My trip down to Glasgow was uneventful, but just as beautiful as on the way up. I got into Glasgow at 20:44, pretty sleepily as I had been up for so long (about 15 hours at that point). I made my way out of Queen Street quickly, popping into the ticket office to buy a Strathclyde Day Tripper, making the ticket woman laugh as I commented on how genius they are, scratching out the date on the ticket. I popped down to the subway to get a train to St. Enoch, as I didn’t want to walk through Glasgow in the rain, or get a bus. I knew there was a train to Ayr at 21:00, as I boarded a tram at about 20:50, so I decided to go for it and run. I didn’t really expect it to be as far as it is from St. Enoch to Glasgow Central (I bet it seemed much further with a heavy bag!), but I was committed, and just made it in time, completely out of breath though. To pass the 50 minutes to Ayr (the journey is not so enjoyable in the dark), I fired up my laptop using the power sockets that the 380’s have, to watch Sound City, the documentary about the recording studio, made by Dave Grohl, because I had been meaning to watch it for ages. 380114 ran this service (just remembered!)
The journey passed away quickly, and before I knew it, I was walking through the light drizzle at Ayr station, trying to get google maps to work on my phone, so I could find the way to my hotel. I found it alright, and after pressing on the buzzer three times, someone finally let me in, and led me through to a pub, before they led me (and my huge bag), back to the reception, jumping over it to grab the card machine. He then ran off to get the key, shouted down the corridor to me and pointed at my room instead of taking me there. Manners these days!
I’m not sure what I was expecting at £29, but the room wasn’t that great really. There were two single beds, so I immediately pushed them together, and took a shower, making use of the complimentary biscuits (although not at the same time). Got to sleep at about 11:30, after being up for about 18 hours x_x
This morning I woke up at 8am, which was a bit nicer. I had decided to scrap my plan of going to Stranraer the morning before, mainly because I realised that the Day Tripper was only valid from 0900, and the train I had planned on getting was the 0736, oops
I popped into Ayr to get some breakfast and a sandwich from tesco, before going back to my room and grabbing my bag, which seemed to be a lot heavier than last night, I don’t know what it’s doing when I turn my eye away >: I walked to the station and hopped on board the 0950 from Ayr to Glasgow Central, run by a 3 car 380, 380014 this time. I love the 380’s, they’re amazingly smooth, and the plug sockets are so useful, especially as my phone eats away power without even doing anything. Fortunately, I had just missed the rain too, as it starting pouring pretty hard when we left! The train quickly filled up with people going to Glasgow for the day. I noticed that the 380’s struggle to keep time on these services, we were already about two minutes down after the third station, which is odd because they’ve just come into service!
At Glasgow Central, I popped over to platform 7 to grab a Cathcarts circular, going clockwise. 314201 did the honours this time, and it was my first chance to check out the Scotrail EMU stock. I was disappointed to see that the 314’s are more similar to the 315’s, and not my loved 313, but it was still close to home! We left Glasgow Central at 10:51, and exactly 30 minutes later, we arrived back on the adjacent Platform 8, well worth it!
I still wasn’t totally certain what I wanted to do with the three hours I had, but I knew I wanted to get the remaining three Scotrail EMU’s in, which were the 318, 334 and 320, and I thought the best chance of this would be to go to Partick and do all the suburban lines from there, so I made my way down to Glasgow Central Low Level, where things got interesting!
For any of you who have been to the Low Level station at Glasgow, there are about two screens per platform, and they had about five pages each to scroll through, which they did amazingly slowly. I was extremely confused at this point as where I was going (well I knew I was going to Partick but I didn’t know what direction this was. A 320 came into Platform 17, so I jumped on, thinking that it went to Partick, but I looked on the screen on the platform, and it only displayed stations that I didn’t recognise, so I jumped back off, thinking that it was going the wrong way! Only then did I notice my mistake; I had only seen page two of the stations, and they were the stations after Partick, so the train was the right one. Absolute nightmare!
Fortunately it was about six minutes to the next train, so I jumped on, a bit more confident that I knew where I was going this time. 318252 took me there, which was more like the 313/317’s that I’m used to
We got to Partick within seven minutes, so I took some pictures, waiting for the 1214 to the infamous Coatbridge Sunnyside! While I was waiting on Platform 1 (westbound), I saw that the 11:38 to Airdrie was due, but running late, and this stopped at Coatbridge SS, so I ran over and jumped on that, 318257 took me there in 29 minutes, and it was actually sunny there! Well, half sun, the sun was shining through some thin clouds
I hadn’t noticed before, but there had been OHLE problems at Airdrie earlier in the day, meaning that about half of the services through were cancelled (including the train I was going to get to Coatbridge), but fortunately a service back into Glasgow came eight minutes later, another 318, 318254 took me to Bellgrove, and I was cursing myself at not staying on the 320 earlier, as there seemed to be a shortage of them. I got off at Bellgrove in the hope of catching the train up to Springburn, and I noticed that it was cancelled just as the doors had closed on my previous train (curse you slow changing boards!), so I was forced to wait for the next train into Glasgow, the 12:57, which was finally a 320 for me, 320306 took me on a short hop to High Street, with the satisfying three letter code of HST, where I waited for a fast train to Dalmuir, run by 334011, completing my goal, satisfying!
