North Country Rover, Day 4: Railfest 2012

Sunday was a grey, dreary day in York, where the rain seeped imperceptibly through one's clothes, and any sensible man would have stayed inside and watched the Jubilee Pageant on television. But Ian and I are not to be stopped by a little water: we were going to Railfest 2012, a giant exhibition of old steam locomotives, diesel engines and modern electric trains all set in the grounds of the National Railway Museum. Such an event is not held often - the last was eight years ago - and as it only lasts a week we wouldn't have another chance. And anyway, we'd already paid in advance.

The United Kingdom has a rich engineering heritage, especially when it comes to trains, but too often this is overlooked and cast to one side, with the seemingly more important task of keeping the infrastructure running taking precedence over celebrating that it exists at all. Sometimes we are all too willing to complain about trains being six minutes late, and too quick to ignore the fact that it's quite amazing that we can make a vehicle comfortable enough for passengers to travel in that's capable of hurtling along the rails at 125mph.

From Stephenson's Rocket of 1830 running on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first inter-city railway in the world, to the high-tech super-fast Pendolinos and Javelins of our modern railway network, Britain has never been far from the cutting edge of railway technology. Indeed, we still hold the world speed records for steam and diesel trains (though I might argue that that's because we didn't move on with everyone else and kept trying to beat the world at yesterday's technology). Where better to showcase this excellence than at the National Railway Museum?

I wasn't quite sure what to expect at Railfest. I knew there would be many visiting exhibits, including 60163 Tornado, the first steam locomotive built in the UK for forty years, and 91110, the electric locomotive which held the British rail speed record of 162mph (at least prior to the opening of HS1), and many other steam locomotives and modern trains alike.

But I wasn't sure who would be there: part of me was worried it would be overrun by trainspotters - perhaps a little rich coming from me, but I know that we aren't always the most fun people to hang out with - and that, rather than celebrating Britain's railway engineering excellence, I'd end up arguing about the precise colour of paint a locomotive is painted in. The event was trailed in the media as an event for all the family, but I worried about how true that would actually be.

Regardless of what we thought it was going to be like, we knew it would be busy, so we'd bought our tickets online in advance. Unfortunately the rain on Sunday somewhat dampened demand: the elaborate queueing arrangements went unneeded, and we were issued with our wristbands - permitting us unlimited access to the Railfest area for the day - in no time at all. We immediately found ourselves in a huge site dotted with trains old and new, with the unmistakable smell of steam engines thick in the air.

We were spoilt for choice for what to look at first. We chose the first thing that caught our eyes: 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley, an LNER A4 Pacific locomotive which holds the post-war steam speed record of 112mph, which was preserved and normally resides at the NYMR we visited on Friday. It looked beautiful in newly-polished BR Blue, and in spite of the persistent rain sat resplendent next to 60163 Tornado.

What I hadn't quite appreciated was the level of access we'd have to the exhibits: they were not just static exhibits, they were living machines, running in "light steam" (enough to make the whistle work and keep the engine crew warm!) which you could, in many cases, climb aboard and talk to volunteers about how they work and how they came to be preserved. After a short queue, we got to climb aboard the footplate of Gresley and behold the machine in all its glory. It was quite a feeling to stand on the footplate of a steam train; I had to resist the urge to squeal with excitement.

Unfortunately we couldn't climb aboard Tornado just yet - that would have to wait until later - so we went next door to the two HST power cars. The original prototype HST power car number 41001, complete with matching Mark 3 coach (still in service with FGW but specially repainted), stood next to 43159, one of FGW's power cars that was recently reengined to give it another few decades of life. Both were open to go and not just look around but sit in: forgive me if I sound like I'm five years old, but I got to sit in the driver's seat of an HST!

The differences were stark: most notably, the prototype just had one driver's seat, but the unions kicked up stink about the safety of one-man operation and the production fleet of HSTs was built with two seats in the driving cab, one for the driver and one for the "secondman," who was presumably there to provide an extra vigilant pair of eyes but whose purpose was clearly deemed unnecessary by their abolition in the 1990s.

After looking hopefully at Tornado but seeing no-one present to enable us to step onto the footplate, we wandered over to the "Red Zone", at the far edge of the site. Here there were a large variety of modern locomotives on display, interspersed with a few old ones too. Virgin Trains had sent along one of their Thunderbird locomotives, 57008, as well as their two redundant power cars which now make up Voyager number 221144 (the two centre cars having been "borrowed" to lengthen two other trains from four to five carriages); we got to look around both and sit in the cabs of each.

One common theme that played out across most of the driving cabs we got the chance to visit was the lack of visibility: even the Voyager, with its modern cab, has a relatively small windscreen; perhaps this is to keep the driver's attention focussed on the "road" ahead. But when compared to the visibility afforded to steam train drivers, Voyager drivers win hands-down; steam train drivers get very little forward visibility at all, at least without sticking their heads out the window.

There were a number of other locomotives around which, at least today, were on static display - including a class 92 locomotive owned by GB Railfreight and a class 37 locomotive owned by DRS - as well as a number of specialist vehicles used by Network Rail, including an MPV (multiple-purpose vehicle) used for, among other things, water-jetting or sanding the track to ensure adhesion during leaf-fall season, and a snowblower. Both are often heard of and without them our network would often come to a complete standstill; seeing them in the flesh, however, was pretty unusual.

After a good look round, we headed for our first train ride of the day. Oh yes, some of the trains were not just on show but running in service. We got on a train on the 15-inch gauge line, with Synolda from the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway on one end and Hawk from the Kirklees Light Railway on the other. The ride took less than a minute - there wasn't much space for 15-inch track on site - but was fun enough nonetheless.

We then headed towards the Southeastern high-speed unit number 395019, better known as a "Javelin" thanks to the Olympic shuttle service they will run this summer during the Olympic Games. While I'd been a passenger in one, I hadn't seen the driving cab of one before: this was particularly interesting, since the Javelins have to work not just on conventional lines but also on HS1, the high-speed link from London through east Kent to the Channel Tunnel where the systems are more akin to the French railways than the British.

Our final stop before lunch was to the Brighton Belle. Fifteen plush carriages were built to run three very special "Pullman" dining services between Victoria and Brighton in the 1930s; eventually they were replaced by standard passenger trains, but many of the carriages live on, some as restaurants and bars, but others remain largely intact, and the hope of the "Bringing Back the Brighton Belle" group is to restore one of the three five-carriage sets to service by 2013.

One of the cars already under restoration, car 88 (a motored third class carriage), was on display to look around and sit in, and once on board we got talking to one of the preservationists about the project, which involves almost complete structural rebuilding of the train. It's a monumental task which involves taking bogies (basically the wheel axles) from another old train (but one not nearly as old) and chopping them to fit, among many other things like trying to get the electrics to work again. We wished them well and head off for lunch.

After a nice meal in the NRM cafe, we headed into the NRM proper for a look round the indoor exhibits (not part of Railfest) to give the rain the chance to ease off. We took a look round the Search Engine, the NRM's library of books historic and modern about all things related to railways, as well as The Works, where all the eclectic railway-related stuff that doesn't quite fit into place in a display cabinet is shown off, including everything from discarded station name-boards to old signals.

Also included in The Works is a real-time feed from the signal box at York, showing the computer screens signallers use to regulate and control the service. The screens are a little unintelligible to a newcomer, but they look almost exactly like SimSig, a computer game (well, simulation) that accurately replicates the environment in a modern signalbox and lets you try and run the railway from the comfort of your own home. It's harder than you might think, and has kept me amused for hours on end for over six years now.

The only weird thing about seeing the live feed in York was that I had to keep reminding myself that it was real, and not the simulation I usually play with at home: I noticed a train to Harrogate just leaving the station and pointed it out to Ian, whereupon he pointed to the window and said "yes, there it goes!", and it roared past and left me slightly disorientated.

