Just travelling around

[fandroid]

I find the everyday business of travelling to be quite interesting, especially the weird foibles of the transport providers. So I thought I'd relate some personal experiences and invite others to do the same.

Today I'm off to Aberdovey from Basingstoke.


Bought tickets on Trainsplit, but the best offer was an offpeak return with no splits. Via Euston and Birmingham. When I got the tickets from a TVM, there were no less than 9 coupons! When I checked them, I found 5 to be almost pointless. Not mandatory reservations but designed to frighten the uninitiated. I hate to imagine how many there could have been if there had been any splits.

I started on my local bus, run by Stagecoach. Checked first on UK Bus tracker. Dashed out of the door, arrived at the bus stop and found the bus to be due about 5 mins later than expected. Not late, just later. No worries, I had time.

It was around 08.45. There were crowds trying in vain to get through ticket gates. There was a a fairly brusque guy in a SWR stab vest enforcing the arbitrary peak/offpeak time boundary. I heard him say "you can't go through until the 08.49 has gone". My little orange ticket wouldn't open a gate but he just waved it through.

Basingstoke's main waiting room between platforms 2 & 3 suffers from some disease that only affects seats! It's been around for quite a while now and apparently random seats are taped off use. Nothing different today, except someone has tidied up the "don't sit here" notices.

Got on my train, a class 159, fortunately with 6 coaches. SWR has economised with short formations since Covid, but this wasn't one. All neat and clean inside but the HVAC was blowing a really noisy gale. I'm a hearing aid wearer and so quite sensitive to noise. I don't like 159s. The seat pitch is too small to accommodate the thick old fashioned cushions. The seats are raked back too. For a tall person like me they're quite tricky to deal with. Also, there are no power sockets. My phone battery is not brilliant so I like to plug in. I'll be quite pleased when the roar of diesels at Basingstoke, apart possibly from freights, is no more.

Anyway, got to Waterloo on time and headed for the Bakerloo. Surprisingly the northbound tube was really busy on arrival, a contrast to Waterloo underground station which was really quiet.

The train interior was actually in a much better nick than I'd become accustomed to. No empty advert slots and no real evidence of graffiti, even the cleaned-up version.

Uneventful change to the Victoria Line at Oxford Circus. Got to the surface at Euston. I never get used to being sent outside there on the journey between Tube and mainline. But, given the station's notoriety for overcrowding I suppose it's a safety measure. But, the open-air bit of Euston was full of people, seemingly contented ones too! It was dry and not cold, and there's a really good set of departure screens out there. I saw that I had 30 mins to my Edinburgh bound train so headed off for a coffee. Caffe Nero is well hidden but there are large signs telling us where to find it.

Euston main toilets were as busy as ever and, due to them being at the extreme low platform number end, the two-way flow of people along the corridor was constantly trying to avoid head-on collisions.

Got to the platform for the usual manual ticket check and the guy there drew an inexplicable diagonal line in biro on my ticket. I ignored my reservation and set off looking for an empty pair of seats facing forward. The refurbished Pendolino wasn't busy, so I didn't have to go far. But, the interiors of these trains is a horror. The extraordinarily high seat backs are about 1 cm short of the tops of the window.

(to be continued)

 

[fandroid]

One week later.

Anyway, the Avanti TM was well versed in customer service. My itinerary told me to change at Sandwell & Dudley for a TFW train to Shrewsbury, but she advised everyone changing to that train to do it at Birmingham International for the very obvious reason that we'd get the best choice of seats there. Whether TFW would be forgiving of anyone with Advance tickets doing the same is another question, and potentially one for the disputes sub-forum! Why do itineraries pick the change-points they do? I had a through ticket (no splits) so there was no fare saving with the Sandwell and Dudley change.

She advised us well. The train became full and standing at New Street , and was the same all the way to Shrewsbury. It was a new diesel unit, but with a really irritating hum. Another gripe was the information screen. It gave arrival times for every stop except Shrewsbury! That's a similar daft feature as Virgin West Coast used to have, giving every stop except the final one! Somehow expecting long distance passengers to be fully alert from the very beginning of every announcement. Anyway, we enjoyed the fully bilingual announcements on a service that never gets to Wales!

As everyone was leaving the train at Shrewsbury, a bit of transfer help would have been appreciated. Two big connections were due, mine to the Cambrian Coast service, and another to the Holyhead one. But no, zilch help from onboard announcements . A mass of bewildered passengers joined a chaotic crowd on the platform and milled around looking for some information, any information. I finally saw a screen with departures on it. But had no idea where my platform was. I deduced from other platform numbers that mine was a bay. It's a good thing that I know that the Cambrian Coast trains head back the same way as my Brum one had just arrived from as I then found the train hidden around the corner with just a minute or so to spare.

This was a 158, but with better seating than the 159 I started the day on. Off on time, but I was in the wrong end for Aberdovey. I am experienced enough to have realised that, but I was focussed on getting a seat. My friend had joined the same train from a Manchester service and texted me to say she'd saved me a seat (at the correct end). Getting back there was a slow job as the catering trolley was coming the other way. I was patient as I'm always pleased to see onboard catering.

Now that I was on a TFW train heading deep into Wales, the bilingual announcements ceased! (But so had the new train hum, replaced by a proper diesel roar) No other excitements for a while except pleasure in watching the Welsh countryside speed by. Spotted a couple of Osprey nest platforms on poles just before Dovey Junction. They were accompanied by several CCTV cameras, also on poles. There are request stations on the Pwllheli branch, but they aren't mentioned in the verbal or visual announcements. Penhelig is the only one before Aberdovey. Immediately before getting there the announcements tell us about it, and say to tell the guard if we want to get off. We did stop, and passengers got off and on. This selective announcement system resulted in another friend, who joined us later, getting off there thinking it was Aberdovey. Luckily they are close together, effectively being Aberdovey south and Aberdovey north.

At Aberdovey we were advised by the guard to use the middle doors of the 2-coach train "because there's a really big step down from the end doors". And there is! The platform has been adapted there with an added ramp that reaches door step height only in the platform centre.

We appreciated the advice and arrived on time to be met by another friend who'd seen the train at Machynlleth and driven madly to catch up with us.