Warning, quite a long trip report!
It has been on my mind lately that I haven’t been on a proper outing for over six months now. I’m not counting two trips made to London for laser torture at Moorfields Eye Hospital as my mind was certainly not only the journey for those! With the growing risk of more restrictions I was keen to go somewhere sooner rather than later.
I work on a weekly rota with four scheduled shifts and one ‘standby’ where I am required to be available on call up until 2.30am. As such I found myself full of coffee, wide awake and uncalled for at 2.30am today. I decided to seize the moment and take a short notice outing. My default option for a ‘comfort’ day out is a day trip to York and the NRM but I found the museum is currently closed Mon and Tues. After a quick look at the options I came up with a round trip Ipswich-Peterborough-York- Birmingham-London-Ipswich.
0600 Ipswich-Peterborough, 755334. Not too busy but I’m not sure would be normal at that time of the morning. Most other passengers seemed to be short hop commuters, Ipswich to Stowmarket and Bury to Ely etc. A fair few school kids got on at March and Whittlesey for Peterborough. During my twenty minute wait at Peterborough I saw three class 91’s and two Azumas, it always was a good place for train watching. Still several HST power cars at Ely, mostly arranged in pairs and looking ready for movement.
0759 Peterborough-York, 91105. First class catering took the form of a drink order taken at my seat which was returned with a bag of crisps and some shortbread biscuits. Along the way I saw 91106 alongside the works at Doncaster with what looked to be new wheel set at the outer end of the bogie under the sharp end. Nice to see money is still being spent on them when there are multiple off lease locos that could be scavenged for such things. The Hosking express passed us coming the other way and D6917+D6851 were looking good in green stabled by York station having brought it down in the morning.
Are the ticket office changes at York going to be permanent? I know the railway is moving away from personal service but that new travel centre is a fraction of the size of the old one. Not ideal for a station with so much tourist traffic.
1044 York-Birmingham New Street, 220030+221136. I booked this one through Trainsplit with splits at Sheffield and Derby. Attempting to book it through XC’s site offered no tickets at all, not even anytime. I had to play with the seat selector to get the same one throughout and noticed it was showing as four cars only despite being eight in reality. Perhaps that was the problem with the XC site, the train was quite busy so maybe there were seats for each section but none that were available all the way through. It seems silly to ostensibly insist on reservations and then make half the train unreservable!
Not much exciting to report on that leg but two light Colas 37’s stopped directly alongside my window at Tamworth. Someone was dropped off from the cab and then they made a noisy departure. The XC site was warning of no catering until Birmingham so I made a quick trip to Sainsbury’s Local near the Odeon in York for supplies. It turned out that there was catering in the front set from York and in both from Leeds where there was a crew change. The offer was drinks and nibbles with the promise of more substantial things to be loaded at Birmingham.
The New Street first lounge was empty except for the two staff and I was the only passenger for the half hour I was in there. Birmingham city centre seems very grim these days, multiple empty premises give a sense of deprivation I haven’t felt since the late 1980’s.
1530 New Street-Euston, 390040. Very lightly loaded and once the Coventry chancers had gone I was the only passenger in coach H for the rest of the journey. Catering was again in the former of order at seat and wait for it to be brought to you. There was much more choice than LNER though. I had the sausage roll and was pleasantly surprised to find it served hot. It came with some chilli crisps and an Ugly chocolate bar. Only one one round of orders but that is often the case on the shorter routes.
1750 Liverpool Street-Ipswich, 745005. Very lightly loaded for the time of day but Liverpool Street was fairly busy. The regular catering service was available.
The cost for the whole trip was just short of £200. For Advance First tickets booked in the early hours of the day itself I think that is reasonable. With hindsight I might as well have gone in Standard though. The current First catering isn’t worth the extra and the socially distanced seating would have given me a pair of seats to myself on all the trains anyway.
As I type this on the 1750 I have just had a text asking me to go to work tonight! Mr Bezos pays well but he certainly likes to mix things up for his staff! Still I had better go in, it will help pay for this adventure!
One off topic observation...It was nice to see York Odeon still surviving as an independent cinema. I was at York University in the early 90’s and it was under threat from the multiplexes even then. I remember seeing a film on its enormous main screen being quite something compared to the overgrown TV screens we had become used to at the multiplexes of the time. I saw Reservoir Dogs there when it was first released, the ear scene was extra disturbing at such a scale!