We then took a look round the rest of the Great Hall, including the model railway layout; the Japanese bullet train; various steam locomotives such as 92220 Evening Star, the last mainline steam locomotive built by British Rail; 26020, one of the 1500V DC electric locomotives built for the now-closed Woodhead route between Manchester and Sheffield; and a replica of Stephenson's Rocket, the first ever railway locomotive which hauled passengers between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830.

After a good look round, we headed back outside to queue for the best train ride of the day: two carriages hauled in one direction by D6700, the first ever class 37 diesel locomotive built in the early 1960s as the beginning of BR's modernisation plan to eliminate steam from the network, and in the other direction by 3717 City of Truro, the first steam locomotive ever to top 100mph. Although the ride was fairly short - a few minutes in each direction to the end of the yard and back - it was satisfying to feel and hear two historic locomotives running under their own power and hauling us even on this short journey.

We headed over to look at an LNER observation coach - a carriage specially designed with windows on three sides, to give maximum visibility to the rear of the train - before moving on to the highlight of my day: standing on the footplate of Tornado. Although it had been closed earlier, it was now open and while we had to queue for a few minutes, the privilege of standing on the footplate of Tornado, and talking to the operators about how it's maintained and operated, was not something I'll soon forget.

Tornado is the realisation of a dream had some 20 years ago, that a steam locomotive could be built from scratch and brought into service on the mainline. None of the original 49 LNER Class A1 locomotives were preserved, and so in 1991 a group of volunteers set about building one from scratch from the original designs, updated to comply with modern safety standards. In 2008, after a total cost of some £3 million, their perseverance was rewarded when the locomotive first moved under its own power. It now regularly hauls charter trains up and down the country, at up to 75mph, and I look forward to being hauled by Tornado on the mainline some day.

Our visit to Tornado over, we moved on to the Yellow Zone, where there were two true record-breakers, nose to nose. On one side, 4468 Mallard, the LNER Class A4 Pacific locomotive which still holds the world record for a steam train, set at 126mph on 3rd July 1938. On the other, 91110 Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, which had been thusly named the previous day with an RAF flypast, one of East Coast's class 91 electric locomotives that holds the British speed record (excluding HS1) of 162mph, recorded on 17th September 1989. Both were on static display, but even to be in the presence of such incredible machines, and to touch them, was quite something.

We rounded out the day with a couple more train rides, one pulled by Courage, a diesel locomotive built by Hunslet with just 20hp, and the other by Ffestiniog Railway locomotive Palmerston, on a specially installed length of 2ft gauge track. In between times, we spent a long while wandering around the marketplace, where a number of stalls were selling railway books old and new: I found some gems, including a book of gradient profiles and some old maps, while Ian bought an old timetable from 1993 (the first to include Manchester Airport).

All in all, we were surprised at just how much Railfest had to offer: it was fascinating not just for enthusiasts like Ian and I, but also to families with kids able to brag about how they sat in the driver's seat of a train, and to the general public interested in learning about the history of our railway network. Indeed, I suspect we could have spent even longer wandering around but tiredness and the rain got the better of us - admittedly after nearly seven hours at one of the best exhibitions I've ever been to.

To all who helped organise Railfest - the staff at Network Rail and the train operating companies for giving up their time and equipment, the magazines like Rail and Steam Railway who spearheaded the whole event, and the staff at the National Railway Museum who made it all happen - thank you for one of the most enjoyable days of "playing on trains" I've had in years.

Railfest runs until Sunday 10th June, at the NRM next to York station; if you can, go before it closes - you won't regret it.

North Country Rover, Day 3: Yorkshire East and West

On Saturday we undertook to go on as many of the lines in East and West Yorkshire that we hadn't been on before as possible. We started with a circular tour of East Yorkshire, by heading for Scarborough:

0941 York to Scarborough, arr 1030
Headcode: 1E63, operated by Transpennine Express using Desiro 185127
Distance: 42 miles; walk-up price: £9.75

It being a relatively nice Saturday in June (by which I mean it wasn't raining), the world and his wife seemed to have decided to go to the seaside. As such, our three-car train from York to Scarborough was pretty full, with Ian and I being lucky to get seats at all, and a number of people standing (at least to Malton).

However, most of the people on the train had got off at York; those going to Scarborough had mostly come from York (like us) or changed trains there. In fact, so many people were trying to get off and on at once that it might have been easier to have a separate train from York to Scarborough and force people to change, rather than running through services all the way from Liverpool.

Indeed, that may well happen soon: plans are afoot to electrify the north trans-Pennine route from Liverpool to York. Electric trans-Pennine services will run from Liverpool and Manchester to at least Newcastle and York; whether they will also serve Hull and Middlesbrough is yet to be decided, but the branch to Scarborough will probably remain unelectrified (at least for the time being) and so services will probably be reduced to a shuttle between York and Scarborough.

Even if it were, such a shuttle would be well-used: the line itself is a nice run, skirting the southern edges of the North Yorkshire Moors, and the principal destination - Scarborough - is still a prime tourist spot for beach-goers, seaside-lovers and arcade-game addicts alike. Unfortunately we only had an hour or so to spend there, but we had enough time to at least wander down to the beach and take a quick look around. We got one of the "cliff lift" tramways back up the hill and avoid the steep walk, before grabbing some lunch to eat later and heading back up to the train station for our next train to Hull:

1128 Scarborough to Hull, arr 1254
Headcode: 1J27, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158908
Distance: 53.75 miles; walk-up price: £9.25

The line joining Scarborough to Hull - the only line contained entirely in East Yorkshire - is sometimes named the "Yorkshire Coast line". We couldn't quite see why: we caught a brief glimpse of the coast just north of Bridlington but otherwise the line was just far enough inland to put the coast out of sight, which is odd given that most of the places it links are coastal resorts, at least for the northern half of the line.

The train arrived at Scarborough as a two-car class 158 coupled to a one-car class 153, but the 153 was detached and left at Scarborough, presumably to strengthen a later train. Our two-car Sprinter seemed fine until Seamer, at which point the world and his wife had got off the next Scarborough train to head to Bridlington instead, forcing the guard to make an announcement that he wanted to see "bums, not bags, on seats"; however even then the train wasn't completely full.

A level crossing problem delayed us for for five minutes at Hunmanby, but thanks to various tricks of timetable planning we made up the deficit and arrived a couple of minutes early into Hull Paragon station. Paragon was once a huge station boasting 14 platforms; today its main shed holds only seven platforms, with one of the old platforms having been converted into a very long bus station (with 32 stands). With the addition of the bus station, however, came a full refurbishment and the whole station basks in the light from the roof.

Having had a quick look around, we headed for our third train of the day, this time back to York:

1312 Hull to York, arr 1427
Headcode: 2R98, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158850
Distance: 52 miles; walk-up price: £12.95

While we tucked into our sandwiches, our train headed west out of Hull under the Humber Bridge towards Selby. Selby used to lie on the ECML proper until 1983, when subsidence from abandoned coalfields meant that the route via Selby could no longer be maintained without severe speed restrictions. Instead Selby now lies primarily on the east-west Leeds-Hull line, with two different routes now permitting trains to join the ECML heading north towards York.

