19th September. The year is coming towards a close from a bashing POV as the nights will soon begin to draw in and the weather turn colder. The only planned Big One between now and the end of the year is Spitfire’s class 50 tour to Edinburgh and the Fife Circle in November, which promises to be very enjoyable.
Still, work continues to deliver on quality mileage at someone else’s cost, and this was the start of 3 days on the rails. A familiar start on the 06:08 ex-Shipley followed by the 06:34 EMT HST ex-Leeds (fourth time this year). 43045/089 in charge again, but this time I’m only riding to Nottingham. I was very tired and slept nearly all the way, but did go to the vestibule for the last couple of miles into Nottingham (reached seven down) and was amazed again by how much clag VP185s emit even when coasting. Considerably more than MTUs on full load I would say. Had a superb breakfast at The Granby Kitchen across the road from the station for £4.95 for two of everything plus beans, tomatoes, toast and tea. Excellent! Back to the station to join 222009 on the 09:02 to St Pancras. This is actually a very nice train, and hard to believe it’s a close relative of the disgusting and reviled Vomiters. Its interior also seems nicer than how I remember the Meridian interior from my last (and first) go back in February. The second class seats are spacious, comfortable, line up with the windows and are for the most part grouped around tables with only a few ‘airline style’ (and even these line up with the windows). No rank smells noticeable from the toilets either. The 5-car set wasn’t that full and I was able to spread out and relax. A smile was raised again passing my favourite ‘Peak Power’ graffiti at Trent Junction, then got on with some work all the way to Luton Airport Parkway (station grice) to be met by a colleague and whisked away for a meeting at our office in Dunstable. Concentration was helped by the apparent almost complete absence of a T Mobile signal anywhere in Leicestershire or Northants (T Mobile utterly useless but there are times like this when it has its up side).
After the meeting there was no lift forthcoming back to Luton Airport Parkway without putting someone out, so rather than take an expensive taxi, I took a lift instead with someone heading towards home in rural Buckinghamshire who dropped me at Leighton Buzzard. Unexpected extra station grice therefore, followed by a nice non-stop run to Euston in a 350 on the 15:53. Then the Northern Line to London Bridge for a short walk to the nearby Premier Inn on the South Bank, right next to the bridge over to Cannon Street for non-stop wheel-screech noise from 376s. Alarmingly I was booked into Room 101, but luckily whatever it is that I fear most (an eternal ride on a 185?) was not in there.
After a few drinks at the pub I got my head down for the night and after breakfast the next morning I strolled over to London Bridge for the 08:18 FCC working to Three Bridges. At the booking office two out of the seven windows were closed, and the queue was 25 people long (by the time I left it was >40 long and stretching back out into the concourse). Huge queues for the ticket machines as well. I was there with 17 minutes to spare so no problem for me personally as it turned out, but here is clearly a case that someone turning up with as much as 10 minutes to spare would be unable to catch his train. I’m sure there are people would criticise any such ‘latecomers’ for not having looked in their crystal ball before leaving for the station. After all, what can they expect if they think that buying a ticket should be straightforward, and Heaven forbid that anyone should criticise a TOC? Those of us who view passengers as the meat and drink of the railway rather than an annoying mass of potential fare-dodgers, liars and cheats will see this as a straightforward undermanning situation at London Bridge however. When I got to the window I asked for a single to Three Bridges and wasn’t offered the £11.50 FCC only ticket without enquiring if such were available as an afterthought, even though I was buying a single and no direct Southern trains were operating at that time. £14.40 is the cost of the open ticket, so that would have been £2.90 extra ching for no benefit whatsoever. Hmmm, what was that I was saying about who the cheats are?
Having seen loads of 319s at Bedford the previous day I was hoping for one of these York-built sets, but a 377 rolled in instead. 319 followed 319 on northbound FCC workings as we headed south. Grrr. Still, the Electrostar was a comfy enough train for the 40 minute journey followed by a short walk to our new facility in Crawley.
