiroshima station, we walked through the city centre to Okonomi-mura, a collection of about thirty traditional okonomiyaki stalls spread over three floors. Okonomiyaki is a traditional Japanese dish consisting of pancakes, cabbage and noodles with the diner's choice of filling: it is perhaps similar to a thick filled omelette (about 3cm deep), but is both filling and delicious. The best thing about the traditional stalls is that they cook it right in front of you, turning batter, cabbage, bacon, noodles and egg into a traditional okonomiyaki right in front of your eyes: when you're really hungry this is a feast for all the senses. They were truly superb, and the atmosphere of the place - filled with locals - made the experience all the more enjoyable.

Afterwards we relaxed in the hostel, and got packed ready to head back to Tokyo on Wednesday morning: while we only had a brief stay in Hiroshima, I think we saw the best of the city and I'm looking forward to seeing Tokyo for a few days, before Jonathan flies home on Saturday. Thereafter I plan to head to Kyoto and Osaka, before I go home next Saturday.

The Far East: Day 12

2010-06-22T15:29:00.001+01:00

On Monday, we headed west. I had been looking forward to taking the Shinkansen (bullet train) for years, and we started by taking one of the longest journeys possible: from Tokyo to Hiroshima.

Joban line, 0923 Minami-Senju to Ueno

Yamanote line, 0936 Ueno to Tokyo

Both suburban trains were pretty packed, though in each case the train before the one we got was much busier.

Tokaido Shinkansen, Hikari #467, 1003 Tokyo to Shin-Osaka arr 1303

The Tokaido Shinkansen was the first 'new main line', opened on October 1st, 1964, just in time for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. That cut the journey time from Tokyo to Osaka down to four hours: today, the fastest trains do it in just two and a half hours.

Unfortunately the Japan Rail Pass does not permit travel on Nozomi services, which are the fastest services between Tokyo and Osaka and beyond; nonetheless, there are more than enough semi-fast (Hikari) and stopping (Kodama) services on the Shinkansen that you can easily make any journey you wish, it just might take an hour or so longer. In this case, our Hikari service took three hours to get to Shin-Osaka (the new station built for the Shinkansen to serve Osaka).

*This* is what trains are meant to be like: wide, spacious carriages; plenty of legroom and seats that recline; sixteen carriages so there are plenty of seats; and a top speed of 168mph (270kph). It didn't seem that fast, probably because the line has a lot of tunnels, many more than I was expecting: that says a lot about how many mountains Japan has. We stopped twice for about ten minutes each in stations to let faster trains tear past. Nonetheless, three hours to cover a distance of 343 miles is rather good.

I could niggle: a lack of soap (seemingly intentional, rather than by omission) was annoying, but this appears to be quite common among Japanese public toilets. The seats didn't always line up with the windows perfectly, either, but given how small the windows are required to be on a high-speed train I can understand. But these niggles should not distract from a superb train journey.

We arrived in Shin-Osaka, where we picked up some lunch. I also bought the pocket version of the Japanese rail timetable - 864 pages at 10x20cm apparently counts as a pocket book - for just ¥500 (about £4). Very good value for an excellent and nearly comprehensive timetable, with just one slight problem.

It's in Japanese.

Nonetheless, I perservered and have found planning journeys with it to be quite easy, once you learn the symbols for a few places - and you can figure that out from the excellent maps at the start.

We had just under 20 minutes in Shin-Osaka until our next train:

Sanyo Shinkansen, Hikari Railstar #563, 1322 Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima arr 1454

This was a shorter 8-car train, but with a top speed of 177mph (285kph). Inside, however, it was very similar to the previous train, and I won't say any more.

We arrived in Hiroshima, and got the streetcar (basically a tram) to our hostel, the Reino Inn, which Jonathan had booked for us. We checked in, but it was only 3:40pm so our room wasn't ready yet, so we left our bags and headed to the Hiroshima Peace Park.

Hiroshima became synonymous with utter devastation almost as soon as the first nuclear bomb detonated 160m above its centre at 8:15am, August 6th, 1945. Within just a few years, however, the city had been rebuilt, and its very existence is a testament to the strength of peace.

On an island between two branches of the river, a park was built in memory of the 140,000 victims of the bomb, only half of whom died on the day, the rest falling victim to complications of radiation sickness and burns. At the entrance to the park is a museum: Jon and I spent two hours looking through the excellent and very balanced exhibitions, many of which were quite graphic.

The whole experience was quite harrowing: there is a panoramic photo on the wall of the utter devastation caused by the bomb, which simply beggars belief; models of the city help to bring the point home. The most poignant exhibit was a pocket-watch, frozen in time at 8:15am, its owner dying a few weeks later of his injuries.

The details of some of the illnesses and injuries that the hibakusha - the survivors - had to endure was almost nauseating: that was the last exhibit, save for a photo of a flower growing in the dust a few months after the bomb, as a symbol of hope, with the words:

That autumn
In Hiroshima where it was said
"For seventy-five years nothing will grow"
New buds sprouted
In the green that came back to life
Among the charred ruins
People recovered
Their living hopes and courage

In a strange way, it was also quite optimistic: there is a real drive in Hiroshima and Japan to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Anyone who still believes that any country possessing nuclear weapons is a good idea need only visit Hiroshima: thankfully there is real hope that President Obama will try and push for an end of the most horrible weapon humanity has ever devised - for the good of all mankind.

The museum exits out into the main park, which is directed towards the A-bomb dome, the dome just 350m from the point of explosion whose shell survives intact. In the centre is a huge arched memorial: after going through the museum I couldn't help but drop to my knees in front of it, overwhelmed by emotion.

There are a number of other memorials dotted around the park: one remembers the Korean victims, who perished as slaves of war but who went unrecognised by Japan for decades; another remembers the children who died of illnesses in the years and decades after the bomb. The whole place is an incredibly serene and poignant place, and will stay with me for the rest of my life.

We returned to the hostel at about 8pm, and then headed to a nearby Japanese "fast-food" restaurant; I use quotes because while it is fast and cheap, it is very like 'normal' Japanese cuisine and doesn't feel as cholesterol-laden as anything like McDonalds. A curry (well, a Japanese impression of one) for ¥590 (about £5) each was pretty good.

After that, we returned to the hostel and played some Go before eventually getting to bed, ready for a day trip to the nearby island of Miyajima on Tuesday.

The Far East: Day 11

2010-06-21T15:28:00.001+01:00

After a long chat on Saturday evening, Sunday started early at 0515 Chinese time. Having said goodbye to Catherine and Martyn, I got the Airport Express to the airport. This is nominally part of the subway, but costs Y25 single rather than Y2, and it is unusual in using a linear induction motor - which looks like a fourth rail - to propel the train. It took just 16 minutes from Sanyuanqiao to the airport. I was in fact getting the first train of the day, at 0604. I arrived at the airport, checked in, went through security (via the inter-terminal train again) ready for:

Flight NH956: 0830 Beijing T3 to Tokyo Narita T1, arr 1300
Operated by All Nippon Airways using a Boeing 767-300
Push-back 0821, wheels-up 0924, wheels-down 1317, on stand 1325

We taxied on time, but there were severe ATC delays at Beijing this morning so we spent nearly a whole hour in a queue waiting for clearance. It was evident that this runway - which I think was 36R - was being used for both takeoffs and landings; moreover, the separation between planes seemed wider than at, say, Heathrow. We eventually got away, and were treated to superb views of Beijing and the surrounding area in the climb-out. Once we were cruising, though, haze and then cloud prevented us having much of a view.