On this train we took the route via Sherburn-in-Elmet, a lightly used station which sees occasional trains between York and Selby and two trains a day between Sheffield and York via Pontefract Baghill. On arrival at York, we got off the train, went to the toilet, walked up and down the platform a bit, and then got back on the very same train:

1447 York to Selby, arr 1506
Headcode: 2R11, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 158850
Distance: 17.75 miles; walk-up price: £4.35

Our train was going back to Hull by the other route: rather than going all the way via Sherburn-in-Elmet, this time the train uses the short connecting line at Hambleton Junction, where the Leeds-Selby line crosses the 1983 ECML diversion, and for the sake of completeness we decided to do both routes. Unfortunately we got held up slightly at Hambleton by a delayed eastbound TPE service to Hull, meaning we had to follow it into Selby, turning a tight five-minute connection to our westbound TPE to Leeds into a one-minute dash across the footbridge:

1511 Selby to Leeds, arr 1536
Headcode: 1K19, operated by Transpennine Express using Turbostar 170106+170104
Distance: 20.75 miles; walk-up price: £5.30

We made it. TPE's class 185 Desiros are too heavy for the line to Hull, so the services to and from Hull are still operated by class 170 Turbostars, which are only two carriages long. If you're unlucky and get one which is just two carriages it can be pretty full, but today we had two joined together and the four carriages were remarkably quiet, at least for the half-hour journey to Leeds.

Once in Leeds, our focus turned from East Yorkshire to West Yorkshire, specifically the network of lines between Leeds, Bradford, Shipley, Ilkley and Skipton which were electrified in 1994/95 as an add-on to the recently completed ECML electrification. We started by getting a Skipton train as far as Saltaire:

1556 Leeds to Saltaire, arr 1610
Headcode: 2H52, operated by Northern Rail using EMU 333011
Distance: 11.5 miles; walk-up price: £2.10

Saltaire is the first station north of Shipley, which is one of only two triangular stations in the country, in that it has platforms on all three sides of a triangle of railway lines (pub quiz question: name the other one!). We decided to go round all three sides of the triangle in full, thus passing through Shipley three times. The first was on the "main line" (which is the least curved of the three sides of the triangle, but still on a bit of a bend) to Skipton. After crossing the bridge at Saltaire, we headed back in the other direction, for the second side of the triangle:

1624 Saltaire to Bradford Forster Square, arr 1638
Headcode: 2S45, operated by Northern Rail using EMU 333004
Distance: 3.5 miles; walk-up price: £1.15

The Skipton-Bradford services use platform 5 at Shipley in both directions, thus making this side of the triangle the only one with only one platform and not two. So close to Shipley is Saltaire that the signal protecting the junction at the west end of Shipley - and telling the drivers which way they are going - is at the end of the platform at Saltaire! The run to Bradford's Forster Square station - one of two termini facing in opposite directions (the other being Interchange) that the Midland Railway planned to connect but never did - was short and uneventful; when our train arrived in Bradford we stayed on it to head back for the third side of the Shipley triangle:

1644 Bradford Forster Square to Ilkley, arr 1717
Headcode: 2D70, operated by Northern Rail using EMU 333004
Distance: 13.5 miles; walk-up price: £2.20

The final side of the Shipley triangle connects Bradford to Leeds. Immediately south of the triangle at Shipley, however, is a much larger triangle (a couple of miles wide rather than a few hundred yards wide) with the line to Ilkley; we'd already traversed the mainline to Skipton earlier, so this train got us the Shipley-Ilkley side of the triangle.

The line to Ilkley, generally known as the Wharfedale Line, is entirely within the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire. However, while its towns are suburban dormitory towns for Leeds and Bradford, they lie nestled in the southern tip of the Yorkshire Dales, and seem like the perfect place to commute from. After a quick walk from Ilkley station to Tesco to buy a drink and use the facilities, we headed back to Leeds to traverse the final side of the Ilkley triangle:

1740 Ilkley to Leeds, arr 1809
Headcode: 2V51, operated by Northern Rail using EMU 333014
Distance: 16.25 miles; walk-up price: £2.80

All four of our suburban trips on the West Yorkshire Electrics were provided by Class 333 electric multiple units built by Siemens in 2001. Unlike the cast-off Class 308 slam-door trains which were used as a stopgap after electrification in 1994, the class 333 units are modern, comfortable, and quick; admittedly they are somewhat spartan inside, but for the typical short commuter journeys they provide they are ideal. A pity that the same could not be said for our next train:

1829 Leeds to Harrogate, arr 1903
Headcode: 2C56, operated by Northern Rail using Pacers 142016+144007
Distance: 18.25 miles; walk-up price: £4.90

We headed north to Harrogate on the dreaded Pacer, the illegitimate love-child of British Rail and British Leyland buses which saved costs in the 1980s but fail to be comfortable, capacious or crashworthy in today's modern railway. The Leeds-Harrogate-York line is an obvious candidate for electrification - if it could be tacked on to a big project such as the trans-Pennine electrification it would probably cost very little - but currently remains unwired and often served by Pacers.

Harrogate itself, by complete contrast to the trains serving it, is a beautiful spa town which, in spite of its proximity to large cities like Leeds and York, manages to have facilities beyond its 70,000 population would appear to deserve, including, for example, a Wagamama in which we had dinner. With plenty of time before the last train back to York, we wandered around the town's parks before heading back to the station:

2105 Harrogate to York, arr 2148
Headcode: 2C66, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinters 150224+150103
Distance: 20.5 miles; walk-up price: £5.00

Mercifully, our final train home to York was not a Pacer but rather a pair of Sprinters; admittedly they had less legroom (being in 2+3 seating rather than 2+2) but they didn't jar us to pieces going over every joint in the track. After grabbing some breakfast for the morning, we headed to our hotel ready for a change of pace on Sunday: exploring Railfest 2012 at the National Railway Museum.

North Country Rover, Day 2: Whitby and the NYMR

On Friday, we went for a day trip to the seaside fishing town of Whitby. Getting from York to Whitby is actually annoyingly difficult: since 1967 the shortest rail route involves going all the way up to Middlesbrough before heading east on the Esk Valley line. This is such a roundabout route that Transdev's Yorkshire Coastliner bus service, running direct between York and Whitby, takes a lot of the business by being faster than the trains.

Before 1967, however, there was a much more direct line via Malton and Pickering which rose over the North Yorkshire Moors to get to Whitby. This line was bought out privately almost as soon as it had closed in 1967, and by 1973 the section from Pickering to Grosmont - where it joins the Esk Valley line from Middlesbrough to Whitby - reopened as the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR), one of the very first privately-owned heritage railways. It remains open today as one of the most popular such lines in the country, where volunteers try to recreate the environment of years gone by, with lovingly-restored steam engines hauling preserved rolling stock.

This still leaves a six-mile gap between Pickering and Rillington Junction, on the York-Scarborough line just outside Malton. Rather than fuss about getting a train from York to Malton and changing to a bus to Pickering, we decided to get one of the Yorkshire Coastliner buses direct from York to Pickering:

0942 York, Blossom St to Pickering, Eastgate Sq, arr 1058
Service #840, operated by Transdev using Yorkshire Coastliner bus 423
Distance: approx 26 miles; walk-up price: £8.00

The Yorkshire Coastliner bus - a modern, comfortable double-decker which even had headrests (not something I'm used to on my commute to and from campus!) - forms a half-hourly service between Leeds, York and Malton, with extensions every hour or two to various coastal towns such as Bridlington, Scarborough and Whitby; ours happened to be terminating at Thornton-le-dale, just east of Pickering.

It took just over an hour and a quarter to cover the 26 miles from York to Pickering, the route mainly following the A64 to Malton, before going through Malton town centre and heading out the A169 towards Pickering. The route started out fairly level, across the plain of the River Ouse, before gradually becoming more undulating as we got closer to the Moors, with the road rising and falling with the numerous valleys.

Before we could get too used to the nice scenery, we arrived in Pickering and, after buying a drink, walked over to Pickering station on the NYMR. Pickering station is one of very few heritage stations to have an overall roof: the original trainshed, dating from 1845, survived the closure of the line in the 1960s, and the whole station has been made to look as much as possible like an LNER station would have done in the 1930s.

