In 1979 I travelled from Whitehaven to Coventry for an interview at what was then Lanchester Polytechnic.
In my mind I had changed at Nuneaton onto a train to Coventry. However I recently discovered that I couldn't have done this as at that time the Nuneaton to Coventry line was freight only.
My question then is where did I change from the Carlisle to Euston train in order to get to Coventry?
I am afraid I can't be precise about my date, it us even possible it was late 1978.
I have a lot of relevant direct experience here, and I lost a lot of hours from my life because there were no direct trains between Coventry and Nuneaton.
I did university interviews by train and remember parts of them quite vividly. In those days there was a hierarchy with Oxbridge going first, they were the main players for pre Christmas interviews. I did all of my interview trips in January and February so I think an interview at Lanchester is much more likely to be early in 1979 than late in 1978.
Can you remember what the weather was like, and whether you stayed overnight?
I lived in the West Midlands and was very familiar with the train service through Coventry in the late 1970s. In the 1978-79 timetable the basic off peak service at Coventry was hourly Wolverhampton and hourly Birmingham to/from Euston, the hourly local EMU via Northampton and er that's it. For a daytime interview at Lanchester in 1978/79 a train arrival at Coventry would have to be on one of those services.
There would have been trains from both Liverpool & Manchester Piccadilly heading towards the south coast in 1978/79, which ran via New Street, Coventry & Leamington Spa
No there would not. Most Liverpool/Manchester-South Coast trains ran via Solihull until May 1979, apart from a few early morning down trains and late afternoon up trains, which are not relevant for a day trip arriving at Coventry from the north.
In 1978/79 Whitehaven-Coventry would have been a bit of a challenge for out and back in one day. My suspicion is that you did get the train to/from Nuneaton, but then used road transport to get to/from Lanchester. Looking at the timetable, these are possible moves:
0550 Whitehaven-Carlisle arr 0702
0716 Carlisle-Euston change at Crewe arr 0937
0912 Manchester-Euston dep Crewe 0951 arr Nuneaton 1035
(this also called at Rugby but missed the hourly EMU to Coventry by 5 minutes)
1600 Euston-Blackpool dep Nuneaton 1716 change at Preston arr 1855
(this also called at Rugby but the hourly EMU from Coventry missed it by 10 minutes)
1645 Euston-Glasgow dep Preston 1916 arr Carlisle 2034
2110 Carlisle-Whitehaven arr 2221
Two taxis make a day trip feasible and would have saved the need for overnight accommodation. If there were enough interview candidates from the north west it might even have been worthwhile for Lanchester to provide a minibus.
Incidentally the furthest north I went was Lancaster, out and back with the same loco on 0900 Euston-Carlisle and 1552 Carlisle-Euston. It was a very long day, and my lasting memory of Lancaster is of it being very grey, cold and dark!