The meal was, effectively, brunch: too late for a Chinese breakfast, but too early for a Japanese lunch. I got the western option, which consisted of an omelette with vegetables, a croissant, a salad, and some melon. The omelette was surprisingly good, and was just what I needed after not getting much breakfast. The croissant was nice enough but there was no butter, while the melon was quite nice. The salad, however, was a bit odd and I didn't really eat any of it: it appeared to contain coleslaw, some pork, a prawn, some unspecified vegetables - possibly turnip - and a single sprig of green. Green what, however, I'm not entirely sure. Pretty good overall, and I can't complain.

We landed only 20 minutes behind schedule, and I made my way through arrivals and immigration to meet Jonathan. He happened to be running late too, and arrived about 30 seconds after I walked out of the arrivals hall. The tricky bit was that our phones simply don't work in Japan - 3G phones work but ordinary GSM phones don't simply because there is no GSM network any more - Japan has moved on from the west.

Having found each other, we went down to the JR (Japan Railways) station. I exchanged my pass order for my Japan Rail Pass, which cost ¥45,100 (about £347) and gives unlimited travel on the entire JR system for two weeks, excluding the very fastest Shinkansen (bullet trains). This isn't quite equivalent to an All-Line Rover, for two reasons. One, the JR pass is only available to foreigners entering under temporary visitor status. Two, there are a good number of privately owned systems which are not included in the JR pass.

Having redeemed my pass, we obtained seat reservations for the Narita Express:

Narita Express: 1415 Narita T1 to Tokyo, arr 1514

As soon as I got on the train, I felt at home: it felt just like the Heathrow Express, but with legroom. The legroom and headroom is particularly impressive given that most of the Japanese network - excluding the Shinkansen - uses narrow guage track, with the rails being 3ft 6in (1067mm) apart, rather than the standard 4ft 8.5in (1435mm) used on the Shinkansen and most of Europe and North America (excluding Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Finland and Russia).

But more than that, the railway network felt just like being in the UK, not least because they drive on the left, both on the rails and the roads. (Pub quiz question: name the only country in Europe in which they drive on the right on the roads, but on the left on the rails.)

Okay, the script may be a bit unreadable - though it's not nearly as bad as Chinese - but Japan really feels a lot like the UK. With bowing. And mountains.

Anyway, Jonathan had booked us a hostel for the night near Ueno in north central Tokyo; however, they'd had a computer mixup and were actually full, so they arranged for us to stay in a nearby hotel. We took a couple of suburban trains to get to Minami-Senju:

Yamanote line, c1536 Tokyo to Ueno

The Yamanote line is basically Tokyo's answer to the circle line. Being a bigger city, however, the circle line is also bigger at 22 miles long. It's pretty useful, connecting Tokyo's main station to a number of other stations used for suburban services, including Ueno, just 8 minutes from Tokyo and the terminus for the Joban line:

Joban line, 1552 Ueno to Minami-Senju

Just three stops on this suburban line took us to the station for our hotel, where we dumped our stuff before heading back to Ueno to get some food.

Joban line, c1650 Minami-Senju to Ueno

We found a soba vendor on the street outside Ueno, basically frying noodles like a burger vendor would fry burgers. After that, we gave Jonathan's brother Nick a ring. Nick is out in Japan as part of his course at Oxford Brookes. He and his girlfriend Tomoe joined us in Ueno at about 1830 and we wandered around the market, in awe of the lights.

After looking around, we got some dinner in a place selling ramen, a kind of noodle soup originally from China but very popular in Japan. Eating noodles with chopsticks is definitely an acquired skill: fortunately this being a noodle soup meant that I had a spoon to help me out. All this for only about ¥800 (£7) per person: Japan is only expensive if you don't know where to get things cheaply.

By this stage I was quite tired, so we parted with Nick and Tomoe and went back to the hotel.

Joban line, 2052 Ueno to Minami-Senju

All five trains we used were very punctual, and all were much longer than they would have been in the UK - the shortest was 10 carriages long. Moreover, the entire network seems well-signposted - in Japanese and English - and everything is laid out just where you'd expect it to be. Elevated stations and underground concourses are the norm, much like Birmingham New Street or London Bridge. Tokyo main station in particular is like very like Birmingham New Street - only bigger and with 23 platforms, 10 of which are exclusively for Shinkansen trains, of which more tomorrow.

We spent the evening relaxing in the hotel. Back in March, I jokingly said to Jonathan that I'd see him in Japan, not really believing it would end up being true. But it did, and it was nice to catch up with him: this will be the longest I've seen him since we lived together in third year at Warwick.

We went to sleep on Japanese-style beds: the floor is covered with tatami mats, and the beds consist of a mattress which you unfold. After being used to a hard mattress at Catherine's it wasn't too bad at all, and we both slept well, ready to head to Hiroshima on Monday morning.

The Far East: Day 10 - Reflections on China

2010-06-20T14:36:00.000+01:00

Another hot day with temperatures peaking at 32C, combined with how tired I was after two days of quite a lot of walking and the prospect of a very long Sunday, led me to take Saturday pretty easy once again. I got some laundry done, and caught up on a few emails.

In the evening, we headed to Liqun, the best place to try the city's signature dish: Peking duck. The restaurant itself is near the centre, but it's down one of Beijing's traditional alleyways, or hutong, and it's hard to imagine anyone stumbling across it by accident.

The ducks are dried and then roasted on the spit over a real wooden fire: you can see them cooking as you come in. This is not crispy duck; it is roasted to a time-honoured recipe. It's served with hoisin sauce, cucumbers and spring onions; traditionally, one takes a few pieces of duck and a few vegetables into a wafer-thin pancake, wrap it into a parcel, and eat.

It was sublime; quite possibly the best meal I've had in decades. You haven't experienced duck until you've had proper local Peking duck.

Since this was my last day in China, I've decided to reflect on a few things about China before they become distant memories. Some of this is a bit random, but I hope you find it interesting.

Language: Mandarin Chinese is one of hundreds of languages in China: what makes Mandarin special is that it is taught nationwide as the de facto national language. Mandarin, or putonghua as the Chinese call it, is based on the native Beijing dialect. It's a difficult language to get used to speaking, mainly because of the tones: exactly how you stress a word changes its meaning completely.

What makes life more difficult is that, while in the major tourist attractions you can get by without much, if any, knowledge of Mandarin, getting *to* the tourist sites can be the problem since taxi drivers speak not one word of English. Getting anywhere thus requires having the Chinese characters of your destination written out to show the driver, and usually a phone number for the taxi driver to talk to the restaurant or whatever to figure out how to get you there. Fortunately I got along alright, only having to venture into a taxi on my own twice.

Roads and taxis: If you think you've seen bad driving, you haven't. Not until you've been to Beijing and witnessed the sheer terror-inducing ride in a Beijing taxi can you understand the madness.

It is, quite literally, every man for himself. The concept of lane discipline is only obeyed when moving at high speed, and then not even very well. Use of indicators is scant; use of horns is apparently mandatory. No-one has *any* patience: drivers will overtake indiscriminately on whatever side they see a space, and cars cut in quite happily without warning. I am amazed that I didn't see any accidents.