We duly went to buy our tickets to Whitby, only to be told that Network Rail were doing some engineering works on the run-round loop at Whitby - that is, the extra bit of track that allows them to take the engine off the front, run it "round" the train, and put it back on the front. The NYMR had considered top-and-tailing the train - putting one engine on each end to remove the need to run round at Whitby - but unfortunately one engine had failed, and so they were unable to run through to Whitby.

Instead, they could only take us by steam train to Grosmont, where the NYMR meets the Esk Valley Line, and then we would be conveyed onwards by a coach. We asked about service trains, but the trains are so infrequent that if we'd waited at Grosmont for a service train we'd have ended up only having 15 minutes in Whitby. Having no other sensible option, we agreed to take the steam train to Grosmont, and get on the replacement bus.

We had arrived in Pickering with 45 minutes to wait for the train, so we took the opportunity to look round the station. On the wall is an original North Eastern Railway map, painted on tiles and mounted on the wall for all to see just how many lines closed during the 1960s: Malton, far from being a simple one-platform halt on the York-Scarborough line, was once the site of two triangular junctions, one for the line to Pickering and Whitby (now run by the NYMR) and one for the line to Driffield.

At 11:40, our train arrived from Grosmont, hauled by BR Standard Class 4 Tank engine no. 80072, originally built in 1953 but made redundant after just 12 years of service, mostly on the London, Tilbury and Southend line running commuter trains - it being a tank engine (i.e. it doesn't have a separate tender to carry the water) limited it to short commuter runs. It was preserved and now usually resides at the Llangollen Railway, and is currently on loan to the NYMR. After the engine ran round the train and was watered, we boarded for the run to Grosmont:

1200 Pickering to Grosmont, arr 1305
Headcode: 1T12, operated by North Yorkshire Moors Railway using BR 4MT 80072 + 6 mark 1 coaches
Distance: 18 miles; walk-up price: £15.00

Our steam engine hauled six Mark 1 coaches for the hour-long journey to Grosmont, winding for nearly twenty miles through the wonderful North Yorkshire Moors. Heading north, we climbed gradually for twelve miles, winding between the hills through Levisham up to Goathland summit at an average gradient of about 1 in 100, through some beautiful countryside enriched by the sound and smell of our steam engine.

From the summit the line descends rapidly to the Esk Valley at Grosmont, the last three miles at an impressive 1 in 49 - on departing from Goathland station we didn't have to gun the engine at all; all it took was a release of the brakes and we were down the hill in no time. Ascending the gradient would have been quite an experience, but that will have to wait for another occasion when I can head south rather than north; if this journey did nothing else it made me want to come back and see the wonderful North Yorkshire Moors again.

And hopefully that next time can include a trip by steam train all the way through to Whitby. Instead, owing to the problems with the run-round loop, we were transferred by bus from Grosmont to Whitby:

1310 Grosmont to Whitby, arr 1335
Rail replacement bus operated on behalf of North Yorkshire Moors Railway
Distance: approx 7 miles; walk-up price included above

Somehow, in seven years of travelling on British trains, I've always avoided the dreaded rail replacement bus, mainly by planning my travels to avoid the need for such things. Unfortunately that streak came to an end on Friday and I ended up on my first ever rail replacement bus. Admittedly, however, it wasn't exactly arduous, or even annoying in the slightest: it was one of the nicest bus rides I've ever been on.

To get from Grosmont to Whitby, the bus had to climb up a very narrow road with gradients of 33% - much more than a train could handle, but the bus was clearly used to it and handled the gradients with ease - before descending down Blue Bank, a mile-long descent at 20% on the A169. We then climbed back up the other side of the valley before descending down again to the coast at Whitby.

Whitby is not your typical English coastal resort: in fact, it's much more like a traditional fishing village than a seaside town. Nonetheless, it is a significant tourist destination and a lovely place to look around for a few hours. On the recommendation of a mutual friend we went to the Magpie Cafe for a huge fish and chips, which was really good but too big for my stomach to handle (I should have gone for the small, not the regular...).

After lunch we took a walk up the 199 steps to St Mary's Church and Whitby Abbey, set upon a clifftop hill to the east of the River Esk, overlooking the whole town. The views of Whitby were quite impressive: the town is nestled on the hills that make up the Esk valley, but you can also see round the headland to them bay to the north, which had a pretty array of changing huts which stood out on the beach.

After a couple of hours wandering around, we headed back to catch our first proper train of the day to Middlesbrough:

1600 Whitby to Middlesbrough, arr 1730
Headcode: 2D43, operated by Northern Rail using Sprinter 156469
Distance: 35 miles; walk-up price: £3.50

The Esk Valley line between Middlesbrough and Whitby feels like it should not exist. It is the longest, most rural branch line in England, and most lines like it did not survive the Beeching Axe in the 1960s. Somehow this line did, partially because it runs through an area very poorly served by road: indeed, the whole line's timetable revolves around getting schoolchildren to school in Whitby in the morning, and getting them home in the afternoon. We happened to end up on the homeward train this Friday afternoon, and it was pretty busy, at least at first.

Unfortunately, a combination of factors - the necessity of the school trains, the single-track nature of the line, and a severe lack of available rolling stock - preclude the line from fulfilling its full potential. In particular, having the school train to Whitby prevents there being a commuter train to Middlesbrough to arrive before 9am, with the first arrival from Whitby into Middlesbrough being after 10:15.

This is partly because there is only enough rolling stock for one two-carriage train to shuttle back and forth between Middlesbrough and Whitby, and with a journey time of an hour and a half each way this means there can only be one train every three or four hours, which amounts to just four or five trains a day. These problems are nothing new, however: the line's timetable has remained more or less unchanged since at least the early 1990s.

The line itself, for all the foibles of its service, is one of the most beautiful and undiscovered lines in all of England. From Whitby the line climbs gradually through the Esk Valley, winding through remote countryside, interrupted by a string of small towns like Grosmont. Gradually the greenery thins out and we climb atop the North Yorkshire Moors and head to the remote station of Battersby.

Battersby station was originally a junction: the line from Whitby continued west to join the Northallerton-Stockton line at Picton Junction, with a branch continuing north towards Nunthorpe and Middlesbrough. The former line towards Picton Junction no longer remains, so trains now reverse at Battersby to head towards Middlesbrough. From here the line descends gradually through the Teesside suburbs into Middlesbrough.

On arriving at Middlesbrough, we met up with my cousin Catherine and her husband Martyn, who now live in Great Ayton just outside Middlesbrough. We saw round their lovely house - much of which is thanks to Martyn's hard work at DIY - before retiring to the Royal Oak, their local pub, for an enjoyable dinner. It was really good to see them again, even if having hitherto separate worlds of family and friends suddenly collide did occasionally make my head hurt...

After a short taxi ride back to Middlesbrough station, we headed home to York:

2050 Middlesbrough to York, arr 2143
Headcode: 1P67, operated by Transpennine Express using Desiro 185124
Distance: 50.75 miles; walk-up price: £7.75

Middlesbrough is one of four destinations at the east end of the north trans-Pennine route - the others being Hull, Scarborough and Newcastle - which combine to give an every-15-minutes service between Manchester and Leeds run by TPE, who revolutionised the service by introducing a new fleet of three-carriage class 185 Desiro units built by Siemens in 2006. They have, however, been something of a victim of their own success, and crowding at peak times can be quite severe.

This, however, was not peak time in any sense, and we had half a carriage to ourselves for the quiet hour-long run through the Vale of York. After passing through Tees Yard and the heavy industry on Teesside, we joined the line from Sunderland and the Durham coast down towards Northallerton, where we join the ECML for the last 30 miles to York. On arriving back at the hotel, we settled down for the night, ready for a busy day of eleven trains on Saturday touring around almost all of East and West Yorkshire.