On the way back I was at the station in time for the 9 minutes late running 16:26 to Bedford. The next working was at 16:37 so this gave me two bites at the 319 cherry should the 16:26 turn out to be another 377. No matter though as an 8-car 319 rolled in on the 16:26, and treated us to a real thrash to East Croydon. From there it was one of the workings that goes via Tulse Hill and Loughborough Junction in the peak, so it was an enjoyable if slow ramble around the maze of South London’s railway lines to arrive at Blackfriars two early! The train was starting to fill up now and by St Pancras I was glad to bail. I walked the long way round the front to the Cross and went to the booking office to buy my ticket for the following day. I had the traditional dirty burger before returning to the concourse to await the 18:33 through train to Bradford.
The concourse was very crowded, even more so than usual, and by 18:25 neither the 18:30 Edinburgh nor 18:33 Bradford had been called. What’s more the 19:03 Leeds was cancelled and the 18:33 showing not calling at Shipley. WTF? If it’s going to Bradford and not calling at Shipley it will be passing through without stopping. This was very bad form I have to say. I only chose this train because it is a through train, and would EC glibly cut out, say, the Grantham stop? Certainly not without a damned convincing explanation. Also, the following 21:26 Leeds > Skipton arrives at Shipley at 21:37, annoyingly not quite qualifying for delay repay. Not that the money’s always the most important thing, although you’d never guess this the way TOCs talk about delay repay as though that made everything alright. It can be the little things that rankle more than the money. The long day at work followed by a farcical journey; the total lack of coherent explanation; the unnecessary transfer and wait for a crowded local train; the not getting home in time to see your kids that night. These are the things that get up people’s noses, and no amount of delay repay can sort that out. The grip announced that the stop at Shipley was being omitted due to ‘earlier lineside equipment failure’, which is just about the most useless explanation imaginable. When will TOCs learn that they must not patronise people in this way? This announcement is just one tiny step up from the appalling catch-all ‘operational difficulties’ excuse. What would be wrong with telling passengers what the actual reason is? A minority will understand it, and the remainder will be no better or worse informed than they were having been given the fatuous jargon-laden excuse ‘earlier lineside equipment failure’, which means nothing to anyone and is clearly quite deliberately designed to obfuscate. Hearing this sort of rubbish just gives people the impression they are being fobbed off, which of course they are.
We eventually left at 18:43 and came to a halt in Gasworks Tunnel. Great. If we stay here for ages we won’t even be able to ring home to tell people we’re going to be late! Only five minutes though (and what was a mere five minutes in East Coast’s sea of delay, cancellations and omitted stops that afternoon?), and we now got underway on a really very fast run indeed, which was great fun. The grip had declassified first class to allow passengers from the canx 19:03 to get a seat, and he then made an announcement apologising to all first class passengers, telling them over the intercom how to claim compensation! Talk about inappropriate! All the standard class passengers given a seat due to his commendable move must suddenly have gone from feeling pleased to feeling very uncomfortable. He might as well have announced that he was sorry for having let a crowd of smelly working class people and lepers in, and would all the poor rich people like a nice wad of lovely cash to take away the pain of the offensive sights and sounds.
Leaving Grantham 13 late, Shipley was omitted from the list of stops again, but this time no explanation was given at all! A few minutes later the grip came up with the explanation that “according to Control” (carefully distancing himself from any duff gen that may follow) a very severe points failure (what other sort is there? Either a set of points has failed or it hasn’t) was blocking access to platform 2 (sic) at Shipley and that our train would not be able to call there. However he reassured us that there are local trains that would call instead and that we ‘should’ (not ‘will’: he chose to leave that uncertainty hanging) be able to use them. Quite how these local trains would get around the Very Severe Points Failure that was so fatal to class 91 operation was unclear, until he told us that ‘local trains’ use ‘local platforms’ at Shipley (all very League of Gentlemen IYAM). So the explanation when finally offered was, in fact, a load of balls. There are no ‘local platforms’ at Shipley, nor does the Kings Cross > Bradford train use platform 2 (the down Skipton platform). What I managed to infer from this tripe is that for some [still unclear] reason we weren’t going to be able to get onto platform three which this train uses wrong line. Also unclear was why the train couldn’t use the short down Bradford platform 4 with only one door being opened, as the up Skipton does at Shipley on the short platform 1 on occasions when mk IVs stand in for the booked HST. Can’t be mk IV clearance issues because the morning ECS goes that way.