This is, at least in part, down to the big but poorly designed roads. Junctions are invariably too small, so everything's too compressed and the bends end up being insanely tight. There are bus stops on off-slips, so buses are cutting back onto the highway across traffic going off. It's quite common to have on-slips and off-slips pretty much crossing each other, and in any case slip roads usually aren't very long, so cars are expected to accelerate and decelerate in no distance at all.

That might not be so bad if there weren't much traffic. But with 22 million citizens and 9 million alien residents in Beijing, there is a huge amount of traffic. There are four huge ring roads: the largest of these is about 80 miles long, which is only 2/3 the length of the M25, giving an indication of how dense the city's population is.

It's even worse at street level, especially as a pedestrian. The American rule of permitting right turns (Brits, think left) on red lights means that even when there is a green man you can't trust it. The traffic is even more undisciplined here and you really need your wits about you just to cross a road.

Subway: By contrast the subway is a model of efficinency. The main problem with the subway is that it's not dense enough yet - there aren't quite enough lines to be able to get everywhere as easily as you might like, with a particularly noticeable lack of diagonal lines.

What puzzled me about the subway was the behaviour of passengers. Every interchange station, where two lines meet, was teeming with passengers and huge numbers seemed to be changing trains. However, the stations in between were quiet, almost eerily so: few people got off or on, and the train remained full of people. So where is everyone going? Maybe the answer is they're going to the suburbs, but it seems unlikely; even getting off or on at Tian'anmen West or East, which should surely be the two busiest stations, was a fairly quiet affair.

There are a huge number of subway lines under construction, as well as high-speed rail lines and motorways, so the situation will undoubtedly be different in a few short years. Indeed, it seems the only constant in Beijing is change.

The 2008 Olympics: The Olympics have undoubtedly left a huge legacy in Beijing, though not all of it is good. On the one hand it vastly accelerated the pace of investment into the transport network, which is undoubtedly a good thing. But the stadiums lie empty, as vast white elephants, as do neighbouring hotels built for the games. I cannot believe that Beijingers really needed so many new hotels.

The vast array of western shops that were built have not done good business, and many are shutting down to make way for the kind of family-run businesses that would have been there before they were simply bulldozed. I guess this is good, but it would have been better if they'd never been demolished in the first place. Anyone who's ever complained about British planning law being too slow need only look to Beijing to see the effects and dangers of having an inadequate planning system.

Money: The Chinese currency, officially known as the yuan but usually called either renminbi or kuai, trades at around Y9 to £1. However, almost everything is done with notes: the highest-value coin is a Y1 piece, which is worth about 10p, but that's rarely used. Instead, Y1 notes are commonplace, with the highest denomination I've seen being Y100. It's quite nice not having to fiddle about with coins too often; on the other hand I have a wallet stuffed full of notes whose combined worth is at most £20.

Not that I've had to spend much: I'm not paying for accommodation, so all I've been spending is for tourism and the occasional meal - though my hosts insisted on paying too often. It will be a bit of a shock getting to Japan and having to spend money hand over fist.

---

I am sad to be leaving Beijing, but I have had a great week looking round no fewer than five World Heritage Sites, and all while in the hospitality of my cousin. I will admit that, left to my own devices, I would have been unlikely to consider visiting China: it's simply too big and too scary. But having the advice of a local made all the difference.

On the other hand, I am greatly looking forward to exploring Japan by train: I have wanted to go on the bullet trains for years and years, and I can't wait!

The Far East: Day 9

2010-06-19T03:24:00.003+01:00

Before Mao's abortive attempts to expunge all semblence of religious belief from its citizens, China was a country of traditional Eastern beliefs such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The country still has a number of temples devoted to such beliefs, and on Friday I went to visit two of them: the Yonghegong, or Lama Temple, Beijing's foremost Buddhist temple; and the Tiantan, or Temple of Heaven, a unique Confucian altar and the centrepiece of one of Beijing's most popular parks.

I arrived at the Yonghegong by subway at about noon, and initially thought I was in the wrong place. I found the temple after a few minutes' walk, but I still can't quite fathom how such a beautiful temple has been plonked in (or, more accurately, surrounded by) the middle of Beijing: it is a wonderfully idyllic place in the middle of complete mayhem. It would be as incongruous as putting Westminster Abbey in among the tower blocks and alleyways of East London.

It was built as the residence of one of the emperors-to-be, but was converted into a lamasery (a temple used by lamas) in 1744. As a result, the traditional imperial Chinese architecture has been modified to fit the new purpose, with walls being decorated with Tibetan script and many statues of Buddhas being installed for worship.

The five halls are beautiful, and the Buddhas inside are masterpieces of sculpture. The rearmost hall contains a 26-metre high statue of Buddha (of which eight metres are underground), carved from a single piece of white sandalwood: this appears in the Guinness Book of World Records - quite rightly, given just how staggeringly huge it is.

There are also two rooms housing smaller statues and other artefacts recovered over the years: there are some ancient bronze sculptures dating back over 3000 years, as well as a huge variety of costumes and ornaments.

The temple remains a working temple, with many people kneeling in prayer to the Buddhas, and offering incense to be burnt. I felt a little like I was intruding into a solemn place of worship, and while its beauty is undoubtedly something to behold I can't help but wonder if it might be better for the temple to go back to being just that. I suppose the answer is that without the tourists they would have no money to spend on upkeep.

By contrast, the Temple of Heaven, which is a short subway ride away, stands proud in the middle of nearly one square mile of parkland in central Beijing. It consists of three altars in a line from south to north: the first, the Round Altar, is nothing more than a circular mound (albeit made of marble); the second, the Imperial Vault of Heaven, is a small octagonal building; and the third, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, is the familiar huge circular triple-roofed structure that forms the centrepiece of the park. The park is popular with Beijingers wanting to rest in the sun, and the temples are no longer used for any religious purpose since the deposition of the imperial class in 1911.

The main Hall is a unique structure, quite unlike anything else in the world. The original 1420 structure burned down in 1889 after apparently being struck by lightning. It was rebuilt in a manner completely faithful to the original, save that the new timber was sourced from Oregon, as no wood remained in China that was strong enough to support the roof, which was built (and rebuilt) without nails or cement - quite an achievement for a building 38m high and 30m in diameter.

The building is supported by a number of pillars, and the roof is covered in beautiful blue-purple tiles. The whole thing sits upon a three-tiered marble terrace affording excellent views over Beijing on a clear day.

The walk from the Hall south to the other two altars is beautiful, as are both the altars in question. The Imperial Vault of Heaven is surrounded by a so-called Echo Wall, meaning that if you stand in a certain place and clap you should hear three echoes. It didn't work for me, but that was probably due to the hordes of tourists in the way. The Round Altar is a beautifully serene place, feeling quite isolated from the rest of the park.

All in all the park and the temples are the perfect antidote to busy, bustling Beijing, and I can quite understand why so many people frequented the park. The weather was good, too: cloudy at first but it brightened later on, with temperatures peaking at a much more manageable 26C and making it easily the most pleasant day of the week, and certainly one of the most enjoyable.

For dinner, we headed to a Mexican restaurant in Sanlitur, the main ex-pat district, and watched Serbia beat Germany on the big screen, before heading home for an early night - I have an early start on Sunday to fly to Tokyo, so I wanted to get used to getting up early, ready for my last day in Beijing.

