Note: Due to other commitments, the completion of this has been a little time in the making, but I still wanted to finish for my own memories if nothing else, but still hope someone enjoys the read 
So, here we are at the time I hoped would never arrive, but my final 16-25 railcard has recently expired
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I decided some time ago that I wanted to do a final "big" trip before it ended and this was to take me to the mostly unexplored areas of Devon and Cornwall (Scotland having been done to death over the past year or so!).
The Prequel – (Saturday 19th March 2016 and Sunday 20th March 2016)
The adventure begun late on the afternoon of Saturday 19th March as I travelled over to Manchester to meet a few other forum members for the journey to London. Ordinarily I would have just travelled to Piccadilly but for a change I took the delayed 17:45 Northern stopper to Ashton-under-Lyne travelling in the 150 part of 150228 and 156461 since most of the hoards had piled onto the back unit (the joys of the Ale Trail!) primarily for a shack scratch and to make an interchange I have been intending to do for a while. Arriving at Ashton, I was surprised to find it still on semaphores (not that I'm complaining!) but also wishing I had looked up the interchange route first, as the Metrolink wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be at first glance out of the station. Nonetheless, I eventually found it across the junction and boarded 3064 through to Victoria hoping to travel the line to Exchange Square, only to find it had already stopped running for the day and instead heading back to Piccadilly on 3088.
At Piccadilly I met up with Mojo, Starmill, Kite159, Yorkie and PermitToTravel "fresh" from the GM Wayfarer meet, at Waitrose on the station approach before most of us headed for the final Euston train of the night, the 20:35 formed of 390016 - most of us travelling all the way to London, but with Yorkie leaving us just before departure and PermitToTravel joining us to Stockport. The journey was fairly uneventful, but quieter onboard than I was expecting. What was nice, though, was getting the Fasts all the way from Milton Keynes in spite of being booked/timed on the Slows - with Watford Junction a pick-up only and thus an early departure, we arrived into Euston a rather nice 15 minutes early! From here, it was across to Victoria for me and Starmill and onto the 23:30 GatEx service formed of 442013 and 442018 - nothing very express about this "Express" service and we appeared to take the Quarry Lines rather than going via Redhill as booked but arrived RT, after a brief wait for a platform, at Gatwick to the slightly confusing (to me at least, only being half awake) announcement from the crew of 'Good Morning, we are now approaching Gatwick Airport' - yes, it had just gone past midnight!
The wander to the hotel was a little eventful - we headed onto the airport shuttle, which was fine but then we weren't quite sure how to get to our Premier Inn, which wasn't the one directly outside the terminal. A phone call to the hotel (kudos to PI for having an ability to quickly get through the reception of the hotel rather than speaking to someone in a call centre) and brief visit to the nearby Premier Inn to get directions and we found it, via a number of narrow paths that skirted the airport security fences - during the walk we also came across quite a few wild rabbits that were hopping around the grass verges, which was a bit of a bonus.
The next morning was an easier walk back to the terminal, given we knew the way (but minus the rabbits and addition of more road traffic) and onto a Zones 1-9 travelcard (well, from East Croydon at least). In brief it was a day of refurbished units, a walk through an industrial wasteland and a brief visit to Kent - for now I will leave it at that and fastforward to the evening and my arrival at Paddington for the Night Riviera - at around 22:30 and on my own, it was a slightly odd feeling! The first job was a quick trip to the ticket office to obtain my ticket for the coming days, a Freedom of Devon and Cornwall 3 in 7 which, at a cost of £30.65, wasn't entirely unreasonable. Ticket obtained I headed over to platform 1 where 57603 was sat idling but uncoupled on the buffers and had a walk along the platform to the front, passing an assortment of FGW and new green GWR liveried coaches on the way - the green ones looking especially smart in my opinion. 57604 "Pendennis Castle" was to be our lead for the evening and was sat idling on the front of the rake. With a good hour or so until departure, I took the opportunity to visit the First Class Lounge and settled in among the passengers for the last southbound HST with a few snacks before joining the Sleeper. This was my first time on the Night Riviera but my third on a sleeper having travelled on the Scottish Caledonian Sleeper a couple of times so expected the set up to be similar - but with no-one on the platform, I wasn't sure what to do… I saw a member of staff who said to board and I'd be seen shortly, so I duly did and found my berth and with no-one around, went for another wander down the platform before returning through the Lounge Car, somewhat to the confusion of the member of staff on the buffet!