In short, a garbled, inaccurate explanation using the talismanic Get Out Of Jail Free phrase ‘points failure’ will have to substitute for clarity, honesty, convenience and service. Such is ‘customer service’ to the modern TOC. It is as if some railway people sincerely believe that as long as there is a mechanical explanation for a farce, then that makes everything OK. Like the kettle veg my father met volunteering at the NRM who got all defensive when put on the spot about kettles setting fire to half the ECML a few weeks ago. His answer, confidently delivered, was that the chaos was down to “just a faulty grate on ‘Sir Lamiel’”!
Anyway, we arrived at Leeds at 21:12, the same time as we should have arrived at Shipley, and loads of people made their weary way over to platform 4 for the 21:26. I was talking to a [normal] acquaintance of mine who had booked from Shipley to London and back on the through workings both ways that day and had been bowled for both, so clearly farces on EC and at Shipley had been the name of the game all day. In the morning he’d ended up stranded at Leeds and sent to York on the 07:10 Aberdeen whence he caught the 08:00 to the Cross. For him therefore the inconvenience of having to change at Leeds on the return journey was Little League compared to where he’d been! At home I cheered up a bit to find about £40 worth of delay repay vouchers in the post from EC’s last debacle
The next morning I got up early again and headed to Shipley station for the 05:55 Leeds > Carlisle. This was the first time I’ve used this very useful new working providing business travellers from West Yorkshire with a convenient, reasonably priced and very enjoyable means of getting to Scotland in good time. At £47.60 open return (route Appleby) this seems good value to me, and is certainly cheaper than using the car. At Shipley the 06:13 to Leeds was already running 3 down, which given that Northern had no points failure (Very Severe or otherwise) to fall back on, nor could they blame late arrival of incoming stock, can only have been down to their own ineptitude. This ‘late arrival of incoming stock’ excuse for poor service is another one readily and willingly trotted out by TOCs as a Get Out Of Jail Free card, as though rolling stock simply dropped out of the sky at originating stations to form services. What they never say or even imply is that it is often their own lack of punctuality on earlier services that is the cause of this, as presumably to do so would tarnish this magic excuse in passengers’ eyes somewhat. The Carlisle train was showing on time, but at our departure time of 06:08 the ECS for the up EC off Skipton was passing through the platform. As expected at exactly 06:10 the 06:08 disappeared from the monitor to be replaced by the 06:33 Skipton as the first train. 158849 appeared at 06:12, which isn’t especially bad, but the information being offered was once again 100% inaccurate. Does anyone working at Northern care about the quality of information given to their passengers?
The 158 was surprisingly well loaded with T-shirt clad youths using this first train out of Leeds as a means of getting home after a night out. What I had thought would be a quiet journey was replete with loudly told tales of snogging, shagging, fights with bouncers and other excess. Still, they’d mostly bailed by Keighley, so it was quiet enough from there. I’d not considered this source of revenue for very early trains before, although I’m sure in my day we never stayed out that long, instead riding home in the single mk I SK or BSK attached to the Shrewsbury > York mail off Leeds at 02:25, which brings back bad and uncomfortable memories! Get with the programme Daddio: da yoof is different these days and thinks nothing of staying out all night on a Tuesday!