The Far East: Days 7 and 8

2010-06-17T15:12:00.000+01:00

Wednesday was a public holiday - the Dragon Boat Festival - in China, so Catherine and Martyn had the day off work. Once again, however, it was unbearably hot - topping out at 36C - so aside from a brief trip to the shop I didn't do much all day. Dinner was also a subdued affair: we went to a nice burger place, which wasn't as fast-food-ish as normal, but it wasn't all that special.

Wednesday evening brought us another thunderstorm, as did Thursday morning. In fact, it rained quite a lot on Thursday; the temperature came down with the rain and made it feel an awful lot more pleasant. Even in the afternoon sun I don't think it got much higher than 27C.

Mao Zedong once said "you cannot call yourself a real man until you have climbed the Great Wall". Well, today (Thursday) I am a real man. Catherine organised for me to go on a tour to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, organised by China Culture Center. At a cost of Y350 (about £40), including entry, lunch and transport, it was really good value and the tour guide was really informative (and spoke very good English, which made a big difference).

After getting a taxi to the CCC - easier said than done but I got there in the end - I met up with the other 15 or so people on the tour; there were three Norwegians, two Germans, a couple from Hong Kong, at least six American students, and one other British guy from Oxfordshire. At about 9am we set out by coach for the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall.

First, let's clear up some myths. One: the Great Wall of China cannot be seen from space. While it can be seen from low earth orbit, at that height you're low enough to discern motorways and other features too. Two: the Great Wall is not one big long wall. It has various overlapping sections, some of which have been restored to something like their original condition. Moreover, there have been various walls built at various times, some as simple as piles of earth and some as complicated as small fortresses.

The most popular section of the Great Wall is that at Badaling, which was visited by Nixon, Gorbachev, Reagan, Thatcher and the Queen. Unfortunately it is hideously touristy, and I'm quite glad that this tour avoided Badaling in favour of Mutianyu, which Clinton visited but is otherwise relatively peaceful.

To get up from the car park to the wall, you can either walk, take a cable car, or a chair lift; coming down you can also use the toboggan run. Unfortunately when we got there it was raining heavily, so we opted for the cable car, which whisks you up the hillside in just three minutes. Such was the rain, however, that when we got to the top we couldn't see a thing at first - it was what I'd call Scotch mist.

We had about an hour and a half on the wall, which is about 3m wide and follows the contours of the hills, so there is some climbing to be done just in walking along the top of it. The mist cleared gradually, and by the time I'd walked along the wall for about an hour the views were stunning, made all the more mysterious by the presence of small wispy clouds of white mist.

The Wall is set quite high up in the hills, using the natural contours as much as possible to add to the defences, so all you can see for miles around is hilly countryside. It is seriously impressive, and Richard Nixon's pronouncement on seeing the wall in 1972 says it better than I ever could:

"This is a Great Wall and only a great people with a great past could have a great wall and such a great people with a such a great wall will surely have a great future."

All morning there was thunder in the air, but the only serious rain we had all day was as we were heading up to the wall. The rain put paid to coming down on the toboggan run - that was closed - and the thunder also briefly halted the cable car. Eventually we all got down the mountain, where we were taken to lunch in a nearby restaurant; the food was traditional Chinese local food, not dissimilar to what I'd had on previous nights but in a rather more upmarket setting. The food was excellent, and the conversation was great fun with it being so international.

After lunch, we had an hour's drive to the Ming Tombs, the resting place of 13 Chinese emperors. The burial mounds are provided with huge courtyards in reverence to their honoured dead; the courtyards provided more of the same style of architecture, but this time with a knowledgeable guide rather than a glorified tape player. It was interesting, not just for the tombs but the guide's take on Chinese history.

The tombs are set in a beautiful u-shaped valley pointing south towards Beijing, chosen for its good feng shui. To provide an entrance-way to the tombs, there is a long avenue of arches. One section has eighteen pairs of statues lining the path between the arches; first there are four 'meritorious officials', then four civil officials, then four generals, and then four of each of six animals: horse, qilin (a small dragon), elephant, camel, xiezhi (unicorn), and lion, with two of each standing, and two of each sitting. This 'sacred way' made an excellent addition to the drudge of the Ming Tombs themselves, and the bus collected us at the other end. All in all, an excellent day out.

On the bus ride home we passed the Birds Nest stadium which hosted the Olympics in 2008 but which is, unfortunately, now a white elephant. The design is unusual, and certainly interesting, but it's not the nicest-looking stadium I've ever seen. Moreover, the whole area around the stadium has been concocted out of nothing, and seems to be too out of keeping to survive for long: Beijingers don't need huge seven-star hotels, they need roads that aren't clogged and more subway lines (among many other things).

Catherine hadn't been feeling terribly well so we had a relatively low-key dinner in a bar nearby, watching some of the football. Catherine and Martyn have been busy sorting out stuff for coming home in July, finishing off bits of work and getting a house sorted, so I had a quiet evening writing this blog. And I think I'll stop now before I get any more self-referential.

The Far East: Day 6

2010-06-16T12:22:00.000+01:00

Another scorcher of a day in Beijing, with the temperature apparently peaking at 35 Celsius. After a leisurely morning catching up on my blog, I got a bite of lunch before heading to the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace in north-western Beijing is the Windsor Castle to the Forbidden City's Buckingham Palace. It's a sprawling park set on the shores of a beautiful lake, with a maze of paths and passageways connecting a multitude of halls, towers and palaces.

Having spent the previous day seeing round the Forbidden City in some detail I must admit I was suffering from architecture fatigue - I enjoyed looking round some of the halls, but they are all really rather similar.

Nonetheless, there was more than enough to occupy me for an afternoon. The Wenchang Gallery contains an amazing collection of vases and bowls, some of which date back as much as 3,000 years. There were bronze vases dating from the Shang Dynasty, which ran from approximately 1600 BC to 1100 BC, in perfect condition. One can imagine that perhaps they may have originally been painted, but any such paint has not been preserved.

There was also a great collection of jade vases, some over 700 years old, and of pottery which, while not being quite so old, was exquisitely decorated. All in all, it is a great testament to the longevity of the Chinese civilisation that such things have been preserved in such good condition. I can't imagine anything remotely similar having survived in Europe, thanks to wave after wave of invasion.

The shores of Kunming Lake are home to some of the best views in Beijing, with a seventeen-arch bridge being the focal point. However, by this stage the heat had started to take its toll on me, so I didn't see perhaps as much as I should have; I could have climbed up Longevity Hill and got even better views, but by this stage even the shade was too warm and I couldn't physically eat an ice lolly fast enough to stop it melting.

As such, I decided to call it a day and headed home after a fairly short look round the Palace. The subway again proved to be refreshingly cool; this time I used line 10 from Sanyuanqiao to Haidianhuangzhuang, and thence line 4 to Xiyuan, from which it's just a ten-minute walk to the palace.

That ten-minute walk, however, was quite eye-opening: unlike the centre of Beijing the streets were cracked and the people were obviously poor. What you can't prepare for, however, is the smell. I can't really describe it, but the Chinese people and streets just smell very different. I imagine that a Chinese visitor to the West would think us just as smelly; that doesn't make it any less unsettling.

Dinner was another baptism of fire in a proper Chinese restaurant, this time with a bunch of teachers that Martyn had gathered to say goodbye to a student teacher who departs this Friday. The ten of us ate for, in total, Y260 - about £30 - sharing a variety of lamb skewers, pork and beans, sizzling beef, crispy noodles and chicken with peanuts. Fantastic food at fantastic value, especially considering that price includes the beers.