North Country Rover, Day 1: Getting There

Although I've been on many, many trains over the last year, I haven't really had much time to blog about it. However, spending five days on trains "oop north" really deserves some blogging. To make it easier, I no longer have to carry around my laptop: I now have an iPad from which to blog about my and Ian's travels around the north this Jubilee weekend. We're spending five nights in York travelling around on a North Country Rover, which is valid for four days in eight travelling around the area bounded by Preston, Carlisle, Newcastle and Hull.

While I've been on pretty much every line in Scotland now, and nearly every line in the midlands and the north-west, Yorkshire and the north-east of England remain largely unexplored by me. Ian, however, is from Bolton, and while he has explored much of the area as a child, it's been quite a while since he's had a chance to spend a good few days "oop north".

We plan to spend Friday (1st June) going to Whitby and back, then Saturday (2nd) touring around a variety of lines in East and West Yorkshire. Then on the Monday (4th) we plan a grand circuit of the Cumbrian Coast and the Tyne Valley, and on Tuesday (5th) a short trip to Morecambe before heading home again via Leeds. On Sunday (3rd), rather than travelling on trains, we will be visiting Railfest 2012, a huge exhibition of trains old and new at the National Railway Museum.

The weekend started, unusually, on Thursday (31st May) evening, with Ian getting the train from Milton Keynes after work, and my joining him at Coventry:

1742 Coventry to Birmingham New St, arr 1808
Headcode: 1G33, operated by Virgin Trains using Pendolino 390003
Distance: 19 miles; walk-up return: £5.40

What a surprise: another train to Birmingham, another Pendolino; though only a 9-car train. Virgin Trains are currently in the process of lengthening over half their Pendolinos from 9 to 11 carriages long: 31 trains will get two new carriages added to them before December, while four extra 11-car Pendolinos have already been brought into service - unfortunately I have yet to travel on one...

We arrived at Birmingham New Street and headed to McDonalds around the corner from the station to grab some dinner, before heading back to New Street to head north towards York. In order to avoid CrossCountry's ubiquitous Voyager trains - which, at 4 or 5 carriages, are far too short for the long journeys they make - we picked one of a few trains a day which CrossCountry run with HSTs:

1903 Birmingham New St to Leeds, arr 2105
Headcode: 1E63, operated by CrossCountry using HST 43301+43384
Distance: 115.5 miles; walk-up return: £37.05

Spending two hours on an HST is such a nice way to travel over 100 miles: the seats are comfortable, the windows are large, and the trains are long enough to cope with almost any number of passengers you care to mention. Compared the noisy, cramped, claustrophobic, short, and wholly unsuitable Voyagers, the HST was a breath of fresh air (ironic given that it is in fact a return to what was used before Voyagers were built!).

Much of the route we travelled was familiar: from Birmingham we headed north-east over CrossCountry's nearest thing to a main line to Derby, and from there we followed the Midland Main Line to Sheffield. From Sheffield, however, I was in less familiar territory, skirting through South Yorkshire to join the Leeds branch of the ECML south of Wakefield, calling at Wakefield Westgate on our way into Leeds.

During the day, the CrossCountry trains via Leeds continue all the way to Edinburgh, but it being 9pm the one we were on terminated at Leeds. We had an unusually long wait at Leeds - nearly 40 minutes - for our onward train to York, during which time we did remarkably little. Eventually the time came to board our final train of the day:

2142 Leeds to York, arr 2206
Headcode: 1P62, operated by Transpennine Express using Desiro 185139
Distance: 25.5 miles; walk-up price: £7.75
Amazingly, in spite of having been on the vast majority of the long-distance network around the country, until Thursday I'd never been on the line between Leeds and York. The line is used by a variety of services: apart from local trains, there are CrossCountry services running between Plymouth and Edinburgh, but the bulk of the traffic is taken up by Transpennine Express (TPE) who run three trains an hour between Leeds and York, continuing to a variety of destinations such as Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Scarborough.

The line itself is electrified at both ends, but otherwise remains a diesel "island" for the time being. However, plans are in place to electrify the main "north trans-Pennine" corridor between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and York by 2020. This would also provide a useful diversionary route for East Coast, whose electric trains can often get stuck due to a lack of alternative electrified routes.

At Colton Junction, where the Leeds-York line joins the ECML, there is a rare type of junction. With most points, there is a "straight on" route, with a fairly high speed limit, and a diverging route which curves more and thus usually has a lower speed limit. Colton Junction, however, is set up to permit trains heading south from York to head towards Doncaster or Leeds at 125mph on either line. (The only other such junction is at Rugby on the WCML.) Unfortunately, we were a) on a train that could only do 100mph and b) heading north where the feeling of "converging" is less noticeable than "diverging" going south.

On arriving at York, we walked the short distance to our Ibis hotel, and settled down for a quiet night, before our day trip to Whitby on the Friday which involved a bus, a steam train, a line that shouldn't still exist, a rather enjoyable meeting with my cousin, and my first ever rail replacement bus service...

Crossing the Irish Sea: The Trials, Tribulations and Simple Pleasures of Going Home

While I now live in Coventry, and spend the vast majority of the year in England, I originally come from Bangor, in Northern Ireland. (No, not Bangor in Wales.) For most of my friends, going home usually involves a train journey of perhaps a few hours; but for me, going home means getting across the Irish Sea, either by ferry or by plane.

When I was very young, even up until I was 13, most of our family holidays involved car journeys either to other parts of Ireland, north or south, or across on the ferry to "the mainland" (i.e., Great Britain). From 1996 onwards, our preferred mode of ferry crossing was the Stena HSS, a class of high-speed catamaran capable of carrying up to 1500 passengers and 375 cars, making them the largest high-speed ferries in the world.

Although Stena had grandiose plans, just three examples were ultimately built. The first, the Stena Explorer, went into service in April 1996 sailing between Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leery), just south of Dublin, and Holyhead, on the north-west coast of Wales. On entering service, it sailed the 62-mile crossing in just 99 minutes, just over half the time that conventional ferries took previously. What's more, the crossing was smoother than ever before thanks to the catamaran hull. When introduced it sailed an impressive five times a day in each direction.

The second HSS, the Stena Voyager, entered service a few months later sailing between Belfast and Stranraer, on the south-western tip of Scotland. The crossing was shorter, at about 50 miles, and a journey time of 85 minutes was initially advertised. However, unlike the Dun Laoghaire-Holyhead route, which is almost entirely in open seas, both Belfast and Stranraer lie at the head of long inlets. As a result, when the HSS first tried running at full speed in Belfast Lough, it caused such huge waves to head towards the shores - in particular, towards Bangor - that for safety reasons they were required to reduce speed in Belfast Lough, and also in Loch Ryan on the approach to Stranraer.

This meant that the journey time for Belfast-Stranraer became 105 minutes, still better than anything else that operated Belfast-Stranraer but comparable to the fastest boats on the Larne-Cairnryan route. Larne is about 20 miles NNE of Belfast in open seas, while Cairnryan is about 5 miles north of Stranraer; thus the Larne-Cairnryan ferries only had to sail 35 miles, nearly all in open seas. For us, though, Larne was the wrong side of Belfast Lough, and involved a 35-mile drive just to get to the port; we were thus more than happy to save the driving and sail from Belfast on the HSS.

A third HSS, the Stena Discoverer, was put into service in 1997 sailing between Harwich and Hoek van Holland, but that was it. While the HSS continued to sail on its three original routes, it was - at least economically speaking - fatally flawed: it was powered not by conventional diesel engines but by gas turbines, like you'd find in jet planes, with no conventional propeller but instead four water jets providing both forward propulsion and directional control. This gave the HSS its speed, but also meant it consumed far more fuel than any other comparable ferry.