Back in my berth and the host was on his way along the carriage checking people in and taking breakfast orders which, to my surprise consisted of more than the tea/coffee/orange option offered on their Scottish counterparts. Checked in and a bacon roll/tea ordered for morning, I was also advised I could go and get a complimentary drink from the buffet now so as the host continued along the carriage, I headed back along to the buffet which was, usefully, just along in the next carriage (formation was loco, seated sleeper, lounge/buffet, beds, of which I was in the frontmost berth coach) to collect tea and biscuits and headed back to my berth. Unlike on the Cally Sleeper where I had travelled with friends from the forum, I was on my own on this one and had a single occupancy berth meaning the second bunk was folded away, making it much less cramped. Decor is very similar to the Cally Sleeper sets though probably a little less tired in parts but one exception I was noticing was a complete lack of any noise whatsoever - on both Scottish sleeper trips I have made, there has been constant squeaks and creaks from the electrics (which only disappeared when the loco was taken off at Edinburgh for the swap on the Highland service) but on here, they were thankfully missing. It wasn't now long until platform staff were starting to lock up the train for departure and at 23:50 we departed on time - for which I took occupancy of a droplight for the short haul out of the Paddington station and station throat. The journey to Reading was observed from my berth with the window blind open so I can see what was going on while looking at some timings for the coming days - passing plenty of p-way gangs busy preparing the electrification at various points along the journey. We arrived a little early into Reading, with this being one of my first times anywhere near since the remodelling a while back and after a short wait, we departed Reading on schedule and I took that as my cue to get my head down for the night.....
Images:

So, here we are at the time I hoped would never arrive, but my final 16-25 railcard has recently expired

I decided some time ago that I wanted to do a final "big" trip before it ended and this was to take me to the mostly unexplored areas of Devon and Cornwall (Scotland having been done to death over the past year or so!).
The Prequel – (Saturday 19th March 2016 and Sunday 20th March 2016)
The adventure begun late on the afternoon of Saturday 19th March as I travelled over to Manchester to meet a few other forum members for the journey to London. Ordinarily I would have just travelled to Piccadilly but for a change I took the delayed 17:45 Northern stopper to Ashton-under-Lyne travelling in the 150 part of 150228 and 156461 since most of the hoards had piled onto the back unit (the joys of the Ale Trail!) primarily for a shack scratch and to make an interchange I have been intending to do for a while. Arriving at Ashton, I was surprised to find it still on semaphores (not that I'm complaining!) but also wishing I had looked up the interchange route first, as the Metrolink wasn't as obvious as I thought it would be at first glance out of the station. Nonetheless, I eventually found it across the junction and boarded 3064 through to Victoria hoping to travel the line to Exchange Square, only to find it had already stopped running for the day and instead heading back to Piccadilly on 3088.
At Piccadilly I met up with Mojo, Starmill, Kite159, Yorkie and PermitToTravel "fresh" from the GM Wayfarer meet, at Waitrose on the station approach before most of us headed for the final Euston train of the night, the 20:35 formed of 390016 - most of us travelling all the way to London, but with Yorkie leaving us just before departure and PermitToTravel joining us to Stockport. The journey was fairly uneventful, but quieter onboard than I was expecting. What was nice, though, was getting the Fasts all the way from Milton Keynes in spite of being booked/timed on the Slows - with Watford Junction a pick-up only and thus an early departure, we arrived into Euston a rather nice 15 minutes early! From here, it was across to Victoria for me and Starmill and onto the 23:30 GatEx service formed of 442013 and 442018 - nothing very express about this "Express" service and we appeared to take the Quarry Lines rather than going via Redhill as booked but arrived RT, after a brief wait for a platform, at Gatwick to the slightly confusing (to me at least, only being half awake) announcement from the crew of 'Good Morning, we are now approaching Gatwick Airport' - yes, it had just gone past midnight!