The evening was cut short by an incredible thunderstorm at around 9pm. As we'd been eating outside, we headed home to escape the worst of it, but by the time we'd walked home the rain was coming down quite heavily. We were treated to an incredible son et lumière looking out from the balcony at forks of lightning hitting buildings all round, and sheets of lightning lit up the sky like nothing I'd ever seen. Sunday's thunderstorm had served up much more rain, but on this occasion the lightning outdid itself and had to be seen to be believed.

Knowing that Wednesday would be just as hot, as well as being a public holiday in China (the Dragon Boat Festival), I planned for a quiet day, so I didn't rush to bed and spent the evening chatting and reminiscing.

The Far East: Day 5

2010-06-15T11:20:00.000+01:00

Until you see it, it's difficult to believe, let alone comprehend, the sheer size of everything in Beijing. I stepped out of the subway at Tian'anmen West onto a road with at least 12 lanes - in the heart of the city centre. Compared to the Champs-Elysées, this is huge.

But that's nothing compared to the architecture. The National Centre for the Performing Arts has to be seen to be believed: it's basically half of a huge eggshell, made of metal, though a huge bead of mercury might be a more accurate description. It looks even weirder when seen including the reflection in the pool that completely surrounds it - it appears that access is from underneath, so there are no drawbridges.

A short walk away is the infamous Tian'anmen Square, with the Great Hall of the People to the west, the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall to the south, the National Museum of China to the east, the Gate of Heavenly Peace leading to the Forbidden City (of which more later) to the north, and the Monument to the People's Heroes in the centre. It's not nearly as imposing as it sounds - largely because the square itself is so huge, and even the biggest and most important buildings in China seem... small and distant.

The square is nothing like, say, Trafalgar Square; one, its size is in a totally different league; two, it has airport-style security scanners at every entrance, with police aiming to thwart any protests before they even start. Most of all, though, it's much more open, and has very little shade.

Which is a bit annoying when you arrive at Tian'anmen Square at about noon on a very hot, sunny, clear-skied June day, when the temperature is about 33 Celsius. Thankfully, the thunderstorm had at least brought the humidity down from the horrible levels it was at on Sunday.

The Square itself is, like the rest of Beijing, perfectly flat and level. It's a truly incredible place, but the soul of the place is in its history rather than its architecture.

Afterwards, I sat in a shady spot under some trees a short walk away to recover from the sun, which, even with suncream, was pretty strong. I'd bought a sandwich in Subway on the way to the subway in the morning, and surprisingly my bag managed to keep the sandwich relatively cool.

At about 1pm, I headed through the Gate of Heavenly Peace - which has the famous portrait of Chairman Mao in the middle - leading, through a seemingly interminable series of similar gates, to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the Emperor's residence and workplace for 500 years in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, until in 1911 the imperial rulers were overthrown by the Kuomintang (the ruling party of the Republic of China).

The architecture is incredibly intricate, and the attention to detail - such as the animals on the corners of the roofs - is mindblowing. That said, after a couple of hours it does get a bit monotonous, with hall after hall wearing a bit thin after a while.

However, the real treat of the day was the Imperial Garden. There are over 160 pine and cypress trees in the garden, most between 300 and 400 years old. Most of them have very knotted and gnarled bark, making for some very weird shapes. There are a variety of stone sculptures dotted around, and while the garden is fairly small it doesn't feel it, as it's packed with really interesting things to look at. It's the kind of thing my mum, who's an artist, would enjoy no end; what surprised me is that I enjoyed the garden no end too, which I wasn't expecting.

I used the Beijing Subway to get from Sanyuanqiao (where my cousin lives) to Tian'anmen, and was pretty impressed. The system underwent huge expansion for the Olympics in 2008, and now consists of six full lines and a couple more short branches, with plans for half a dozen more. I took line 10 to Goumao, and then line 1 to Tian'anmen West, and the reverse on the way back.

It's quite reminiscent of the newer lines on the Paris métro, with doors along the platform edge which open when the train arrives, preventing people accidentally falling onto the track (as on the Jubilee line extension in London). Some of the lines also have gangways between the carriages; even better, some have windows into the driver's cab, so you can see forward into the tunnel.

They also all have very intuitive diagrams of the line, with flashing lights to indicate where on the line you are, what direction you're going, and which station is next: it's a genuinely useful innovation, one I wish London might copy.

The really good thing, though, about the Beijing subway is that it's air-conditioned. Unlike the London Underground, which is so old and the tunnels so small that air conditioning is impossible, the Beijing subway has generously-sized tunnels, so the trains can be big enough so that you can have headroom *and* air conditioning.

The headroom, in particular, was very welcome given how busy it was. Even at 11am the subway was standing-room only, and coming back at 4:30pm it was pretty much breathing-room only. It wasn't as bad as the Northern Line in the morning peak between London Bridge and Bank, at least, but it wasn't massively pleasant.

Dinner was a relatively subdued affair: pizza while watching the World Cup (Netherlands vs Denmark) on the big screen in the plaza below the apartment was just what I (and Catherine and Martyn!) needed after a long day, and I slept very well, ready for an even hotter Tuesday.

The Far East, Day 4

2010-06-14T12:06:00.001+01:00

A quiet Sunday in Beijing, as I continued to get over my jetlag. I lounged around during the morning, and then the three of us went to a nearby café to allow Martyn and Catherine to get some work done.

Dinner, however, was quite another story. Matt, a friend of Martyn and Catherine who they know through their school, was due to fly home on Tuesday, so he and his wife Janet joined the three of us for dinner at Fukunoya, a Japanese restaurant just ten minutes' walk away.

The menu allowed to order as many dishes from a certain list - basically more than half the total menu, excluding mainly expensive things like sashimi - for Y108 per head (about £10), inclusive of beer. Which was very good value, especially given how much we drank - though one pint was more than enough for me - and we had a hilarious evening chatting about everything from ash clouds to wedding dresses. Chicken teppanyaki was undoubtedly the best plate in an array of dishes shared by the five of us, including bacon rolls, shrimp, and salmon with cheese (which Martyn claims to have enjoyed).

The humidity had been rising all weekend, and in the evening the cloud finally mustered and gave us the biggest thunderstorm I can remember - though I'm told it's fairly normal for Beijing, even if this year it's been raining rather more than it used to. It cleared the air, and Monday saw clear skies. With the beer down me, I slept like a log - which was good, since I had a much busier day on Monday...

The Far East: Day 3

2010-06-13T03:55:00.000+01:00

I slept very well on Friday night, sleeping for nearly twelve hours. Not all that surprising given I'd been up for 31 hours. I had some breakfast and got a shower, and then found Iwas pretty much ready for lunch - the jetlag seems to have made me quite hungry. So I blogged a little and got a sandwich.

Catherine had some work to finish off, so Martyn and I headed out. Martyn needed to go to the tailors to get a suit fitted, so we did that before heading to the Sanlitun area of Beijing (pronounced Sanliter, thanks to the Beijing accent).

Sanlitun is one of the main areas in which expats live, and has a number of embassies nearby. There are a large number of Western shops, such as United Colours of Benetton. Martyn and I settled down for a couple of hours with some drinks and had a long chat, before Catherine joined us and we went for dinner.

