William's 2023 west midlands trip reports (though sometimes I do go a bit further.)

[william.martin]

This is basically an archive of trip reports, I shall underline anything interesting:

14/1/23

Origin: Oakengates.
Destination: Shrewsbury.
Purpose: Booking a holiday
Units rode on: 196102,196107
Story:
So for my first rail journey of the year I was travelling to Shrewsbury for the purpose of buying a holiday and of course riding on the new 196's. However, it gets better; I was allowed onboard the cab of 196102 at Shrewsbury station by the lovely driver who I will keep anonymous as I don't want him to get into trouble . Other than that this was a fairly text-book journey.

28/1/23

Origin: Oakengates
Destination: Caersws
Purpose: Going with my dad to see some of his old work mates.
Units rode: 196107, 158828, 196102 (and a pair of mercedes busses)
Story:
For my second trip of the year, I was heading over the border to Wales (specifically Caersws) with my Dad to see some of his ex-colleagues, using the train as far as Newton Powys and then boarding a rail replacement bus 10 mins to Newport. The outbound trip was pretty much the same as ever however on the return journey where we had the Rail replacement bus all the way home, what a drama!
So, to kick things off we had to stand on a Welsh road in the middle of nowhere for 15 mins while we waited for the bus. Having boarded this nice big bus/ coach we began to hear a row (including the F word and N word) from a bunch of teenagers maybe about 14 at the back of the bus, the (very Welsh accented) bus driver stops the bus and stands up and walks to the back and gives them a right telling off. "Get your feat down of my seats!" "If I hear another piece of bad language out of you lots mouths, you will be off this bus in the middle of nowhere!" "If I find a single bit of rubbish by your seats I will have the BTP knocking on your door!" "I know you don't have a ticket!" "Good evening girls".
Somehow he did all of that lot without shouting but still scared the life out of those girls (rightfully)... I think it might be the Welsh accent. Everything after this went... just fine, what a drama


That's it for now however I will add to this post whenever I go somewhere new, bye for now!

 

[william.martin]

Trip No.3
17/2/23
Origin: Shifnal
Destination: Marston green/ Birmingham New Street.
Purpose: Plane spotting and a trip to JD.
Story: So, for this trip I was heading to the land of the Brum for the purposes of Plane spotting at the end of Birmingham airport runway (the landing lights were in the country park behind me!) and visiting JD in the city centre.
To kick off the journey I boarded 196101 at Shifnal all on-time headed for Marston green with a change at new street onto 350240, everything ran on time and completely smoothly, great work WMR!
Now, you should probably bare this in mind
for later that the brakes on 196101 had been making weird noises every time the driver applied them (somehow worse than the typical CAF screech.)
We got to the end of the runway only to discover that the planes were taking off/ landing from the opposite end which meant that the view was not as a good as when they takeoff and land at the end we sit.
However we still witnessed many awesome 20-30kts crosswind landings at the world 8th most dangerous airport.
Now, you may be thinking "never, it always seemed absolutely textbook for the pilots when I flew there" and to be fair I agree as on a fairly still day it is a textbook landing. However, the runway is very exposed to the weather meaning that a little bit of wind can make the difference between a normal landing and a landing that can only be for filled by the best pilots.
The runway only used to be small and it was an airport for light aircraft only named "Elmdon airport" however certain airlines with small aircraft wanted to fly there so they built a terminal. Next, bigger airlines wanted to fly there meaning that the runway would have to be extended. So, the plan was to build an entirely new runway in the opposite direction to what there is today however there was a big object in the way; Birmingham. So instead of knocking down and rebuilding the entire of Birmingham they simply extended the runway that they already had, the first aircraft to land on it was a turbo-prop from Canada which has stopped to refuel in Greenland (and contained 3 members of my close family who were interviewed on the extended runway by the BBC.)
A few years later they shut down the terminal and turned it into a private jet centre and built a new one with nearly 8x as many gates on the other side of the airport, this remains today.

