Railways Blog

I keep reading about rail traveller’s horror stories. Since I’ve made two lengthy return journeys in the past week; I’ll recount my experiences:

The first was a trip to the Birmingham NEC for the Warley Model Railway Exhibition, last Saturday. I hadn’t bought a ticket in advance, and was presented at Slough with a long snaking queue for the one open ticket window. Fortunately there were a couple of guys with PORTIS machines willing to sell tickets to any destination provided you could pay cash.

Thames Trains services were still chaos following the derailment a few days earlier; they’d suspended normal services (including the Oxford semi-fasts), forcing me to take the substitute all-stations stopper to Reading. Fortunately this still had a good connection into a Virgin Trains Reading-Newcastle service formed by a five-car Voyager. This left Reading about half-full (the back half)

It left Reading on time, but lost about fifteen minutes at Oxford, stuck behind a kettle! Yes, there was a long train of maroon Mk1 coaches headed by GWR No. 7007 “Nunney Castle” let out in front of us. Not sure why, since it was promptly looped a mile north of the station to let us get in front of it again – perhaps they needed to clear the platform at Oxford.

The train filled up at Oxford, prompting an announcement from the train manager telling the people standing at the back of the train that there were plenty of seats in the front two coaches.

Return on Sunday night saw the 17:13 train to Reading arrive about ten minutes late. Another 5-car Voyager, this time very full. Although I managed to find a seat, the large number of passengers joining at Coventry filled up the aisles and vestibules making it impossible to get the buffet, sorry ‘shop’. While Virgin claim that under ‘Operation Princess’, with train frequencies doubled but train lengths halved, the number of seats should be the same, this service highlights one of the problems: because of limited capacity on the Birmingham-Coventry-Leamington section, every other train has to be routed via the old GWR route via Solihull – so Birmingham International and Coventry still only have an hourly service, as before, only with much shorter trains.

My second long-distance journey of the week was much further, for a job interview in Edinburgh. The appointment in Edinburgh was at 10am, and the agency suggested I flew with one of the budget airlines. Unfortunately it turns out they all fly from Stansted, the wrong side of London, a good three hours away from where I live. A search on the Scotrail web site revealed it was possible to get a one-way sleeper berth for just £29 (from London, not including the connection from Slough), which seemed too good a bargain to be true.

It felt weird leaving home for a long journey at half-past nine in the evening. At this time of night, the ticket office was closed, the ticket machines decided they didn’t like £2 coins, and there was no sign of a conductor on the trains, so Thames Trains lost some revenue for that part of the trip.

It’s been 29 years since I last travelled on a sleeper (the long-discontinued Kensington Olympia-Stirling motorail on a family holiday). I arrived at Euston to find a long train of mauve-coloured sleeping cars, and an attendant holding a clipboard with a list of names.

Once on the move, I found it difficult to sleep. While I’m sure the ride in Mk3 coaches on continuous welded rail must be quieter than Mk1s on jointed track, I still only managed to sleep fitfully; I remember being woken up when the train took a reverse curve at speed somewhere on the northern section of the line, and again waking up when everything had fallen silent (even the air-conditioning), which must have been when they divided the train at Carstairs. The now-shortened train rolled in to Edinburgh on-time at 7.30

I was surprised to see the earlier sleeper (which carries portions to Aberdeen, Inverness and Fort William) still in the station. I’m assuming this was badly delayed somewhere en-route; it did give me the chance to see a veteran class 37 on the four-coach Fort William portion.

Train spotters would probably like to know that I saw six classes of locomotive at Edinburgh Waverley, four of them hauling passenger trains.

The return was by a daytime GNER service which cost more than twice as much as the outward sleeper, about half-full and ten minutes late, although it made up some of this time on journey south. It’s ironic that I travelled the much more scenic west coast line during the night, and the duller east coast line during the day.

Overall, none of the horror stories I keep reading about – the worst delay was only about 15 minutes, and the worst problem was the overcrowding on the return from Birmingham.

Posted by Steven Bateman on the Ngauge mailing list.

21 years ago today (ie 7th Dec 1981) BR’s Advanced Passenger train made its first journey from Glasgow to London – in a record beating time of 4 hours and 14 minutes.

I wonder how long it will be until the Pendolinos do any better? (hopefully without the need for sick bags!)

Was it really that long ago? I remember the APT project getting cancelled because the new business-led sectorisation of BR decided there was no business case for a 4-and-a-half hour journey from London to Glasgow.