It was a bit dull from here, I went up to Dalmuir, before coming back to Hyndland on 334032, before waiting for the 14:07 to Motherwell, on 320307. At Motherwell, I was treated to dual 37’s thrashing through, on a rail head cleaning service it looked like, blimey it was loud! I then caught the 15:14 XC service to Edinburgh, on 221131, so I stole the free wifi from First Class (much like I’m about to in a minute to post this!), to check up how my later trains were doing.
At Edinburgh, I jumped off and walked up the long ramp up to Waverley Bridge, and then along to the McDonalds nearby, to grab a meal (was starving by this point). On the way back I noticed that I needn’t have bothered, there was a McDonalds just in the little mall out of the station, there’s even an escalator to it! Just my luck 8(
My next service was the Loco Hauled services around the Glenrothes Loop, and 67022 turned up for it with some Mk 2 stock in tow, was great fun to put my head out of the front coach and listen to it power up. It’s quite obvious that this service struggles a lot to keep up with the DMU timings, even with the WTT about six minutes behind the PTT in places! The getaways from stations were amazingly slow, and we were about four minutes late all the way round. I especially liked the dispatch method, a good old fashioned green flag being waved.
I went all the way around the loop to Kirkcaldly, where I hopped off and crossed the platform, my speed decreasing all the way as my feet were getting tired of my huge bag! I waited for the 18:47 XC service to Aberdeen, run by another Voyager, 221141 this time. It was tempting to wait for an EC HST 25 minutes later, but I thought that it was worth putting up with the Voyager for two hours, to make sure I get into Aberdeen on time. I also invented a new game for when I’m on XC services, called “who’s been on a voyager for the longest?’ The winner today goes to the man in D20, who’s been on from Exeter St Davids to Dundee! Ouch that’s a long journey x_x
I’m writing this and watching the rest of Sound City as we speed up the East Coast, just approaching Stonehaven now. I’m planning on popping up to the first class coach in a minute, posting this and then coming back, hopefully I’ll be sneaky enough!
At Aberdeen, I’m gonna try and find a left luggage (I seem to recall there was one when I went before?), or put my bag in the First Class lounge, then run into the town, grab something for the Sleeper, before running back and jumping on. Nervous as to who I’m going to have to share with, but I probably won’t spend that much time in the berth anyway.
Thanks for the kind comments Urban Gateline, really appreciated
I agree about the scenery, it changes a lot and all of it is really interesting! Well worth the trip I feel. I haven’t been in a hotel or anything on my own before so I had no idea what to expect. I can understand going for the big chains though, I think I’ll try it too when I next get a trip going.
Wick is a bit dull, yes, and I couldn’t find a supermarket either! If you’re referring to the ‘Original 99p Shop’ in Wick, I have some terrible news for you, it’s shut down!
There’s also a large Poundstretcher that looks quite new, so I have a bad feeling that it put it out of business, which is really quite sad actually. Maybe it’s a common thing with the power sockets not being in use, would be nice if they were, but I can’t really complain with a free upgrade! I turned out not getting anything on the trolley service anyway, I came prepared!
I’ll do my best to keep on writing these, thank you so much for the nice comments.
Eastwestdivide, I personally think it would be a great thing, it snowing whenever you go to Snow Hill
You learn something every day HLE13
It even works the barriers at King’s Cross, without a Maltese Cross!
I’ll post a short summary to this tomorrow morning when I get back home. All it is to go now is the Sleeper down to Euston and a train back to Hertford North. Pretty sad that it’s coming to an end so quickly!
(I'm sitting outside first class, stealing their wifi and there is a guy who is SO drunk he can hardly talk properly. Scotland eh?
, I went onto the platform with the sleeper, and found it very odd that someone was welcoming me on and asking what drink I wanted in the morning! I went into my berth (D 01), and fortunately there was no one else in there, so I put my bag on the bed and sat down. I think I also put out a snow globe of the loch ness monster as a little decoration (I had got it for my girlfriend as a semi-tacky joke gift, although it is quite sweet actually!). I went back outside to see what loco was pulling us tonight (67011, which unsurprisingly I had never been on before, as the first 67 I had was earlier in the day), before jumping back inside to wait our departure.