Catherine and Martyn decided to give me a baptism of fire and take me to a proper Chinese restaurant. 'Chinese' food as eaten in the UK simply isn't what the Chinese eat. There are so many regional varieties of food that even attempting to try them all could keep you here for a year.

While I went to the bathroom, they ordered a variety of dishes, which we all shared. There were lamb skewers, very hot chicken wings, something that looked like pizza but was really bread in a bowl of tomato sauce and lamb pieces, and bite-size chicken pieces with leeks and chillies. My personal favourite was a combination of pancake pieces and cabbage, that looked not dissimilar to a bowl of fried onion, but which tasted nice without being overpowering; it was very moreish.

The trouble with sharing food is that you don't get it in portion-sized plates, so you're never quite sure of how much you've eaten. As it was I ate a fair amount, though I could probably have eaten more.

Unfortunately I'm still quite jetlagged as I write this on Sunday morning: I don't feel particularly tired, I just feel a bit disoriented, and a bit more hungry than normal. I'm sure it'll wear off soon.

I've not got much planned for today (i.e. Sunday, aka Day 4), but tomorrow I plan to head into Beijing city centre and see some of the sights like Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

Lastly, a correction to Day 2: Beijing terminal 3 is the second biggest terminal, but the biggest is Dubai T3, not Heathrow T5. In fact, I discovered that Beijing T3 is 17% bigger than all five of Heathrow's terminals put together! Beijing airport has rapidly ascended the rankings, and in 2009 was third in the world on passenger traffic (up from eighth in 2008); London Heathrow was second (up from third) and Atlanta remains first (as it has been since 2000).

The Far East: Day 2

2010-06-12T15:28:00.001+01:00

First, a note on timezones. All of China uses GMT+8, and all of Japan uses GMT+9. Neither country observes daylight savings time, so the difference from British time is reduced to +7 and +8 respectively during the summer (as now). Unless otherwise stated, all times are local.

Flight NH202: 19:35 London Heathrow T3 to Tokyo Narita T1, arr 15:20
Operated by ANA (All Nippon Airways) using a Boeing 777-300ER, seat 32B
Pushback 19:36, wheels-up 19:50, wheels-down 14:50, on stand 14:58

Written c23:00 British tine / c07:00 Japan time:

As I write this we are 33000 ft in the air over Russia, just east of Saint Petersburg, about a quarter of the way from London to Tokyo. This is my first long-haul flight, and I must admit that it's not as horrid as I expected. So far, anyway.

The Boeing 777 is a twin-engined long-range widebody jet, most easily distinguished by its notched tailcone. This one has nine seats per row and was full, and there are perhaps a dozen gaijin (Westerners) like myself, the rest being Japanese. I guess that is to be expected given I'm flying with All Nippon Airways, the Japanese's second national airline (after Japan Airlines). Nearly half the main economy cabin is filled with about 50 Japanese schoolchildren, about 16 years old or so, who are evidently returning from a school trip to England.

We took off on time from runway 9R at Heathrow, climbing quickly into the low cloud, and headed east over Suffolk, out over the North Sea, directly over Copenhagen, before tracking over the Baltic Sea, southern Estonia (from which we got wonderful silhouettes of the Gulf of Finland) and St Petersburg. Aside from the Gulf of Finland, there is very little to see thanks to the cloud and the night.

Flying, as we are, so far north means that, of course, we come very close to the Arctic Circle. As such it's never really dark: there's always a red spit of flame on the horizon to the north (I'm one seat away from the left-hand, i.e. north-facing, window).

ANA is still a full-service airline, at least when it comes to long-haul. We were each provided with a blanket and pillow for the journey. Dinner service started about half an hour after takeoff, but since I'm four rows from the back I had to wait. In the meantime I watched an episode of Yes Minister which I had downloaded to my iPod.

There was a choice of a Japanese meal of noodles with shrimp and other assorted seafood, and a Western chicken and rice option. Much as I know my stomach will have to get used to it sooner or later, I wimped out and avoided the seafood option. The chicken piccanta with rice was quite nice - the chicken was remarkably tender - and the Mediterranean vegetables with it were tasty too. It came with a side of coleslaw and a few other cold vegetables, as well as a roll and butter (which I left, being a bit full). Dessert consisted of what I think was banoffee, I couldn't be entirely sure of what it was but it tasted nice enough. All in all a good dinner, at least by airline standards.

Now, for some sleep, methinks. It's been a long day, but in some sense it's already Friday morning...

---

Written c05:30 British time / c13:30 Japan time:

Having cruised over most of Siberia, we're now just approaching the north end of Hokkaido, the northernmost of the Japanese islands, about an hour and a half from touchdown. Breakfast/lunch is gradually being served. I haven't slept much: I slept for half an hour or so around 07:00 Japan time, and about two hours from 10:30 to 12:30 Japan time; otherwise I just dozed.

I envy the schoolkids, though: while some of them have curledt up and tried to sleep, most have been up all night playing video games and watching movies. Ah, to be 16 again...

I've now had my lunch - a very tasty roll with cheese, ham and chicken which you put together yourself, and a yogurt and some fruit salad. Boy, was I ready for that!

---

Written on day 3:

We got away so promptly from Heathrow that we landed half an hour early. So much so that I disembarked, went through security for connections, and found my gate ten minutes before we were due to land!

Narita is a very pleasant, spacious, modern airport; on this occasion, however, I could find little to do. I used the Internet for half an hour, but otherwise I just wandered around, too tired to do anything serious. There was a slight delay in boarding the next flight:

Flight NH955: 17:20 Tokyo Narita to Beijing, arr 20:10
Operated by ANA (All Nippon Airways) by a Boeing 767-300, seat 24A
Pushback 17:33, wheels-up 17:47, wheels-down 19:51, on stand 19:58

While I would have considered a three-and-a-half hour flight as pretty long until today, next to the long-haul flight I'd just stepped off it was nothing. In the end the flight time was only three hours and five minutes, ensuring an early arrival after a slightly late departure.

We were served a meal, a choice of fish or pork stew. The pork stew was not stew: it was some pieces of pork and mushroom in a thick, gloopy, orange-coloured sauce, and didn't taste great. It was served with mash and a few vegetables, which were alright. I couldn't work out if the (cold!) noodles with soy sauce, and the random selection of things which could just about be described as a 'salad', were meant as side dishes or a starter: as it was I didn't eat much of either. The dessert was a creme caramel, which was by far the best thing on the tray, even though it wasn't brilliant.

While I had a window seat, unfortunately I was right over the wing so I couldn't see much of the ground. On the other hand, most of Japan was shrouded in cloud, except Mount Fuji which stuck proudly up through the clouds. We then passed over South Korea before following the Gulf of Bohai up towards Beijing. The cloud didn't lift even as we came into land at Beijing, and only when we were a few feet off the ground could we see anything.

Beijing Capital Airport is, quite simply, enormous. Apparently Terminal Three is second in size only to Heathrow T5, but it seemed much bigger even than that, with a huge expansive roof and an internal subway system to move you from the gate (in T3E) to baggage reclaim (in T3C).

I retrieved my baggage, which successfully made it across Narita, and was met by my cousin Catherine. Catherine has been in Beijing for three years teaching in an international English-language school for ex-pats. She has a lovely flat in Sanyuanqiao in north-eastern Beijing, which she shares with her fiancé Martyn.