By Hellifield it was getting properly light and I settled in to enjoy the ride. This is what it’s all about, a train journey across the roof of England in relaxed surroundings. I was extremely tired though and dozed for too much of the journey, although I did wake up briefly as we came to a stand south of Ribblehead to let the southbound 05:56 Carlisle > Leeds off the viaduct, and saw a Colas Rail 66 in the timber loading siding. I was awake from Appleby onwards to see good numbers of commuters joining there and at the other little intermediate stations, and the 2-car set was comfortably full on arrival at the Border City. Next move was the 09:01 Virgin Supervomiter to Edinburgh, a 10-car set and almost empty. How very un-Cross Country. Are Virgin embarrassed about having got rid of loads of mk IIIs, DVTs and class 90s with years of service left in them, only to end up running diesel trains under the wires all the way from Birmingham to Glasgow and Edinburgh? They should be. The more so as the 221s would be [begrudgingly] welcomed by the benighted users of XC’s overcrowded services. As I sat with a coach all to myself, 4- and 5-car Vomiters elsewhere were bringing long-suffering commuters into Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol and various other places packed to the gunwales. The toilet smell was as unpleasant as ever; surely it wouldn’t be too hard to sort this out? It would be a huge improvement. The speed along the WCML and all the tilting was great fun though, and the 100½ miles to Haymarket is booked to be covered in 75 mins. We thundered through Lockerbie at some speed, entering what must surely be Britain’s longest stretch without an intermediate station, from there to Kirknewton, a distance of 65 1/4 miles. Carstairs was reached in 45 minutes which if you take a step back and think about it is just breathtaking. Let’s do something about the really slow approach to the junction though: taking this at 15mph after the run we’d just been treated to is a bit of a let down! We arrived at Haymarket on time at 10:16, but only after having been checked short of the junction for 8 minutes. This means the 100 miles to that signal were covered in 66 minutes, a very creditable average of 91mph, especially when you consider all the messing about round the back of Carstairs. A short wait for Saltire-liveried 156507 on the 10:30 to Glasgow Central via Shotts, taken as far as Cleland where the new operating base of one of our sub-contractors is located. A nice obscure station grice there This was a real trundle, reminiscent of the only previous time I’ve done it, in 1987 in a 3-car 101. Breaking the journey at Cleland help relieve the tedium a bit, although of course these days there’s the option of an hourly semi-fast for inhabitants of the bigger places en route. There was virtually no custom at any of the smaller intermediate stations though, so two trains an hour off peak on the route seems overkill. Even at Shotts only seven people boarded, although at Cleland three of us bailed and six boarded.
After the meeting I got another 156 into Glasgow for a haggis supper and then the 14:40 to Euston. At last! The first time I’ve ever been on a Pendolino on an open ticket. I’m certain Virgin stick the advance ticket holders away in all the crappiest nooks and crannies without even the hint of a window, so this is the first time I’ve been able to sit by a window on one of these trains. The smell from the toilets was as bad as on a Voyager, and the seats across the table from me had nothing but a blank wall to look at, but here I was joining that small and select band of people who have sat next to a window on a Pendo! On the positive side it’s a seriously fast train, and like this morning’s Vomiter it was hard not to be impressed by the sheer speed at which we careered and tilted our way through the Southern Uplands.
At Carlisle WRC 47826 was in platform 3 on the rear of a rake of WRC liveried mk II aircons, with all over blue 47237 on the front. The BSO immediately next to 47237 was in BR Inter-City livery, so for a while it was possible to stand in this largely unchanged station and imagine that it was 25 years ago. This pleasant illusion was shattered by a Vomiter snarling its decidedly unpleasant way into platform 1 heading for Glasgow, and shortly afterwards the incoming stock (158845) to form my 16:18 to Leeds arrived 30 minutes late on platform 6. Still 16 minutes before the booked departure though, so this particular Late Arrival Of Incoming Stock was ineligible to go into the Excuse Bank. Apart from the engine under the leading car of 158845 appearing to be on fire at both Armathwaite and Lazonby (it wasn’t: phew!) the journey home was uneventful and very pleasant. A gorgeous Autumn evening light was making the run look even better than ever, and all too soon I found myself back in Juiceland at Skipton with just a few minutes left to go. At Shipley I got into the waiting car and drove home, exhausted.