Anyway, you are now all dismissed from History class with william.martin and may continue reading the story that I completely high jacked with a history lesson. At the end of the runway we saw quite a few aircraft takeoff/ land including an Emirates Boeing 777 landing from Dubai and a TUI 787 taking off to Bridgetown (Barbados.)
After spending 2 hours watching the aircraft I got fed up and headed back to Marston Green station where I boarded 350104 into Birmingham where I spent a further 2 hours shopping about in JD and sports direct for clothes and trainers.
After that, I headed to new Street and looked at the huge departure boards to find that may train back to Shifnal was on time and due to arrive in 10 mins on plat5.
So, I headed down to plat 5 only to discover that my train was going to arrive into New Street an entire minute after it was due to turn around and head back out again. The train continued to get later until a random pair of 7 minute early voyagers rocked up on platform 5 from Barton under Needsword RSMD ready to form a Euston service 20 minutes later.
So due to the voyagers early running they had to make a platform alteration to our train and for about a minute it just said "platform TBC" until it was eventually announced my train would now depart from 4c! (I was very excited about this as 4c was only ever used by Birmingham to Shrewsbury services until the December timetable change where we lost our personal platform to the Crewe services and now had to make do with plat 5.)
So I boarded 196101 again and pulled away only 5 down, however deep in to Birmingham new street westbound tunnels I heard the same weird noise as earlier and then all of a sudden the brakes slammed on hard nearly at emergency level and came to a stop not particularly near a signal. The train then continued 6 down until just outside of Tipton where the same happened again, there was a weird noise similar to that I heard earlier then the brakes slammed on nowhere near a signal. We headed on into Wolverhampton without any further issues where we headed onto platform 2 where we waited 8 mins as a bunch of people in high vis jackets ran up and down the train closely followed by the conductor.
we then continued 15 down without any problems to Shifnal where I got off at that point 16 mins late.
The beauty about Shifnal is that from the western end of the platform you can see down the line for about 2 miles. So as I watched the train disappear off into the sunset I thought "hang on a minute, the train looks like its stopped." It remained visible for a further 4 minutes though I just thought that I have been underestimating how for you can see for 11 years. But no, after checking RTT, it had indeed been stopped for 4 mins which my friend said was for the same reason as earlier. The train continued to Shrewsbury while I was at home until it arrived 19 late.
Its next service was cancelled due to a train fault.

Hopefully they managed to fix the train and even though we had delay on the way back I
was in no rush and still had a fab day

 

[william.martin]

So this time it has been a bit of a disaster...
So let's start by summing up yesterday's trip in one sentence: train was late which meant I saw a pair of tractors and a TFW MK3 set on my way to Shrewsbury.

Now here is the bit that has ruined all of my rail plans for the next week:
I had planned to spend 4 days back in my homeland of the Midlands, two of those days would be traveling around on the west midlands travel network like my ass was on fire and the others seeing family. However, somebody in my family managed to break quite a few bones which meant that I would have 0 days red penning and 4 days helping the poor soul with housework.

However, next week I'm off on a huge travel week in Yorkshire including NYMR, NRMY, and a visit to the footplate of someone very special!

All the best - Will

 

[Techniquest]

Hopefully your family member is recovering fast and smoothly. That sounds like a seriously unpleasant incident!

Also, it's Mark 4s not Mark 3s on TfW Which set did you see? I did MK4s on the 0954 to Manchester from Hereford, 67014 on the back and 82200 on the back. I also had 82229+67020 on the 1630 from Manchester, changed plans en-route and bailed at Crewe.

 

[william.martin]

Hopefully your family member is recovering fast and smoothly. That sounds like a seriously unpleasant incident!

Also, it's Mark 4s not Mark 3s on TfW Which set did you see? I did MK4s on the 0954 to Manchester from Hereford, 67014 on the back and 82200 on the back. I also had 82229+67020 on the 1630 from Manchester, changed plans en-route and bailed at Crewe.

Thank you, they are making a slow but smooth recovery.

The Mk4's were 1V42 Manchester Piccadilly to Cardiff Central.

Sounds like you were onboard the set working up to Manchester prior to it heading back to Cardiff and me seeing it at Shrewsbury.

 

[Techniquest]

I have no idea what 1V42 is, nor am I looking it up I am of course assuming it would be the 1230 Manchester Piccadilly to Cardiff Central. I don't do headcodes!

 

[SuperLuke2334]

I have no idea what 1V42 is, nor am I looking it up I am of course assuming it would be the 1230 Manchester Piccadilly to Cardiff Central. I don't do headcodes!

That is what 1V42 is. Good guess!

 

[Techniquest]

That is what 1V42 is. Good guess!

I only knew that because the same set took me north to Piccadilly and was due to work the 1230 next I'm just not interested in learning all the headcodes, and I can't be bothered to look them up!