I got in to her flat about 21:15, had some cereal and got to bed after 31 hours being awake (well, that does include a couple of hours of sleep on the plane).

News of day 3 to follow shortly!

The Far East, Day 1

2010-06-10T17:11:00.002+01:00

Well, I've made it as far as Heathrow, and I'm currently sat in an internet café killing time before my 19:35 flight to Tokyo, whence I have two hours to catch a flight on to Beijing, arriving at 20:10 on Friday, 17 1/2 hours after leaving London.

The day started all too early at 09:30 British time, which was especially painful having only got to sleep at about 04:30. I hope I'll get some sleep on the flight. A shower, some final packing and some photocopying of documents later, I left the house at 11:25. My mum gave me a lift to Belfast City airport, where I caught

Flight BD87: 13:05 Belfast City to London Heathrow T1, arr 14:25
Operated by BMI (British Midland) using an Airbus A319; seat 8D
Pushback 1304, wheels-up 1310, wheels-down 1407, on stand 1415

A routine short hop across the Irish Sea: my 58th flight ever, and my 67th ever crossing of the Irish Sea (inclusive of ferries). BMI are familiar to me, mainly because my dad used to use them quite frequently for trips to London (maybe once a month or so). I last used them in 2004 for a day trip to Imperial College London for an open day, back when I was choosing undergraduate courses. Since then, the traditional full-service model has been replace by the now-standard buy-on-board system, which I didn't end up using mainly because I was too tired to want anything to eat.

We got away bang on time, and landed in Heathrow early with none of the usual ATC delays, on runway 9L. We got a good view of Terminal 5 on our right as we came into land; I hadn't realised the network of elevated roadways that allow seamless access to every level, and it looked quite impressive from 50 feet in the air. Unfortunately being early meant the gate wasn't quite ready for us, and even when it was we still had a 20-minute wait for our baggage.

Once my case arrived, I went down into the bowels under the terminals, and went for a seemingly interminable walk past the Piccadilly line station and the Heathrow Express station to get to Terminal 3, arriving there about 15:00. Unfortunately, the flight doesn't leave till 19:35, so the check-in desks didn't open until 16:30 or so. So I went and got some lunch.

It was after that that it finally started to hit me that I was going to a far-off distant land: I bought 1400 Chinese renminbi, and 18,000 Japanese yen. (That's about £150 of each.) After killing time in bookshops and on the phone, I went to check in.

Check-in was, itself, not the simple affair I'm used to. Because I'm spending a week in China and two weeks in Japan, I couldn't book London-Tokyo-Beijing on a single ticket, so the lady at the check-in desk at All Nippon Airways (Japan's second national carrier) had to input my connection data manually.

After a few minutes typing away at the computer, I came away with both boarding cards. That was a big relief; if I'd had to check in again in Tokyo (Narita) it would have been quite tight. But now that both I and my baggage are checked through to Beijing, all I have to do when I get to Tokyo is clear immigration and find the gate. In theory, anyway.

Now, however, I have a dilemma: what time to think of it as? It's 17:30 in London, 00:30 in Beijing and 01:30 in Tokyo. And I only have one watch. This is going to be confusing.

Anyway, I'll try and write some stuff on the two planes, which are:

NH202, 19:35 London Heathrow T3 to Tokyo Narita T1, arr 15:20 (Fri)
NH955, 17:20 Tokyo Narita T1 to Beijing, arr 20:10

I don't expect I'll get time to post on Friday night, so Day 2's post will hopefully come sometime on Saturday, after I've settled into Beijing.

The Far East, Day 0

2010-06-10T00:52:00.000+01:00

By the time you read this I will be on my way to China! I'm spending nine nights with my cousin Catherine in Beijing. Then I fly to Tokyo to meet up with Jonathan Elliott, who is in Japan visiting his brother. We will spend six days touring Japan, then he flies home and I have another week of tourism.

In full, I fly with Bmi from Belfast to Heathrow, then with All Nippon Airways from there to Tokyo and on to Beijing. I leave at 1305 on Thursday 10th June, and arrive at 2010 Friday (Beijing time), 24 hours later.

I then fly on to Tokyo on Sunday 20th June at 0830, arriving at 1300 (Japan time). Coming home, I leave Tokyo at 1130 on Saturday 3rd July and arrive home at 2055, 17 hours later.

Timezones are _weird_.

For the purposes of this blog, which I shall be updating as often as possible from my iPod touch, I define Thursday 10th June to be Day 1; that will make Saturday 3rd July day 24.

I have a Japan Rail Pass, which is basically like an All Line Rover, but for Japan. And only available to foreign visitors. And cheaper, at ¥45100 (£347). So I shall be doing much train travel in Japan!

As I say, I'll update when I can, and if all else fails I'll upload the story when I'm home. Watch this space!

Now, to finish packing...

Increasing capacity on the railways: my verdict on High Speed Rail

2010-03-11T19:43:00.002Z

Today Lord Adonis, the Secretary of State for Transport, announced a £30bn plan to build a high-speed railway line between London and Birmingham from 2017, eventually extending to Manchester and Leeds. Here I'm going to try and examine the plans and give my verdict.

The basic idea of high-speed rail in the UK is that we should build new tracks to take the strain off the existing mainlines, and make the new lines capable of trains travelling at more than 200mph. This would give a much-needed injection of capacity into our struggling mainlines. It's analogous to the situation of the road network in the 1950s: the A-roads were clogged and there wasn't any capacity to do anything. So we built the motorways. High-speed rail is to the railway network what motorways are to the road network.

The point of high-speed rail is not speed, it's capacity. Again, it's like the motorways: we didn't build the motorways so we could all whizz up and down the country at 100mph, we built them so the A-roads didn't collapse under the strain. That's not to say that we can't get fantastic speeds out of new high-speed lines. Herein lies another similarity to motorways: both need to be built wide and straight, to maximise the speed. The world speed record for traditional steel-wheel-on-steel-rail trains is held by the French, with one of their TGVs attaining an astonishing 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph).

The idea of high-speed rail has been around for a long time: the Japanese started in 1964, as a showcase for the Tokyo Olympics. The Shinkansen (or Bullet Train) has become synonymous with high-speed rail, with a network covering the whole of Japan.

The French were the pioneers in Europe, starting with Paris to Lyon in 1981, a line not dissimilar to our West Coast Main Line (WCML). But instead of upgrading the existing line, as we did between 1999 and 2008, they chose to build a completely new line. The result? Journey times on Paris-Lyon were cut from 5 hours to 2 hours overnight. Since then, the French have built a vast network extending from Lille to Marseilles, from Le Mans to Strasbourg.

The rest of Europe has got in on the act too, with Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium all building their own high-speed lines. The first high-speed line in the UK was opened in 2007 to connect London to the Channel Tunnel.

The second line, whose plans were announced today, would run from London to Birmingham and Rugeley, with a connection to the WCML to permit onwards services to Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. This would take all the fast trains off the WCML and leave lots of capacity south of Rugby for growth and for new services.

The capacity increase comes from the act of building new tracks: in that respect, building a new ordinary-speed line would have just the same (if not more) effect on capacity. Once you've decided to build new tracks, however, it makes more economic sense to build them to be capable of very fast speeds, because more people will be attracted to a faster train service, so you get more money out of them and the investment is thus justified.