Apologies if this seems more of a rant than usual, but poor customer service and especially unnecessarily poor information provision makes me very cross. I’ve seen the best and the worst of the railway in the last three days.
Still, work continues to deliver on quality mileage at someone else’s cost, and this was the start of 3 days on the rails. A familiar start on the 06:08 ex-Shipley followed by the 06:34 EMT HST ex-Leeds (fourth time this year). 43045/089 in charge again, but this time I’m only riding to Nottingham. I was very tired and slept nearly all the way, but did go to the vestibule for the last couple of miles into Nottingham (reached seven down) and was amazed again by how much clag VP185s emit even when coasting. Considerably more than MTUs on full load I would say. Had a superb breakfast at The Granby Kitchen across the road from the station for £4.95 for two of everything plus beans, tomatoes, toast and tea. Excellent! Back to the station to join 222009 on the 09:02 to St Pancras. This is actually a very nice train, and hard to believe it’s a close relative of the disgusting and reviled Vomiters. Its interior also seems nicer than how I remember the Meridian interior from my last (and first) go back in February. The second class seats are spacious, comfortable, line up with the windows and are for the most part grouped around tables with only a few ‘airline style’ (and even these line up with the windows). No rank smells noticeable from the toilets either. The 5-car set wasn’t that full and I was able to spread out and relax. A smile was raised again passing my favourite ‘Peak Power’ graffiti at Trent Junction, then got on with some work all the way to Luton Airport Parkway (station grice) to be met by a colleague and whisked away for a meeting at our office in Dunstable. Concentration was helped by the apparent almost complete absence of a T Mobile signal anywhere in Leicestershire or Northants (T Mobile utterly useless but there are times like this when it has its up side).
After the meeting there was no lift forthcoming back to Luton Airport Parkway without putting someone out, so rather than take an expensive taxi, I took a lift instead with someone heading towards home in rural Buckinghamshire who dropped me at Leighton Buzzard. Unexpected extra station grice therefore, followed by a nice non-stop run to Euston in a 350 on the 15:53. Then the Northern Line to London Bridge for a short walk to the nearby Premier Inn on the South Bank, right next to the bridge over to Cannon Street for non-stop wheel-screech noise from 376s. Alarmingly I was booked into Room 101, but luckily whatever it is that I fear most (an eternal ride on a 185?) was not in there.
After a few drinks at the pub I got my head down for the night and after breakfast the next morning I strolled over to London Bridge for the 08:18 FCC working to Three Bridges. At the booking office two out of the seven windows were closed, and the queue was 25 people long (by the time I left it was >40 long and stretching back out into the concourse). Huge queues for the ticket machines as well. I was there with 17 minutes to spare so no problem for me personally as it turned out, but here is clearly a case that someone turning up with as much as 10 minutes to spare would be unable to catch his train. I’m sure there are people would criticise any such ‘latecomers’ for not having looked in their crystal ball before leaving for the station. After all, what can they expect if they think that buying a ticket should be straightforward, and Heaven forbid that anyone should criticise a TOC? Those of us who view passengers as the meat and drink of the railway rather than an annoying mass of potential fare-dodgers, liars and cheats will see this as a straightforward undermanning situation at London Bridge however. When I got to the window I asked for a single to Three Bridges and wasn’t offered the £11.50 FCC only ticket without enquiring if such were available as an afterthought, even though I was buying a single and no direct Southern trains were operating at that time. £14.40 is the cost of the open ticket, so that would have been £2.90 extra ching for no benefit whatsoever. Hmmm, what was that I was saying about who the cheats are?
Having seen loads of 319s at Bedford the previous day I was hoping for one of these York-built sets, but a 377 rolled in instead. 319 followed 319 on northbound FCC workings as we headed south. Grrr. Still, the Electrostar was a comfy enough train for the 40 minute journey followed by a short walk to our new facility in Crawley.