The media loved taking the piss out of the APT, perhaps because they put it into passenger service before they’d ironed out all the bugs (Voyagers, anyone?). I believe the decision to scrap it was made just as the engineers managed to get it working properly. Then the media had more fun with pictures of this shiny new train sitting in the scapyard.

The one surviving APT now gathers dust at the railway heritage centre at Crewe, beside the west coast main line it should have worked, a perpetual reminder of what might have been.

Patrick Crozier credits me (or rather Hugh Dady, who I quoted) with prescience over the problems with Operation Princess. The reality is that the way things were going seriously pear-shaped was blindingly obvious to anyone that actually uses the service.

I think Virgin Train’s problem stems from the fact that they have two quite different markets, and the trains and timetable only really caters for one of those.

The first market is the short-haul market on runs like Birmingham-Manchester; this market is made up of day-trippers and commuters, who want a high-frequency ‘turn-up-and-go’ service.

The second market is the long-haul one, on the routes to Scotland and the West of England, made up mostly of people whose journeys involve overnight stays and therefore carry a lot of luggage. These people tend to book their journeys in advance, and service frequency is less of an issue than the existance of a direct train at the right time of day between a given pair of stations.

The trains (basically sprinters with pointy noses) just aren’t designed for the long-distance market; the lack of luggage space and inadequate catering are example of this. As for the serious overcrowding problems, this is a consequence of attempting an all-day regular-interval service with short trains when the demand varies considerably by time of day. While Virgin claim there are as many seats available over the course of the day, I’m sure there are far fewer at busy times.

I now have proof that Virgin Trains do irony – The Voyager “shops” do indeed sell the Manic Street Preachers’ album “Forever Delayed”.

So says the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) in this BBC article.

Instead of encouraging airport expansion and proliferation, it is essential that the government should divert resources into encouraging a shift from air to high-speed rail for internal UK travel and some intra-European journeys.

The amount of pollution (especially CO2) from air travel is far higher per passenger-mile than rail. Britain’s problem that, unlike France and Germany, we’ve failed to invest in a high-speed rail network, preferring patchwork upgrades to existing lines dating from the Victorian era.

The RCEP isn’t taking a Luddite line that air travel is evil, only that as much short-haul traffic as possible should go by rail.

Not that this argument will cut any ice with the head-in-the-sand crowd who are still ‘in denial’ about global warming.

It’s been reported that there’s going to be a major press conference at 5pm toda by Virgin Trains, Stagecoach, and the SRA. Whether it’s to be about the West Coast Modernisation, or the growing fiasco of ‘Operation Princess’ is left to speculation.

Hugh Dady posts this on the SWRG mailing list

As we approach the end of the week, a formal announcement is expected late tomorrow from Virgin, Stagecoach and the SRA. Mr Bow-wow, Ringmaster in charge at the now fully re-nationalised Strategic Rail Circus is reported to have said woof woof to Chris Green who is now relegated to try and salvage the growing mess looming on the West Coast. Industry insiders are now convinced that full squadron service for the Pendolinos could be 5 years away as like most new trains delivered under privatisation they don’t actually work. With time running out for the 87s its all a bit of a muddle.

As ever the ‘Railway Magazine’ has the scoop picture on its front cover this month of Branson accepting the replacement traction for the Westcoast upgrade in the shape of ‘Rocket’ with the apparently generous gesture of donating the Pendolino to the National collection.

Meanwhile having completely stuffed Cross Country, Virgin won’t actually be ordering the additional coaches which they have been kidding staff about. Unfortunately the ‘business case’ rather fell apart when Virgin were told that the UK taxpayer would not be picking up the bill for an extra coach. Since VT haven’t so far put a penny into the new rolling stock – Voyagers/Pendolinos etc are actually owned by a complex consortium of finance houses and now the UK taxpayer, they are at least consistent in their strategy of getting someone else to pay for the rather expensive advertising billboard for the company to promote its name. The brand awareness is now very high among the travelling public but not actually for the right reasons leaving Branston in a bit of a pickle – the sandwich variety finally chopped with all the big lumps taken out.