Let's not kid ourselves: the investment required for building high-speed lines in Britain would be huge. And we, as taxpayers, would foot almost all of the bill. The first line to the Channel Tunnel cost £5 billion. According to today's report, the second line from London to Birmingham announced today might cost £17 billion, and a Y-shaped network to take the pressure off the West Coast and East Coast Main Lines and get all the way from London to Manchester and Leeds could cost £30 billion.

Put another way, a line from London to Birmingham would cost cost every British man, woman and child £280 each. The full network reaching from London to Manchester and Leeds would cost £500 each. Some would say that's quite a lot of money; it is, but in some ways it's actually very good value for money. Because the benefits would be, quite simply, enormous.

Primarily, it would give the network the injection of capacity it sorely needs. As I said before, the West Coast Main Line will be out of capacity in about a decade. Building a second high-speed line from London to the West Midlands would effectively double the capacity for long-distance trains to the North West and Scotland.

The East Coast Main Line suffers from a massive bottleneck at Welwyn, where four tracks merge into two to squeeze through a long viaduct and two long tunnels. Even the cheapest plan to fix this bottleneck would probably cost at least £3 billion, and the capacity increase would be nothing compared to that provided by a high-speed line between London and Yorkshire - given the limited capacity of the ECML it's not hard to imagine that such a high-speed line could triple capacity between London and Yorkshire.

As a secondary effect, journey times would be significantly reduced. Even with just a simple London-West Midlands high-speed line, journey times on London-Birmingham would be cut from 1 hour 20 minutes to just 49 minutes; London-Manchester, currently standing at about 2 hours 5 minutes, could take just 1 hour 40 minutes; and London-Glasgow could be reduced from 4 hours 30 minutes to under 4 hours.

With a network that extends to Manchester and Leeds, London to Glasgow or Edinburgh could be as fast as just 3 hours 30 minutes. That would put a serious dent in British Airways and BMI, who have a lucrative eight flights a day -- each! -- between London and Glasgow and London and Edinburgh.

The space capacity on the West Coast Main Line would permit a whole range of services which have been sidelined to come back to life. It would permit a huge increase in commuter services to the likes of Watford Junction, Milton Keynes and Northampton. It would also permit services to smaller cities such as Blackpool to return; London-Blackpool services last ran in 2003, withdrawn to make room for more services to Glasgow and Liverpool.

It also gives room for increased freight traffic: a single train composed of deep-sea containers can do the work of thirty or more HGVs. With more capacity for freight on our railways, we can start to remove freight from the roads, and so even the road network ends up with more capacity as a result.

All this begs the question that, if high-speed rail is so good, why hasn't it been built already? In part that's down to the decisions in the 1960s and 1970s to upgrade the existing network instead of building new lines, and this attitude has prevailed ever since. But there's only so much upgrading that can be done, and the last big upgrade on the West Coast Main Line resulted in a sub-standard weekend service for most of the last decade.

By contrast, building high-speed lines causes much less disruption to the existing railway network, but instead causes years of planning enquiries and NIMBYism. Today's report is the result of a year-long study by HS2 Ltd to find the best route between London and Birmingham; this route will cut through the Chilterns, and already the opposition from the Campaign to Protect Rural England has been vociferous.

Nevertheless, all three main political parties have agreed over the last few years to the necessity of high-speed rail in principle, which means that today's report stands a good chance of being implemented eventually, if not perhaps quite as soon as the timescale envisaged by Lord Adonis today which would involve construction starting in 2017 and opening in 2026.

However, the Conservative shadow transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, said that Labour had "betrayed" the vision of high-speed rail set out by the Conservatives a few years ago; in particular she lamented the fact that today's plans only got as far as Birmingham, not Manchester and Leeds, and that Heathrow was not to be served directly.

While today's plans don't set out detailed plans for lines to Manchester and Leeds, they do endorse them as the vital next step after building the line from London to Birmingham. Pretty much everyone agrees that you've got to go via Birmingham to get to the north, so today's announcement is a reasonable first step, and planning on lines to Manchester and Leeds can follow later once we've cut our teeth on the line to Birmingham.

How to serve Heathrow, however, has been a subject of contentious debate in the railway press for many years now. Heathrow is not well-served by trains, with only the Heathrow Express service into Paddington as a link to the wider railway network; a long wished-for connection from Heathrow to Reading has been suggested for many years but has not materialised. This is in contrast to Gatwick, which has had direct train connections to London, Brighton, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bedford, Luton, Reading and many other places in the south of England for decades.

Today's proposals see Heathrow being served by a station in the Acton area of west London to allow interchange between High Speed Two (the new line to Birmingham) and Crossrail, the new east-west suburban line across London which will serve Heathrow from 2017. This would permit passengers to make one train change to get between Heathrow and the north of England, as well as making access to the west end and the Docklands much easier.

The Tories would prefer this station to be much nearer Heathrow, or perhaps even underneath the airport (though this would require much more expensive tunnelling). This is because the Tories see the primary purpose of high-speed rail as an alternative to domestic air travel, so much so that they've proposed building high-speed rail instead of a third runway at Heathrow.

In my view that simply isn't a feasible goal, since for it to make any kind of a dent in usage at Heathrow you'd need a line all the way to Scotland, which would probably cost in excess of £50 billion and take 30 years to build. What's more, the fraction of flights out of Heathrow which are domestic is so small that removing them would still leave the airport close to capacity. No, as evidenced by every other country which has built high-speed rail the fundamental purpose of high-speed rail is capacity of the railway network itself; any effects it might have on air travel are secondary.

One key feature of today's report has been detailed proposals on exactly how the high-speed line will serve London and Birmingham. It's no use buildling a high-speed line from the edge of London to the edge of Birmingham if it can't get into the city centres. Today it has been proposed to expand and rebuild London Euston to take high-speed trains, and to run the tracks out along a lightly-used line through West Ruislip.

They also plan to build a new station on derelict land just east of Birmingham New Street, on the site of the old Curzon Street station. The latter is something I've been advocating for several years, and I'm very pleased that the report has not tried to shoehorn the high-speed services into an existing station at Moor Street or New Street, since neither would be able to cope. (I intend to examine Birmingham in more detail in a future blog post.)

There will undoubtedly be opponents to the route chosen between London and Birmingham, which cuts through swathes of countryside in Buckinghamshire and Warwickshire. There will be questions from many along the lines of "why should we put up with a line through our back yard from which we can't get any benefit unless we drive to Birmingham or London?" The answer, of course, is that they will benefit from improved services on existing railway lines and less traffic on the roads. I know that won't silence them, but I can live in hope, right?

Today's report spells out the detail of how High Speed Two should be constructed. What it doesn't spell out, however, is how it's going to be paid for. At a cost of £17 billion, no government would be eager to part with that much cash; in this economic climate it would be a miracle.

However, there is much detailed design work and consultation to be done before we can actually start building; it is most likely that construction will begin no earlier than 2017, once Crossrail has been completed. So hopefully the economy will have recovered significantly by then, and the funding for a high-speed line would be forthcoming. Make no mistake, however; the bulk of the funding must come from the government, and thus, ultimately, from taxpayers.

In conclusion, then, today's report is a huge milestone on the road to high-speed rail in England, and I commend the work of both HS2 Ltd and Lord Adonis in getting us this far. I think today is perhaps the day that the question turned from if we see high-speed rail to when. However, to see exactly what happens next, and when, we must wait until after the general election.