Memories of the year 2000.

[Snow1964]

Year 2000 railway usage was commuting from Richmond into Waterloo. Loads of 455s and some VEPs and CIGs, might have been a then new 458 towards end of 2000

But Rail trip highlight was the Rocky Mountaineer, 2 days to Vancouver followed by weeks cruise to Alaska, and 2 days from Fairbanks to Anchorage by train as part of our Honeymoon. The Alaska rail trip was second week of September where the very short autumn was full of vivid red and yellow colours, and first snows had settled on mountains around Denali.

 

[High Dyke]

My father passed away, aged 63. Rail wise, I began my railway career; and 22 years later I'm still employed on the railway.

 

[Galvanize]

Year 2000 railway usage was commuting from Richmond into Waterloo. Loads of 455s and some VEPs and CIGs, might have been a then new 458 towards end of 2000

I remember doing several trips like that with my Family to/from Kew Gardens. We’d always try and get the “Fast” service to/from Richmond, more chance of interesting stock…though even the fast Reading services at weekends were booked for 455s. May have been slightly earlier than 2000, but on occasion we had a VEP and a BEP on a Waterloo-Reading service, but sadly the Buffet was closed.

In a similar vain, we did a trip to Windsor to visit Legoland, and while that was usually wall-to-wall 455s, it was quite exciting seeing a few running around in Advertising liveries besides the Residual NSE hangovers and initial SWT livery!

 

[30907]

Autumn 2000: I had a 6-week mini-sabbatical with our partner church in Erfurt, Thüringen.
Part of it was intended as holiday, which gave me a day or two a week to visit the Saxon narrow gauge lines, and one or two interesting local As a bonus I was also invited on a clergy retreat at a place right by the Fichtelberg line, which is otherwise difficult to reach from Erfurt in a day.
The family joined me for half term week, but the least said the better about their journey from Frankfurt Airport on a Friday evening the better

(These days we would have done the whole trip by rail, but it wasn't as easy then.)

Can't remember any UK travel that year, but I probably did a bit

 

[Taunton]

My immediate first rail trip of 2000 was lost. For Millennium night went to central London, DLR to Tower Gateway about 2300, walked along to Cannon Street but could get no further because of the crush, so hung around to midnight, bit of a let down in the end, back to the DLR which like everything else was running all night - service suspended. Of course everyone though it was the Millennium Bug with the automated driving. Started to walk east, there were trains down to low battery light stuck up on the DLR viaduct full of those, now decidedly grumpy-looking even from a distance, who had been heading for the festivities. Into each staffless DLR station along the way, just said suspended. Finally at Poplar there were trains from beyond there, virtually empty; operator said "there's been a bloomin' derailment".

January 1 2000, and those concerned from all sides said how wonderfully the TfL transport had run all night "the tubes, the buses ...", carefully avoiding all mention of the DLR. So the media published the same.

Took about 15 years before, in response to commenting on this before here, someone responded that there had been a complete power failure on the DLR west end at about 2330. So I wonder. Power failure? Derailment? Who knows.

 

[Hassocks5489]

This is where collecting tickets helps ... I have a record to hand of every journey I took in 2000 First year at university (Warwick), so Coventry and Canley were my local stations, or Leamington Spa if I got the bus. Roughly in date order: a random trip to Nuneaton; a day trip to Manchester and Merseyside; a day out in Worcester plus a return from Birmingham to Shirley (not sure why I did that...!); a trip down to London for the day via Chiltern; day trip to Southport area; day trip to Oakham to see a friend, with a pre-Trainsplit bit of split ticketing at Nuneaton (no CDR Coventry-Oakham fares); a very silly journey back from Coventry to Hassocks via Tamworth, Derby and Luton Airport Parkway (!) using multiple tickets; while back home, a trip on the Arun Valley line; day trip from Leam to Stratford-upon-Avon via the direct line; yet another day trip to Merseyside; Coventry-Birmingham-Stratford-Leamington on a Coventry-Wood End ticket (hope that was legal); trip back home via another daft route (Reading and Southampton, I think); yet another Merseyside trip; then four days later, a day trip to Manchester, Huddersfield, Bradford and Leeds plus a separate ticket for a random diversion to Warrington, Liverpool and Birkenhead (!) (first train of the day from Canley, that one - I think I changed at Birmingham NS and went straight to Manchester); day trip to Cardiff; trip back home from Coventry via Leicester; trip from Hassocks to Croydon purely to get a ticket with the destination TRAMLINK CROYDON; trip to Bognor Regis - first time on that branch since the 1980s; another weird Liverpool/Manchester/Huddersfield/Leeds two-ticket day trip from Coventry - I seem to remember leaving around 0600 and getting back to our student house, where we had just moved in, about 2300; day trip to Bath, splitting tickets at Worcester; quick trip back home from Coventry via Kensington Olympia; another Coventry-Birmingham-Stratford-Leamington trip; yet another trip home via Kensington Olympia; and a trip from Hassocks to Cheam during the Christmas holidays, for some reason: probably out via Dorking, back via Croydon.

I am not really a track-basher, if that's the right term, but I do like travelling on new lines, and I think I travelled on more new track in 2000 than in any other year (perhaps excluding the 6 months I spent working in Germany in 2018 and travelling whenever I wasn't working!)

I must admit I thought my Aberystwyth trip was 2000, but I can see now it was February 2001. Central Trains ran a special flat-fare offer between a very limited number of its stations in winter 2001 (it was one of the pick-up-a-leaflet-cut-out-this-voucher-and-take-it-to-a-ticket-office types). Tickets cost £10.00 and were issued with the interesting ticket type FLAT FARE SSR. Luckily, two of the stations in question were Leamington Spa and Aberystwyth, where my friend was at university. Cue a lively weekend of pub-crawling. We woke up after 3pm on the Sunday: luckily the train back to Birmingham New Street left at 4.30 or something!

 

[Techniquest]

Fascinating thread! I very rarely come into this sector of the forum, browsing past (with the intention of shutting everything down for bed!) I saw this thread and had to have a look!

I got started on the enthusiast scene in autumn 2003, but I remain reasonably convinced there were rail journeys in 2000. I know there were some in 2001, details are vague frustratingly, sadly they were not exactly for fun. 2000 though, I have to be honest I barely remember 2000 for absolutely anything. I was in Year 10 at secondary school (which for those wondering for all these years, that'll give away how old I actually am!) in 2000, going into Year 11 in September that year. There's an awful lot I've buried away from that year, for one reason or another, but I do recall journeying to Poros with the very futuristic sounding Air 2000 in what I am sure was 2000. I went twice, and I can't remember for sure if it was 1999 and 2000 or the other way around. I also have a recollection of flying Monarch back for whatever reason, it was way too long ago to remember now and I wasn't into aviation back then.

So whatever happened in 2000, which I may never be able to fully recall, and whenever I actually went to Poros, I would love to go back there!