On the way back I was at the station in time for the 9 minutes late running 16:26 to Bedford. The next working was at 16:37 so this gave me two bites at the 319 cherry should the 16:26 turn out to be another 377. No matter though as an 8-car 319 rolled in on the 16:26, and treated us to a real thrash to East Croydon. From there it was one of the workings that goes via Tulse Hill and Loughborough Junction in the peak, so it was an enjoyable if slow ramble around the maze of South London’s railway lines to arrive at Blackfriars two early! The train was starting to fill up now and by St Pancras I was glad to bail. I walked the long way round the front to the Cross and went to the booking office to buy my ticket for the following day. I had the traditional dirty burger before returning to the concourse to await the 18:33 through train to Bradford.
The concourse was very crowded, even more so than usual, and by 18:25 neither the 18:30 Edinburgh nor 18:33 Bradford had been called. What’s more the 19:03 Leeds was cancelled and the 18:33 showing not calling at Shipley. WTF? If it’s going to Bradford and not calling at Shipley it will be passing through without stopping. This was very bad form I have to say. I only chose this train because it is a through train, and would EC glibly cut out, say, the Grantham stop? Certainly not without a damned convincing explanation. Also, the following 21:26 Leeds > Skipton arrives at Shipley at 21:37, annoyingly not quite qualifying for delay repay. Not that the money’s always the most important thing, although you’d never guess this the way TOCs talk about delay repay as though that made everything alright. It can be the little things that rankle more than the money. The long day at work followed by a farcical journey; the total lack of coherent explanation; the unnecessary transfer and wait for a crowded local train; the not getting home in time to see your kids that night. These are the things that get up people’s noses, and no amount of delay repay can sort that out. The grip announced that the stop at Shipley was being omitted due to ‘earlier lineside equipment failure’, which is just about the most useless explanation imaginable. When will TOCs learn that they must not patronise people in this way? This announcement is just one tiny step up from the appalling catch-all ‘operational difficulties’ excuse. What would be wrong with telling passengers what the actual reason is? A minority will understand it, and the remainder will be no better or worse informed than they were having been given the fatuous jargon-laden excuse ‘earlier lineside equipment failure’, which means nothing to anyone and is clearly quite deliberately designed to obfuscate. Hearing this sort of rubbish just gives people the impression they are being fobbed off, which of course they are.
We eventually left at 18:43 and came to a halt in Gasworks Tunnel. Great. If we stay here for ages we won’t even be able to ring home to tell people we’re going to be late! Only five minutes though (and what was a mere five minutes in East Coast’s sea of delay, cancellations and omitted stops that afternoon?), and we now got underway on a really very fast run indeed, which was great fun. The grip had declassified first class to allow passengers from the canx 19:03 to get a seat, and he then made an announcement apologising to all first class passengers, telling them over the intercom how to claim compensation! Talk about inappropriate! All the standard class passengers given a seat due to his commendable move must suddenly have gone from feeling pleased to feeling very uncomfortable. He might as well have announced that he was sorry for having let a crowd of smelly working class people and lepers in, and would all the poor rich people like a nice wad of lovely cash to take away the pain of the offensive sights and sounds.
Leaving Grantham 13 late, Shipley was omitted from the list of stops again, but this time no explanation was given at all! A few minutes later the grip came up with the explanation that “according to Control” (carefully distancing himself from any duff gen that may follow) a very severe points failure (what other sort is there? Either a set of points has failed or it hasn’t) was blocking access to platform 2 (sic) at Shipley and that our train would not be able to call there. However he reassured us that there are local trains that would call instead and that we ‘should’ (not ‘will’: he chose to leave that uncertainty hanging) be able to use them. Quite how these local trains would get around the Very Severe Points Failure that was so fatal to class 91 operation was unclear, until he told us that ‘local trains’ use ‘local platforms’ at Shipley (all very League of Gentlemen IYAM). So the explanation when finally offered was, in fact, a load of balls. There are no ‘local platforms’ at Shipley, nor does the Kings Cross > Bradford train use platform 2 (the down Skipton platform). What I managed to infer from this tripe is that for some [still unclear] reason we weren’t going to be able to get onto platform three which this train uses wrong line. Also unclear was why the train couldn’t use the short down Bradford platform 4 with only one door being opened, as the up Skipton does at Shipley on the short platform 1 on occasions when mk IVs stand in for the booked HST. Can’t be mk IV clearance issues because the morning ECS goes that way.