The wander to the hotel was a little eventful - we headed onto the airport shuttle, which was fine but then we weren't quite sure how to get to our Premier Inn, which wasn't the one directly outside the terminal. A phone call to the hotel (kudos to PI for having an ability to quickly get through the reception of the hotel rather than speaking to someone in a call centre) and brief visit to the nearby Premier Inn to get directions and we found it, via a number of narrow paths that skirted the airport security fences - during the walk we also came across quite a few wild rabbits that were hopping around the grass verges, which was a bit of a bonus.
The next morning was an easier walk back to the terminal, given we knew the way (but minus the rabbits and addition of more road traffic) and onto a Zones 1-9 travelcard (well, from East Croydon at least). In brief it was a day of refurbished units, a walk through an industrial wasteland and a brief visit to Kent - for now I will leave it at that and fastforward to the evening and my arrival at Paddington for the Night Riviera - at around 22:30 and on my own, it was a slightly odd feeling! The first job was a quick trip to the ticket office to obtain my ticket for the coming days, a Freedom of Devon and Cornwall 3 in 7 which, at a cost of £30.65, wasn't entirely unreasonable. Ticket obtained I headed over to platform 1 where 57603 was sat idling but uncoupled on the buffers and had a walk along the platform to the front, passing an assortment of FGW and new green GWR liveried coaches on the way - the green ones looking especially smart in my opinion. 57604 "Pendennis Castle" was to be our lead for the evening and was sat idling on the front of the rake. With a good hour or so until departure, I took the opportunity to visit the First Class Lounge and settled in among the passengers for the last southbound HST with a few snacks before joining the Sleeper. This was my first time on the Night Riviera but my third on a sleeper having travelled on the Scottish Caledonian Sleeper a couple of times so expected the set up to be similar - but with no-one on the platform, I wasn't sure what to do… I saw a member of staff who said to board and I'd be seen shortly, so I duly did and found my berth and with no-one around, went for another wander down the platform before returning through the Lounge Car, somewhat to the confusion of the member of staff on the buffet!
Back in my berth and the host was on his way along the carriage checking people in and taking breakfast orders which, to my surprise consisted of more than the tea/coffee/orange option offered on their Scottish counterparts. Checked in and a bacon roll/tea ordered for morning, I was also advised I could go and get a complimentary drink from the buffet now so as the host continued along the carriage, I headed back along to the buffet which was, usefully, just along in the next carriage (formation was loco, seated sleeper, lounge/buffet, beds, of which I was in the frontmost berth coach) to collect tea and biscuits and headed back to my berth. Unlike on the Cally Sleeper where I had travelled with friends from the forum, I was on my own on this one and had a single occupancy berth meaning the second bunk was folded away, making it much less cramped. Decor is very similar to the Cally Sleeper sets though probably a little less tired in parts but one exception I was noticing was a complete lack of any noise whatsoever - on both Scottish sleeper trips I have made, there has been constant squeaks and creaks from the electrics (which only disappeared when the loco was taken off at Edinburgh for the swap on the Highland service) but on here, they were thankfully missing. It wasn't now long until platform staff were starting to lock up the train for departure and at 23:50 we departed on time - for which I took occupancy of a droplight for the short haul out of the Paddington station and station throat. The journey to Reading was observed from my berth with the window blind open so I can see what was going on while looking at some timings for the coming days - passing plenty of p-way gangs busy preparing the electrification at various points along the journey. We arrived a little early into Reading, with this being one of my first times anywhere near since the remodelling a while back and after a short wait, we departed Reading on schedule and I took that as my cue to get my head down for the night.....
Images:
- 150228 heads the service from Ashton-Under-Lyne with a semaphore distant in the background
- A “skipped” part of the report, but the day in London took me and Mojo to the new Crossrail station – the “roof garden” was too pretty not to take a photo
- 57603 sits idle on the buffers of platform 1 at Paddington
- A view along one of the re-liveried sleeper stock coaches
- 57604 “Pendennis Castle” heads up the 2750bhp hotel
- An opposite view of a re-liveried sleeper stock coach
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