High fuel consumption wasn't such a problem in 1996, when oil prices were low and looked set to stay that way indefinitely; however, by 2008 oil prices had soared and so cutbacks had to be made. The number of sailings was gradually cut from five to just one or two round trips per day, and journey times were prolonged in order to save fuel. The Stena Explorer even stopped sailing between Dun Laoghaire and Holyhead altogether between September and May, replaced by conventional ferries. Finally, in order to shorten the journey a little, the dock at Belfast was moved down Belfast Lough by a few miles - saving fuel but prolonging journey times to the port.

Ultimately, however, it wasn't enough to save the HSS. The Stena Discoverer was withdrawn from the Harwich-Hoek van Holland route in January 2007. The other two survived a while longer, but the Stena Voyager was withdrawn from sailing the Belfast-Stranraer route in November 2011. The Stena Explorer faces an uncertain future on the Dun Laoghaire-Holyhead route; whether it will return to service in May, as planned, remains to be seen.

The Stena Voyager was replaced by two conventional-hulled large ferries, Superfast VII and VIII, originally built in 2001 to serve Helsinki-Tallinn. In introducing these two new ferries, Stena decided they needed to upgrade the facilities at their now rather dilapidated port in Stranraer. Here, they decided to do the same as they had done in Belfast and move the port a few miles down Loch Ryan to save fuel - also giving them more space to build a larger terminal building. The new port is now nearer Cairnryan than Stranraer.

The move from Stranraer to Cairnryan makes little difference to car and lorry traffic - which make up the bulk of Stena's throughput - but was a disaster for foot passengers. You see, while Stranraer has a railway station, Cairnryan does not. This thus forces any foot passengers wishing to use the ferries to use a bus to the port. Rather than bussing ferry passengers from Stranraer station to the port, Stena have decided instead to bus passengers from Ayr.

This is mainly down to the nature of the railway line from Ayr to Stranraer: it doesn't pass anywhere near Cairnryan, because instead of following the coast the line curves inland to follow a valley, only rejoining the coast briefly at Girvan. This makes the line slow and winding, making it faster to bus passengers along the A77 from Ayr than rely on the railway to Stranraer.

It also means there is no easy way to provide a station at Cairnryan, without building a new seven-mile connection from the line at Stranraer. As such, the very reason for the existence of the railway line south of Ayr - the connection to ferries to Northern Ireland - has been removed at a stroke. Passenger numbers have fallen through the floor in recent months, with only the towns of Girvan, Barrhill and Stranraer to sustain the line.

At this point I should declare an interest: I can't drive. So the existence of a relatively integrated public transport system in which I can get a train to Stranraer and then a ferry to Belfast is important to me. However, much as I enjoy making the train journey to or from Stranraer, it normally takes at least seven hours from Coventry - about four hours to either Carlisle or Glasgow, and another three hours thence to Stranraer. It was not, to put it mildly, the fastest way of getting home.

It was, however, the cheapest: at £25 single (with a railcard) all the way from Belfast to Leamington, it was an absolute steal. Nonetheless, the fact that it was at best a full twelve-hour journey meant that I only did it once in full, and once more when I was up in Edinburgh and then heading straight home. However, while the fares haven't gone up, they have become less flexible; in theory you used to be able to get those fares on the day, but now you must book in advance; combined with the hassle of getting a bus, I doubt it's an option I'll be availing myself of anytime soon.

To me, most of the time, going home means flying. Cheap short-haul air travel has put a severe dent in the ferry companies' business over the last 20 years by removing the necessity of a long drive through north Wales or southern Scotland. Normally I can book a few weeks in advance and have change from £100 for a return flight home, which while it works out at double the cost, it takes less than half the time to get there.

I almost invariably fly between Birmingham and Belfast City on Flybe, formerly Jersey European, who fly a very large range of domestic flights within the UK as well as some cross-channel flights to Paris and other parts of France. (I've flown with them so many times, I almost know their safety announcement off by heart...) With an average flying time of about 45 minutes, I can reliably get between my house in Coventry and home in Northern Ireland in less than four hours. 

Flying even permits day trips from one island to the other: in 2004/05 when I was looking at different universities I flew over on various day trips for open days; more recently I flew home for a day in November 2010 for a hospital check-up (it was easier to fly home than to rearrange it). Doing so by ferry would be all but impossible nowadays. That said, even up to 1990 there was a daily sleeper train service between Stranraer and London, which would have permitted a 36-hour round-trip on two sleepers, but that's nothing compared to a same-day trip.

However, flying is not really a sustainable mode of transport. It uses much more fuel than a ferry, and given the finite supply of oil in the world there will come a point where short-haul air travel is no longer cheap and available to the masses. When that day comes - be it in ten, a hundred or a thousand years' time - we will rue the day that Stena decided, for short-term commercial reasons, to break the link between ferry and train at Stranraer.

At least for the time being the connection at Holyhead remains, but at the other end one either arrives in Dun Laoghaire and needs a suburban train into Dublin, or one arrives in Dublin Port and has to get a bus to one of Dublin's railway stations. It is that, combined with a slight instinct of distrust towards Irish trains, that has thus far put me off going via Holyhead by train. That said, as a means of getting between Northern Ireland and England by road, Dublin-Holyhead is my family's preferred route as it is shorter overall than Belfast-Stranraer, and doesn't require such sustained periods of driving.

In the meantime, I expect that most of my trips home will involve flying. Yes, government responses to successive terrorist threats have made it more difficult to retain one's sense of dignity as we pass through security. Yes, you can't take a bottle of water onto the plane unless you buy it at the airport. Yes, my ears don't always pressurise quite right when we descend. And yes, eventually we will run out of oil and future generations may despise us for using up two billion years' worth of accumulated energy from the sun.

But - and it is a huge but - for a modest sum of money, not only do I get to soar above the clouds and see the world from above like our forefathers could only dream of, I get to go home - a distance of some 400 miles as the crow (though not the aeroplane) flies - in just a few hours. And until the day comes that short-haul air travel is commercially unviable and we are forced to use what ferries and trains are left, I shall continue to enjoy the simple pleasures of flying home.

My first steam train: the Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express

Somehow, in spite of having loved trains for many years, I had never been on a steam train - until yesterday. On Saturday 18th February, six of us went to Carlisle and back on the "Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express", a steam train run by the Railway Touring Company, combining the glorious scenery of the Lake District with the sights, sounds and smells of steam engines. It was, undoubtedly, the best train journey I've ever done.

Of course, you can't just buy a ticket and jump on a steam train anywhere these days. There are basically two kinds of steam train available these days: the first is to go along to one of the many "preserved railways" in the country - mostly old branch lines, long closed to normal traffic, but kept running by volunteers and enthusiasts to run trains on for fun.

I've been to one in Northern Ireland - the Downpatrick and County Down Railway - and I've been on the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales, but neither are standard gauge; all railways in Ireland have the rails 5ft 3in (1600mm) apart, while the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways are narrow-gauge railways with the rails 1ft 11½in (597mm) apart. There aren't, however, any heritage railways which are particularly near to Coventry, and thus I haven't yet been on any such lines in England.

While travelling on heritage branch lines has its charm, it's a far cry from the days of steam trains on the main line. Various companies try and recreate those days by running special charter services, usually known as railtours, over the main lines, often hauled by steam engines (though there are also railtours hauled by diesel engines). And thus it was that six of us embarked upon the Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express, from London to Carlisle and back.

There are two important rail arteries running through Cumbria: one is the West Coast Main Line, which is roughly parallel to the M6 over the summit of Shap, and the other is the Settle and Carlisle Line, with its famous Ribblehead viaduct at Blea Moor, and the summit at Ais Gill. Both offer spectacular mountain scenery, and our train undertook a circular tour of them both, heading north over Shap to Carlisle, before returning south via Ais Gill and Settle.