It has been on my mind lately that I haven’t been on a proper outing for over six months now. I’m not counting two trips made to London for laser torture at Moorfields Eye Hospital as my mind was certainly not only the journey for those! With the growing risk of more restrictions I was keen to go somewhere sooner rather than later.
I work on a weekly rota with four scheduled shifts and one ‘standby’ where I am required to be available on call up until 2.30am. As such I found myself full of coffee, wide awake and uncalled for at 2.30am today. I decided to seize the moment and take a short notice outing. My default option for a ‘comfort’ day out is a day trip to York and the NRM but I found the museum is currently closed Mon and Tues. After a quick look at the options I came up with a round trip Ipswich-Peterborough-York- Birmingham-London-Ipswich.
0600 Ipswich-Peterborough, 755334. Not too busy but I’m not sure would be normal at that time of the morning. Most other passengers seemed to be short hop commuters, Ipswich to Stowmarket and Bury to Ely etc. A fair few school kids got on at March and Whittlesey for Peterborough. During my twenty minute wait at Peterborough I saw three class 91’s and two Azumas, it always was a good place for train watching. Still several HST power cars at Ely, mostly arranged in pairs and looking ready for movement.
0759 Peterborough-York, 91105. First class catering took the form of a drink order taken at my seat which was returned with a bag of crisps and some shortbread biscuits. Along the way I saw 91106 alongside the works at Doncaster with what looked to be new wheel set at the outer end of the bogie under the sharp end. Nice to see money is still being spent on them when there are multiple off lease locos that could be scavenged for such things. The Hosking express passed us coming the other way and D6917+D6851 were looking good in green stabled by York station having brought it down in the morning.
Are the ticket office changes at York going to be permanent? I know the railway is moving away from personal service but that new travel centre is a fraction of the size of the old one. Not ideal for a station with so much tourist traffic.
1044 York-Birmingham New Street, 220030+221136. I booked this one through Trainsplit with splits at Sheffield and Derby. Attempting to book it through XC’s site offered no tickets at all, not even anytime. I had to play with the seat selector to get the same one throughout and noticed it was showing as four cars only despite being eight in reality. Perhaps that was the problem with the XC site, the train was quite busy so maybe there were seats for each section but none that were available all the way through. It seems silly to ostensibly insist on reservations and then make half the train unreservable!
Not much exciting to report on that leg but two light Colas 37’s stopped directly alongside my window at Tamworth. Someone was dropped off from the cab and then they made a noisy departure. The XC site was warning of no catering until Birmingham so I made a quick trip to Sainsbury’s Local near the Odeon in York for supplies. It turned out that there was catering in the front set from York and in both from Leeds where there was a crew change. The offer was drinks and nibbles with the promise of more substantial things to be loaded at Birmingham.
The New Street first lounge was empty except for the two staff and I was the only passenger for the half hour I was in there. Birmingham city centre seems very grim these days, multiple empty premises give a sense of deprivation I haven’t felt since the late 1980’s.
1530 New Street-Euston, 390040. Very lightly loaded and once the Coventry chancers had gone I was the only passenger in coach H for the rest of the journey. Catering was again in the former of order at seat and wait for it to be brought to you. There was much more choice than LNER though. I had the sausage roll and was pleasantly surprised to find it served hot. It came with some chilli crisps and an Ugly chocolate bar. Only one one round of orders but that is often the case on the shorter routes.
1750 Liverpool Street-Ipswich, 745005. Very lightly loaded for the time of day but Liverpool Street was fairly busy. The regular catering service was available.
The cost for the whole trip was just short of £200. For Advance First tickets booked in the early hours of the day itself I think that is reasonable. With hindsight I might as well have gone in Standard though. The current First catering isn’t worth the extra and the socially distanced seating would have given me a pair of seats to myself on all the trains anyway.
As I type this on the 1750 I have just had a text asking me to go to work tonight! Mr Bezos pays well but he certainly likes to mix things up for his staff! Still I had better go in, it will help pay for this adventure!
One off topic observation...It was nice to see York Odeon still surviving as an independent cinema. I was at York University in the early 90’s and it was under threat from the multiplexes even then. I remember seeing a film on its enormous main screen being quite something compared to the overgrown TV screens we had become used to at the multiplexes of the time. I saw Reservoir Dogs there when it was first released, the ear scene was extra disturbing at such a scale!