There is no known cure as yet for the troubled Voyager fleet – well Bombustic transportation don’t have one yet, but they are close according to a VT spokesperson – its all relative you know. Mars is close compared to some of the Planets which these senior railway managers seem to live on. The problem is that the roof mounted rheo.brake resistors double as smoothing chokes for the traction motors under power which is why they can’t be isolated. Don’t try explaining it to Mr G though – he was a management trainee with BR and engineering remains a mystery. At present it is likely that the Voyager fleet will leave the South West region by the end of the timetable on 11 January 2003 or maybe sooner so as I keep saying, grab those pictures while you can. Where possible, there is likely to be a return to an ‘all new’ type of pre-owned traction for the Westcountry with one careful previous owner (BR) and a mere 8 million miles under their belt . As for the Duffs – maybe – maybe not, but I remain confident that they will be back for another summer staring at the Atlantic Ocean as they pass but not actually falling into it as a certain railway manager once unkindly suggested.

For those that would like the performance characteristic of the new traction alias class 43 (but not the original NBL variety!) to compare with the late lamented Voyagers they are:

Class 43 with 7 MK III trailers: 0 – 60 mph in 79.2 sec achieved Old Dalby test track May 76. Note Virgin incorrectly quote the acceleration as 0 – 60 in 80 sec for a 5 car set. So far as I am aware the figure for 5 coaches has never actually been tested although both record braking attempts in May 77 for the Queen Silver Jubilee Pdn – Bristol and a year later with the Tees Tyne Pullman used specially prepared 5 coach sets.

Class 220 4 car set: 0 – 60 mph in under 60 sec.

Class 221 5 car set: 0-60 mph in under 70 sec.

Changes to the way that performance envelopes are now specified makes direct comparison difficult , but a 5 car HST has 42 more seats available than a 5 car Voyager and there is probably very little difference in actual acceleration time because the HST has 4500 h.p available to accelerate a weight of 310 tonnes against a 5 car 221 with 3750 h.p. for 304 tonnes.

So don’t forget to watch the news over the next few days – the once respected family firm of Chipperfield Circus has given up, unable to compete with the railway big boys any longer who can put on a Circus the like of which you have never seen. So from the wall of death at Dawlish its Goodnight.
H.D.

The British N gauge world has lost one of it’s leading lights. Nobody that saw his excellent “Moorcock Junction” at the N Gauge Society show this year could doubt his modelling talent. This tribute comes from Michael Shillabeer:

It is with deep regret that I have to report that Andy Calvert sadly passed away last night.

My lasting impression of Andy is that he never let model railways get too serious – when I first saw Andy’s latest layout Moorcock Junction, his comments to me were “what’d you think of my new trainset then?”

I’d like to express on behalf of myself and the N Gauge Society my deepest sympathy to Andy’s family and friends.

Dave Jones had this to say:

I have just found out about Andy Calvert.

What can i say? Well he was a good friend of mine, although we only chatted about 6 or 7 times a year it was usually for 3-4 hours uninterrupted. He was one of the top 3 modellers in the country, and the leading impetus in ALL the NGS wagon kits.

No mean modeller himself either, i was lucky enough to have Andy debut Welham Green MPD at a show i organised in Banbury about 6 years ago. I was also a supplier of stock for this layout, plus the ‘broker’ for it when he sold it to another of my customers.

He was always open, and cheerful……and never really had a harsh word to say about anyone.

The N gauge world is poorer for his loss, and i can only repeat Michael’s sentiments.

He will be missed.

BBC NEWS | England | Safety investigation into derailed train
I realised I hadn’t mentioned this weekend’s derailment. From what I can tell, just one bogie of the middle coach of the train left the track, and nobody was hurt. I don’t know whether the train was running at anything like the full 125mph; some reports say it was moving much more slowly when it came off.

I travelled the route the following morning, after they’d removed the derailed train. The two fast tracks were still closed, with a lot of men in orange hi-vis vests working on the up (eastbound) fast line. I couldn’t see any obvious damage, suggesting that the derailment was at a low speed.

My friend Alan Monk got stuck in the disruption, arriving at Paddington on his way back from Southend at 8.30pm, just after the accident happened. His train got as far as Ealing Broadway, 5 miles out, then turned round and went back to Paddington. He finally got home at 2.30am once they’d reopened the two unobstructed slow lines.

A weekend away from blogging! I’ve been in sunny Southend, attending the Shoeburyness MRC exhibition and staying with my sister and family in Southend. First time I’ve seen my nephew and niece’s newly-acquired pet guinea pigs – takes me back a few years to when I was their age, and had a large colony of the creatures. Note to Michele – Guinea pigs are much cuter than hamsters, and aren’t into wife-beating or infanticide.

