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.
Tuesday 8 November 2011
Monday 26 September 2011
California, Day 6
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.
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.
Sunday 25 September 2011
California, Day 5
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.
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.
Friday 23 September 2011
California, Day 4
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.
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.
Wednesday 21 September 2011
California, Day 3
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.
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.
Monday 19 September 2011
California, Day 2
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.
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.
Sunday 18 September 2011
California, Day 1
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.
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.
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Bank Holiday Engineering Works: Bus Substitution vs. Diverted Trains
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.
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.
Sunday 31 July 2011
Freedom of Scotland: Reflections
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...
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
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.
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.
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Freedom of Scotland, Day 9
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
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.
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.
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