In short, a garbled, inaccurate explanation using the talismanic Get Out Of Jail Free phrase ‘points failure’ will have to substitute for clarity, honesty, convenience and service. Such is ‘customer service’ to the modern TOC. It is as if some railway people sincerely believe that as long as there is a mechanical explanation for a farce, then that makes everything OK. Like the kettle veg my father met volunteering at the NRM who got all defensive when put on the spot about kettles setting fire to half the ECML a few weeks ago. His answer, confidently delivered, was that the chaos was down to “just a faulty grate on ‘Sir Lamiel’”!
Anyway, we arrived at Leeds at 21:12, the same time as we should have arrived at Shipley, and loads of people made their weary way over to platform 4 for the 21:26. I was talking to a [normal] acquaintance of mine who had booked from Shipley to London and back on the through workings both ways that day and had been bowled for both, so clearly farces on EC and at Shipley had been the name of the game all day. In the morning he’d ended up stranded at Leeds and sent to York on the 07:10 Aberdeen whence he caught the 08:00 to the Cross. For him therefore the inconvenience of having to change at Leeds on the return journey was Little League compared to where he’d been! At home I cheered up a bit to find about £40 worth of delay repay vouchers in the post from EC’s last debacle
The next morning I got up early again and headed to Shipley station for the 05:55 Leeds > Carlisle. This was the first time I’ve used this very useful new working providing business travellers from West Yorkshire with a convenient, reasonably priced and very enjoyable means of getting to Scotland in good time. At £47.60 open return (route Appleby) this seems good value to me, and is certainly cheaper than using the car. At Shipley the 06:13 to Leeds was already running 3 down, which given that Northern had no points failure (Very Severe or otherwise) to fall back on, nor could they blame late arrival of incoming stock, can only have been down to their own ineptitude. This ‘late arrival of incoming stock’ excuse for poor service is another one readily and willingly trotted out by TOCs as a Get Out Of Jail Free card, as though rolling stock simply dropped out of the sky at originating stations to form services. What they never say or even imply is that it is often their own lack of punctuality on earlier services that is the cause of this, as presumably to do so would tarnish this magic excuse in passengers’ eyes somewhat. The Carlisle train was showing on time, but at our departure time of 06:08 the ECS for the up EC off Skipton was passing through the platform. As expected at exactly 06:10 the 06:08 disappeared from the monitor to be replaced by the 06:33 Skipton as the first train. 158849 appeared at 06:12, which isn’t especially bad, but the information being offered was once again 100% inaccurate. Does anyone working at Northern care about the quality of information given to their passengers?
The 158 was surprisingly well loaded with T-shirt clad youths using this first train out of Leeds as a means of getting home after a night out. What I had thought would be a quiet journey was replete with loudly told tales of snogging, shagging, fights with bouncers and other excess. Still, they’d mostly bailed by Keighley, so it was quiet enough from there. I’d not considered this source of revenue for very early trains before, although I’m sure in my day we never stayed out that long, instead riding home in the single mk I SK or BSK attached to the Shrewsbury > York mail off Leeds at 02:25, which brings back bad and uncomfortable memories! Get with the programme Daddio: da yoof is different these days and thinks nothing of staying out all night on a Tuesday!