On a journey of 300 miles from London to Carlisle, it would take too long to do the entire trip there and back by steam today; for a variety of reasons steam locomotives are now restricted to just 60mph on the main line. So for the journey between London and Preston we were hauled by an electric locomotive, with steam taking us on our round-trip through Cumbria.

Our train in this case was a rake of 12 Mark 1 coaches, dating from the 1950s but carefully maintained and lovingly restored, which had great visibility and lovely springy seats. On this kind of journey, the visibility is vital: the scenery through Cumbria is magnificent, and having only ever sped over Shap in a Pendolino with tiny windows I was looking forward to being able to see the Lake District in the way you can from the M6. There were three classes onboard: Premier, First and Standard; we were in coach H, the third of four standard class coaches.

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For Matt, James, James and Ben, the day began by getting to London Euston for the 07:09 departure time of our railtour; Ian joined the party at Milton Keynes at 07:58, and finally I joined at Rugby at 08:28. Our electric locomotive, number 86259, was painted in so-called "electric blue" livery, the original colour they were painted when introduced to the newly-electrified WCML in the 1960s. While nowadays Class 86 locomotives are confined to freight trains and occasional railtours, in their heyday they hauled crack express services all the way from London to Glasgow.

In spite of being nearly 50 years old, the Class 86 locomotive easily hauled us at its top speed of 100mph. In order to be able to use this speed, we were routed mostly on the fast lines of the WCML, sharing tracks with Pendolinos. Of course, given that the Pendolinos have a top speed of 125mph, we had to be carefully threaded between them; the train had an eleven-minute stand at Milton Keynes to let three Pendolinos speed through, with a fourth overtaking us while we stopped at Rugby.

Unfortunately our timings were a little optimistic - I believe the train had been timed for 10 coaches rather than 12, and so being a bit heavier meant we were a little more sluggish - and so all four of those Pendolinos were delayed by a few minutes. Fortunately, in spite of our being five minutes late leaving Rugby and Nuneaton, we caught the time up by Colwich Junction, and the next Pendolino (which took a different route at Colwich Junction) was not delayed.

We enjoyed a clear, fast run as far as Stafford, where we were checked to about 30mph through the station (possibly due to a slightly delayed train in front) and then gradually accelerated again. Unlike modern locomotives, the class 86s are fairly slow to accelerate and decelerate, which made for an interesting race through Stafford: on approaching the station we'd passed a stationary container train hauled by 90045, a much more modern electric locomotive from the 1980s, and it overtook us on the slow lines just north of the station; but our higher top speed (100mph vs. 75mph maximum for freight trains) meant he never completely passed us again and we slowly overhauled him for a clear run to Crewe.

We crossed over to the slow lines at Basford Hall Junction, just south of Crewe, to clear the way for another Pendolino to go through to Liverpool, and stopped in platform 6 to pick up passengers; we arrived three minutes early, and so stood for seven minutes to await our 09:46 departure time. On departure from Crewe we ran non-stop to Preston; it's fairly uncommon to run non-stop through Warrington and Wigan, but non-stopping meant we could keep up sufficient speed to stay in front of the next London-Glasgow Pendolino which was due through Crewe 13 minutes behind us.

Between Crewe and Preston the predicted bad weather crossed our path: a cold front was moving southbound over the UK, but fortunately it brought only a narrow band of rain and moved fairly quickly, so that the rain, which started while we were approaching Crewe, had turned to sunshine by the time we got to Preston.

After a brief stop at Preston, we left at 10:30 for the final leg behind our electric locomotive, to Carnforth, just north of Lancaster. At Lancaster, we passed a local train from Morecambe to Leeds, waiting for us to pass so it could come into the station and reverse, in spite of the fact that it was due to arrive before we were due to pass. Here we see our main problem of the day: not being a regular passenger service, nor a freight train, we were at the whim of the signallers as to when we got to go. Some treated us like we were radioactive - "get it out of here, now!" - while some held us back to ensure regular service trains got priority.

A few minutes north of Lancaster, we pulled into no. 2 goods loop at Carnforth at 10:57, where our electric locomotive was detached. As a special celebration of the late George Hinchcliffe, the man responsible for saving Flying Scotsman from the scrapheap in San Francisco, not one but two steam locomotives were now attached: 'Black Fives' numbers 44932 (leading) and 45305, both classic LMS steam engines dating from the late 1930s, painted all in black.

"Double-heading" is very rare in passenger service, especially with steam trains; the primary purpose is to be able to go faster without having more powerful locomotives. While very heavy freight trains are still sometimes hauled by two locomotives, using two diesel or electric locomotives is fairly easy because they can usually be connected together so that one driver can control both from one set of controls.

With steam double-heading, however, this is impossible, and so there were two drivers controlling the two locomotives, who were faced with the exceedingly difficult task of keeping their acceleration roughly the same so that one locomotive didn't end up exerting more power than the other and damaging one or both. This requires careful coordination, which was done with the very simple but effective system of the drivers sticking their heads out and shouting between the two locomotives!

Upon leaving Carnforth at 11:33 (11 minutes late) behind our two steam engines, the need for having two locomotives became immediately obvious: the ascent up to the summit at Shap is one of the steepest and twistiest bits of the WCML. With our locomotives going at full steam we managed a respectable speed as far as Tebay; up to then the maximum gradient was two miles at 1 in 106. After Tebay, however, comes a solid five-mile climb at 1 in 75, and while we were probably doing 50mph through Tebay, by the time we hit Shap summit we were probably doing little more than 30mph.

Until you've experienced a ride behind a steam engine, little prepares you for the sensory experience of steam engines at maximum power: the sight, sound and smell of the steam and smoke make climbing a hill like Shap into an event. I'd previously been over Shap four times, but only one of those was northbound, where the uphill gradient is 1 in 75 (compared with just 1 in 125 uphill going southbound), and that was in a Pendolino which has considerably more power; the Pendo made mincemeat of the hill, but even with two Black Fives it was a genuine struggle.

Moreover, Mark 1 coaches have much better visibility than a Pendolino, and our lack of speed actually enhanced the views; rather than flashing by at 90mph, we were able to see all the wonderful scenery of the Lake District, with bright sunshine all the way from Kendal to Penrith. It still doesn't quite beat the view from the parallel M6 (thanks to the lack of forward visibility) but this came much closer than any Pendolino ever could.

Having crested the summit at about 12:15, about ten minutes late, it was downhill all the way to Carlisle, and our two Black Fives ate up the miles fairly well. While officially restricted to 60mph, it felt like we were going just a little faster in an attempt to make up time; the locos were certainly capable of a little more speed.

After a squally shower darkened the skies between Penrith and Carlisle, it brightened up for our arrival into Carlisle at 12:49, just nine minutes late. The journey from Euston had taken over five and a half hours (with a half-hour stop at Carnforth); three minutes behind us, the 09:30 Pendolino from Euston to Glasgow pulled into the opposite platform having taken not much over three hours (though we had delayed it by a few minutes).

At Carlisle, we got the first sight of our two steam locomotives, still shrouding themselves in steam even now they were stopped in the platform. Practically everyone ran to the front of the train to get shots of the locomotives; I had to fight my way through but got some nice photos in the end. After a few minutes, the two locos and the support coach were detached to be turned round: unlike modern diesel and electric locomotives, steam engines have a definite "front" and "back", so they used a triangle of tracks at the south end of Carlisle station to turn the locomotives, before refilling the water tanks.

With nearly two hours' break in Carlisle, we headed into the city centre to get some food; James and I headed to KFC, while the other four headed to McDonalds, reconvening after we'd eaten to look briefly around the city. After an hour or so we headed back to the station, in time to see them bringing the locomotives back in to reattach them to the other end of the train. From now on, we were heading south.

