The Night Riviera sleeper service to Cornwall leaves from Platform 1 at Paddington. This is the platform, dominated by its huge Victorian clock, from which my train to boarding school used to leave, so seven years of vivid memories flood back as I arrive for another uncertain voyage.
The train harks back to the past in many other ways. It is locomotive-hauled the Totnes Castle doing the honours on this occasion and has wonderful old-style sleeper compartments, each with a courteous attendant who will bring tea and breakfast as the train pulls into Bodmin Parkway at 6.30am.
My attendant, Tasmyn, is a Cornish lady who has been doing the job for six years. She loves the train and it shows. There are three sleeper coaches, each with eight single and four double berths, and it is about two thirds full.
The new touch is an on-board entertainment system. As the train pulls out of a deserted Paddington at 11.45pm I flick on to the drama channel to find a Poirot special. No, surely not Murder on the Orient Express. In fact it is Mrs McGinty's Dead, with Poirot proving the innocence of a convicted killer within days of the gallows, via lots of trips to the village of the murder on restored steam trains which I hope made some money for the heritage side of the rail industry.
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I fall asleep long before the little grey cells have identified the real murderer, and don't wake up until the station announcer at Exeter, at 4.30am, makes it hard to do otherwise.
Off the train a little early at 7.05 for breakfast in a Truro coffee shop with Matthew Taylor MP. His main transport concern is the A30, whose dualling is still incomplete. An hour later back on the train to the junction station of Par, where Dan Rogerson MP is on the platform with the leaders of the Focal group, which is promoting improvements to the branch line to Newquay on which I travel next after visiting the wonderful old Par signal box, with its levers, bells and semaphore signals, straight out of Poirot.
The line to Newquay is not quite the classic case of the branch line fallen on hard times but it is reviving. It kept its holiday express trains to London post-Beeching and also a good deal of china clay freight traffic. Now it has seven weekday local trains winding slowly along the 21-mile line in addition to the Saturday long-distance trains.
The local trains are mostly single-carriage trains like the one I take. Ours is pretty full there and back, including a party of young surfers out for a day from Saltash who quickly take up all the luggage racks with their surfboards. Apparently on Good Friday the train was so full with surfers that a local coach had to be found to take half of them. With Newquay a growing attraction, the future for the line appears bright, although it is now running at full capacity.
A two-minute connection at Par, then on to a Penzance-to-London express. Next stop Exeter to meet representatives from Devon rail user groups before taking trains to Yeovil, Weymouth, Southampton and finally reaching Brighton at 11.20 tonight. Then to a hotel for the first long well, six-hour, stationary period in 24 hours.
So far, every train on time. The InterCity 125 I'm on has every seat taken as we reach Totnes no sign of the Totnes Castle and a few people standing in the vestibule, so when it leaves Exeter it will doubtless be busy.
Andrew Adonis is Minister for Transport
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6092448.ece
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I arrive at Hastings at 6.30am in the company of a dozen other passengers, having set off from Brighton at 5.30am with only two others before Norman Baker MP joined at Lewes.
Norman, who is passionate about the railways, points out the disused platform at Lewes which used to serve the rural line that is now the preserved Bluebell Railway from Sheffield Park. I remember visiting the Bluebell at the age of 9 and the thrill of going on a steam train for the first time. The memory came back yesterday afrernoon when I visited the Swanage Railway in Dorset with Jim Knight, the local MP and Schools Minister.
The large, enthusiastic and highly professional team at the Swanage operate steam and old diesel trains along a dozen miles of track from Norden, with a full daily timetable. They want to link up to the London-Weymouth main line at Wareham. There is strong local support and, since the track is all there and the business case is promising, the proposal is highly credible.
Britain's preserved steam railways are a remarkable part of the railway system and the national tourist industry. As a proponent of new high-speed rail lines, I am keen to build a new technological future for the railways, breaking with our baleful historic tradition of patch-and-mend. The challenge is to celebrate the best of the past as do our preserved railways while boldly seizing the latest technology to create anew for the future.
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Norman leaves at Eastbourne, for a ceremony with war veterans, as I proceed to what is now called Ashford International a junction with High Speed One from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel which is the best of the modern on Britain's railways and a model for the future
At Ashford, Amir, the guard on the train from Eastbourne, tells me that passenger numbers on his line have rocketed since the old Ashford to Hastings service was extended through to Brighton two years ago. At peak hours the two-coach trains are extended to four coaches, but it is still sometimes standing room only. A success story for Southern, which pioneered the service, and a good example of the struggle to provide enough trains and carriages on lines where passenger numbers are growing fast.
Less positive was my experience of Southampton station yesterday evening. At only 8pm there was nowhere on the station selling refreshments not even a cup of tea was to be had for good money and but for the forethought of Jocelyn Pearson, the local Passenger Focus director who came to brief me on her work, who had brought a bottle of orange juice, I would have got on to the two-hour train to Brighton unable to get anything to eat or drink. This was in marked contrast to Brighton, where the station's M&S was still open at 11.30pm, so I could buy dinner on arrival.
Surely the major stations should be selling food and drink until late evening, in the same way that motorway service stations are required to do? Another point for action on my return starting by finding out who is responsible for commissioning catering at major stations, Network Rail or the train operating companies. If I don't know, the travelling public doubtless don't know who to take this up with either.
It surprises me that it isn't in someone's commercial interest to be providing refreshments in a major station such as Southampton until late in the evening; the ticket collector told me that he gets lots of evening passengers asking where they can get something to eat and drink. I will be raising this issue with SWT and Network Rail next time I see them.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6098034.ece