By Hellifield it was getting properly light and I settled in to enjoy the ride. This is what it’s all about, a train journey across the roof of England in relaxed surroundings. I was extremely tired though and dozed for too much of the journey, although I did wake up briefly as we came to a stand south of Ribblehead to let the southbound 05:56 Carlisle > Leeds off the viaduct, and saw a Colas Rail 66 in the timber loading siding. I was awake from Appleby onwards to see good numbers of commuters joining there and at the other little intermediate stations, and the 2-car set was comfortably full on arrival at the Border City. Next move was the 09:01 Virgin Supervomiter to Edinburgh, a 10-car set and almost empty. How very un-Cross Country. Are Virgin embarrassed about having got rid of loads of mk IIIs, DVTs and class 90s with years of service left in them, only to end up running diesel trains under the wires all the way from Birmingham to Glasgow and Edinburgh? They should be. The more so as the 221s would be [begrudgingly] welcomed by the benighted users of XC’s overcrowded services. As I sat with a coach all to myself, 4- and 5-car Vomiters elsewhere were bringing long-suffering commuters into Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol and various other places packed to the gunwales. The toilet smell was as unpleasant as ever; surely it wouldn’t be too hard to sort this out? It would be a huge improvement. The speed along the WCML and all the tilting was great fun though, and the 100½ miles to Haymarket is booked to be covered in 75 mins. We thundered through Lockerbie at some speed, entering what must surely be Britain’s longest stretch without an intermediate station, from there to Kirknewton, a distance of 65 1/4 miles. Carstairs was reached in 45 minutes which if you take a step back and think about it is just breathtaking. Let’s do something about the really slow approach to the junction though: taking this at 15mph after the run we’d just been treated to is a bit of a let down! We arrived at Haymarket on time at 10:16, but only after having been checked short of the junction for 8 minutes. This means the 100 miles to that signal were covered in 66 minutes, a very creditable average of 91mph, especially when you consider all the messing about round the back of Carstairs. A short wait for Saltire-liveried 156507 on the 10:30 to Glasgow Central via Shotts, taken as far as Cleland where the new operating base of one of our sub-contractors is located. A nice obscure station grice there
This was a real trundle, reminiscent of the only previous time I’ve done it, in 1987 in a 3-car 101. Breaking the journey at Cleland help relieve the tedium a bit, although of course these days there’s the option of an hourly semi-fast for inhabitants of the bigger places en route. There was virtually no custom at any of the smaller intermediate stations though, so two trains an hour off peak on the route seems overkill. Even at Shotts only seven people boarded, although at Cleland three of us bailed and six boarded.After the meeting I got another 156 into Glasgow for a haggis supper and then the 14:40 to Euston. At last! The first time I’ve ever been on a Pendolino on an open ticket. I’m certain Virgin stick the advance ticket holders away in all the crappiest nooks and crannies without even the hint of a window, so this is the first time I’ve been able to sit by a window on one of these trains. The smell from the toilets was as bad as on a Voyager, and the seats across the table from me had nothing but a blank wall to look at, but here I was joining that small and select band of people who have sat next to a window on a Pendo! On the positive side it’s a seriously fast train, and like this morning’s Vomiter it was hard not to be impressed by the sheer speed at which we careered and tilted our way through the Southern Uplands.
At Carlisle WRC 47826 was in platform 3 on the rear of a rake of WRC liveried mk II aircons, with all over blue 47237 on the front. The BSO immediately next to 47237 was in BR Inter-City livery, so for a while it was possible to stand in this largely unchanged station and imagine that it was 25 years ago. This pleasant illusion was shattered by a Vomiter snarling its decidedly unpleasant way into platform 1 heading for Glasgow, and shortly afterwards the incoming stock (158845) to form my 16:18 to Leeds arrived 30 minutes late on platform 6. Still 16 minutes before the booked departure though, so this particular Late Arrival Of Incoming Stock was ineligible to go into the Excuse Bank. Apart from the engine under the leading car of 158845 appearing to be on fire at both Armathwaite and Lazonby (it wasn’t: phew!) the journey home was uneventful and very pleasant. A gorgeous Autumn evening light was making the run look even better than ever, and all too soon I found myself back in Juiceland at Skipton with just a few minutes left to go. At Shipley I got into the waiting car and drove home, exhausted.
Apologies if this seems more of a rant than usual, but poor customer service and especially unnecessarily poor information provision makes me very cross. I’ve seen the best and the worst of the railway in the last three days.
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