At 14:39, a couple of minutes late, we left Carlisle, immediately diverging from our inbound route to take us up the Settle and Carlisle. The S&C was the third major north-south route to Scotland; it was deliberately built as a mainline railway, with the maximum gradient limited to 1 in 100 throughout. From Carlisle to Appleby, the line climbs the Eden Valley at a fairly gentle pace, and we reached Appleby in just under 50 minutes, where we stopped for about 15 minutes for more water. By this time, the weather had closed in slightly, and we were treated - briefly - to snow on the Settle and Carlisle!

On departure from Appleby at 15:41, we began the climb up "the long drag": in order to keep to the maximum gradient of 1 in 100, the builders of the line from Settle Junction to Appleby ended up creating a continuous 15-mile uphill gradient of 1 in 100 in both directions, with about ten miles approximately flat between Blea Moor and Ais Gill, at 1156ft (352m) and 1169ft (356m) above sea level respectively. Unlike modern coal trains, which even with a good run-up are doing 23mph by the time they get to the top, our Black Fives performed admirably and we made very good time up the long drag, running three minutes faster than timetabled to Ais Gill.

At Blea Moor, we passed over the infamous Ribblehead viaduct, where we were able to see the front of the train snaking over the horseshoe-shaped viaduct out of our left-hand window, with clouds of steam puffing from our two locomotives. From here on in, it was downhill for 15 miles at 1 in 100, and we made good time as far as Hellifield, where we got stopped briefly at a signal before pulling into the goods loop for our final water stop.

At 17:06, we left Hellifield in bright evening sunshine and said goodbye to the Settle and Carlisle; we headed south over the Ribble Valley line to Blackburn. From Hellifield to Clitheroe, there are few passenger services (just two in each direction on summer Sundays, designed for ramblers); the line remains for use by freight and diverted passenger trains, and counts as "rare track" which, in my quest to travel on every British railway line, is all-important - it's no good saying "I've been on every line except X, Y and Z..."

With the sun setting, we made it to Daisyfield Junction outside Blackburn a full seven minutes early; with the line between Hellifield and Clitheroe being hardly used, our timings were deliberately a bit slack. Here, Preston signal box held us for ten minutes, so that not one but two passenger services to pass over Daisyfield Junction in front of us; we were timetabled between the two but the signaller clearly thought better of it. Having thus been seven minutes early, we arrived in Blackburn six minutes late, where we dropped passengers who had boarded at Preston, because we weren't going back via Preston.

No, we were being much more cunning than that: there is a little used curve between the WCML and the Preston-Blackburn line - from Lostock Hall Junction to Farington Junction - which permitted us to go through onto the WCML without reversing. And with this curve being wired, we were timetabled to stop on the curve to change locomotives.

The curve itself is little used by freight and very rarely used indeed by passenger services; loco changes on the curve are even rarer, with the last recorded loco change happening there in 2003. However, while we'd been allowed half an hour at Carnforth, here we had just 15 minutes to change locomotives. And now that we were a few minutes late, it was going to be difficult to keep to our path back up the WCML to London.

We stopped on the curve at Farington Junction at 18:21, three minutes later than booked; we bade a fond farewell to our two steam locomotives, which passed us before heading back to the steam works at Carnforth. Our electric locomotive was then reunited with us; but even though everything appeared to go smoothly, we were stopped for 22 minutes, and left at 18:44, 11 minutes late.

Now we were once again at the mercy of the signallers controlling the WCML. We expected that the next Pendolino from Liverpool, which was booked to join the main line at Weaver Junction twelve minutes behind us, would be given priority at Weaver Junction. But we got closer and closer to Weaver Junction and we didn't slow down; even once we'd gone through the junction we were uncertain if we were behind it or in front of it.

But as we were approaching Crewe, a peek out the window confirmed that the Pendo was behind us. Right behind us. So close we could see the headlights. We were then sent into platform 11, which meant crawling across lots of pointwork to get over to the far side of the station; before we were even stationary in the platform, the Pendo ran through, by now a full nine minutes late. After setting down passengers at Crewe, we left at 19:31, still 11 minutes late, but we were now running on the slow lines; as such we were held to a maximum speed of 75mph.

We remained on the slow lines through Stafford, where we had been booked to cross to the fast lines; we crossed instead at Whitehouse Junction, but not before slowing right down to a 5mph crawl to let two Pendolinos cross in front of us. At Colwich Junction, where the brief section of double track widens once more to four, we were routed once again onto the slow lines, in spite of the trains that we had been booked to pass while on the slow lines already having gone through; this meant we were still limited to 75mph and any hope of making up time on the run to Nuneaton was dashed.

We spent much of the run to Rugby trying to figure out what order the trains would end up in on the way into Euston: it being late on a Saturday night, the line south of Rugby would be limited to two of the four tracks, with the other two closed for maintenance; thus, the order we left Rugby in was crucial. We used live departure boards and working timetables to try and figure out what would happen.

While we were doing this, one of our fellow passengers came up to us and thanked us; the most enjoyable part of his day had, he said, been seeing us up and about, peeking out windows, trying to figure out what was going on; it reminded him of himself, many years ago. I have to admit that, had we just sat around enjoying the scenery, it wouldn't have been half as interesting: but by keeping a log of our times, and then trying to figure out where all the other trains were - in effect, trying to second-guess the signallers - it made the journey all the more fun.

As it was, we steadily lost a little bit of time, and so we called at Nuneaton about 14 minutes late. We were unexpectedly crossed back to the fast lines just south of Nuneaton, but by Rugby we were 16 minutes late. At Rugby, I said goodbye to the others and disembarked at 20:47 to head back to Coventry; I then saw another Pendolino pass slowly through Rugby behind us, and clearly the train had been slotted in between two Pendolinos when it was meant to be in front of both of them.

That did mean, however, that with an eight-minute stand at Milton Keynes to let the Pendolino back in front, the railtour didn't need its booked 12-minute stop at Tring to let the two Pendolinos in question back through, and having been 16 minutes late into Milton Keynes, the rest of the party arrived back in London Euston just three minutes late, at 22:09, exactly 15 hours after they left.

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My first steam train didn't disappoint: to get not one but two steam locomotives was a rare treat, and because we had two locomotives we were able to experience the steep ascent of Shap. In most modern trains, you just don't appreciate the gradients unless they're really extreme; and where there are extreme gradients such as Shap, trains have evolved to cope with them. Thus, to turn the clock back sixty years and see what it was like to climb Shap and Ais Gill with steam locomotives - an everyday occurence right up till the mid-1960s - was eye-opening.

It was also my first railtour, and I think that was perhaps the aspect of the day I enjoyed most: this wasn't just another Pendolino speeding up and down the WCML between Coventry and London, this was a train going on a scenic excursion to probably the most beautiful lines in England, unconstrained by punctuality statistics and profit margins. Many of the onboard staff were volunteers, who give up their time to help run these tours, and get free trips on such wonderful lines as their just reward; my thanks to all the staff at the Railway Touring Company, and at the West Coast Railway Company (who supplied the locomotives and coaches), for making all this possible.

Doing it as a group of six worked especially well: just two or three people would have been an altogether quieter, more subdued affair, but with six of us we kept each other going, and the whole thing was a really satisfying day out. Once it got dark, and we got delayed, we were all trying to second-guess the signallers, which somehow made it even more fun. Most satisfying of all, our train managed to delay, by my count, 14 service trains (though each by no more than a few minutes).

I had long been sceptical of railtours in general - not least because of their relatively high cost - but at £69 a head, this Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express felt like a bargain. To have the romance and beauty of being hauled by two steam locomotives - real machines doing mechanical work, unlike all these modern electric and diesel trains where everything is just pushing buttons - on such beautiful lines was simply magical.

The only question now is, what's next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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