The Shoeburyness show, held that the Cliffs Pavilion at Leigh-on-Sea is one of the smaller shows, but quite high-quality. Although it pains me to say so, two of the best layouts were American, the HO-scale “Pueblo Falls” and the convoluted N-scale “Bethany Wells”, both based on the Union Pacific, which seems to be the US railroad most favoured by British modellers. Good British layouts included the very simple but effective “Ascott-under-Wychwood”, just three points in a 20-foot length representing the Cotswold village station in the early 1980s, and the highly-detailed “Walker Marine”, a small shunting layout set in the mid-1960s with diesel power on the main line and an assortment of steam locomotives on the industrial sidings.

My nephew is now compiling a long list of train-set wants for Christmas…

The BBC have now caught up with the woes of Virgin Voyagers, proving that it’s not just us rail anoraks that find “Operation Princess” deeply flawed.

Hugh Dady recalls a typical day in the West of England on the SWRG mailing list

Waiting on platform 5 at Exeter this morning I was comforted to see the monitors were showing FGW’s 0657 service to London as on time while all around the 0712, 0740 and 0812 from a certain other company had the blue line treatment on the indicator (i.e. cancelled). Life is full of little surprises and at that rather unsociable time of the day I had to rub my eyes as 47815 came into view actually 1 minute down at this stage. For those that don’t know, the 0555 Ply – Pdn is an all stations job and since it is timed for an HST it presents quite a challenge to one of Brush’s finest. ‘Abertawe Landore’ put in a commendable performance arriving at platform 2 at Pdn a tad over 5 min late, which considering the train is timed to take 25 min Reading – Pdn alone , I though wasn’t a bad performance. The ecs was taken out by 47813 for the record.

Overrunning business meant that I missed the Golden Hind and was saddled with the 1833 ex-Pdn for my return, not a favourite train as it is another all stations job. The stock was late arriving presumably as they were trying to step up an HST rather than rely on a loco formation again, but an HST finally arrived in platform 9 and we set off some 7 min late. Now at this stage you might wonder how I am going to get Virgin into a trip from Dawlish to Pdn by FGW! Well it goes like this. We had just about pulled back all of the 7 min late start by the time that we drew up at Westbury, when I was startled by a Voyager which scuttled by on the adjacent line. Now Voyagers don’t belong at Westbury do they? What was it doing – to Eastleigh for maintenance perhaps – that was my first though anyway. After 5 min delay we were on our way again with the booked stop at Castle Carry and an unscheduled stop west of Cogload. After a few min. I went to the end of the coach , looked out and beyond our signal were the tail lights of a Voyager. Soon it moved but we didn’t. Eventually we got a green, drew into Taunton where sitting in the island platform were 221108 leading 220006 both apparently collapsed. Passengers were being urged to get off the Voyagers and cross under the subway to join our train. Eventually about 100 very weary looking passengers did so and the debrief of some of them was interesting. For a start the units that had passed us at Westbury were these two! It looks as if the first Voyager coming south to Bristol had suffered brake problems through much of its journey. When it got to Bristol it would apparently only go in one direction and that wasn’t west. It looks as if the service behind it coupled up (both were apparently full and standing at this stage – presumably about 1730/1800 at Bristol so right in the middle of the rush hour) but they could only move in an easterly direction so they were sent via Bath and the Limpley Stoke. The whole lot ground to a halt outside Taunton according to the passengers – they then managed to get into the station where all the lights went out and the units shut down.

We left at 2054 as they were splitting the Voyagers having powered up 221108 again. Very comprehensive announcements were made by FGW on our service to the VT passengers joining us and I was glad to note that the train manager did use the word ‘passengers’. A coach would be laid on at Plymouth for those pass. for Liskeard and Bodmin etc. The news for passengers wanting Truro Redruth Cambourne and Penzance was not however to good as they were hoping to provide a rail service leaving Plymouth at 2305.

While waiting at Exeter for my connection to Dawlish the announcements confirmed that most VT services from the north were either one, one and a half hours late or just cancelled. 220031 came in smartly behind us at 2125, I think forming a service from Darlington but it was hard to tell and it was followed by 221108 (empty from Taunton) which went into platform 5 and within three mins set off back north with no passengers which all seemed pretty odd. Meantime I left on the 2136 for Paignton formed of 153372/305 and very nice they were too, perhaps a little noisier than a Voyager but at least they work. Passengers on the 2132 to Exmouth were in for an even better treat with a sparkling 158816. Mr Green – when are you going to accept that it isn’t working – FGW might even loan you the odd 47 but surely you have enough of your own and Rivera trains could supply you with the coaches? You gave away the finest diesel train in the world bar none (HST) to other operators – don’t say people didn’t warn you that it would be like this.
H.D.