All the Stations - Challenge accepted!
Saturday 5th August 2017
Time to dig this thread out of the bowels of the trip reporting section of the forum with another tale of a short evening out. This time I had decided to do something different. For those of you who haven't been following Geoff and Vicki travel around the UK on the "All the Stations" project, the recently set the "challenge" to their viewers to travel to somewhere new, somewhere they'd never been to before. So that's just what I did, I went to Scotland's least used station.
Barry Links sees just one train in each direction, Monday to Saturday, with no service on Sundays. The evening train calls at just after to past 7, but I had wanted to make an evening of it, so I devised a plan to score a couple more stations while I was up there.
Three o'clock came knocking and I headed out into the rain for the short-ish drive to Musselburgh station as I could utilise one of the Dunbar services. On Saturdays, this is one single 158 shuttling between Edinburgh and Dunbar all day (I must take it for a spin up to Dunbar one day, purely to get some good thrash off of it) and today it was
158734 doing the honours. It had picked up both a healthy loading and a few minutes of delay along its journey, however I need not have worried as I had at least twenty minutes still at Edinburgh before my train north.
A quick coffee and bite to eat is sourced from Pret before I join super-dud
170454. I climb aboard the front coach, thinking it'll be quieter but I was surprised to see a ton of reservation labels in most of the seat backs. Upon closer inspection, however, I see that these are for its inward journey from Aberdeen earlier. A cleaner comes through and duly clears them all away before we set off up the Fife coastline.
Some lovely views of the bay around Inverkeithing and Burntisland, before some more countryside as we continue our journey calling at most of the "principal" stations. Crossing the Tay bridge is a bit of a slog under the grey skies but we soon arrive and terminate at Dundee station. I have another twenty minute fester here before my train forwards and I note that the train I just arrived on will call at another limited service shack on its way back to Edinburgh. Yes, it was the Springfield stopper and upon inspection of RTT, I see that its northbound counterpart had left Edinburgh a few minutes late, raising the usual +0 connection to a much more doable +3. I ponder this thought for a moment before snapping back to reality and deciding against it.
The 17:47 from Dundee (16:11 from Glasgow) is shown as being formed of three coaches, so that'll be some more 170 mileage for me tonight!
170457 shows and I add another 6 miles to its total before I alight (along with no-one else) at tonight's first shack score,
Monifieth. Not much on the platforms themselves, although there were some out of use PIS displays.
I head to the Tesco right next to the station for a quick loo break before purchasing the requisite meal deal. That'll do nicely for my fester, I think, and I go off to catch the bus. There is a Stagecoach service 73A due imminently, and I shall take me it to Barry village for the price of just £1.60. The conductor lady has trouble in finding a fare to Barry (evidently not a very common journey) but eventually she finds it and I purchase a ticket.
Barry is reached swiftly and it looks like a nice enough place containing very little to pass the time, so Google maps is fired up to get me directions to the station. From the first bus stop in Barry to the station is just over 15 minutes' walk at a reasonable pace. Could do it in 10 if you really wanted to challenge yourself. I reach
Barry Links in plenty of time, as there's 40 minutes or so until the train arrives. Time for dinner!
I pass the time by taking a couple of photos and reading my book, and I'm surprised that the rain held off until just 10 minutes of my fester here remained, and I retired to the seat-less shelter. I had expected the Carnoustie terminator to be a pair of 158s (as it is booked through the week) but on Saturdays, like everything else in this part of the world, that is not the case, as
170459 was to take me one stop up the line to the local door-only
Golf Street.
Nobody else boarded or alighted with me at Barry Links, but at Golf Street a grand total of three (yes, three! Me and two others) alighted. The guard was surprised! I was now presented with a sub 12 minute walk along Links Parade to reach Carnousite station, or face over an hours wait. Needless to say I bolted along the road and made it to the station in just over 5!
The gods of bashing had obviously wanted to reward me for scoring three of Scotland's least used stations with a winner, as my chariot down to Dundee was no other than
170418. A very cheerful guard on this one, and he was more than happy to have a chat and a laugh with everyone as they headed out for a Dundee-based night on the town.
I alight at Dundee to await the following Edinburgh bound train (that one was a Glasgow express) and I see that there is a stopper leaving not too long after the express and I decide that if it is a winner then I'd join it at Leuchars. It wasn't to be as it turned out to be 170393. Never mind then! Tonight's second winner was about to produce as
170406 was on the slightly late 20:23 off Dundee to Edinburgh, calling only at Leuchars and Haymarket along the way.
It arrived into Dundee 4 late, which would have given me just 3 minutes to get from platform 16 to platform 7 at Edinburgh, and anyone who knows the layout of Waverley station will know that that just isn't possible. The driver emerged at Leuchars to ask the trolley lady for a coffee and honestly, I don't know what she put in it but we made up 8 minutes between there and Haymarket as we arrived 4 early! We didn't even hang around until our booked time and rolled into Edinburgh 3 early. Score! Time, then, for a photo before making my way over to
380106 on the 21:43.
It takes a couple of minutes longer than normal to reach Musselburgh as we are caught behind a set of empties heading to Craigentinny depot, but I reach the house without too much delay.
In case anyone is interested in doing something similar, they (Geoff & Vicki) recommend heading out next weekend (12th & 13th) and any photos sent to them will be used in a video montage at the end of the project.
Thanks for reading!