28 – 30th June – Return of the Red Rose (and
Introduction)
The background of this trip was to revisit some of the
stations I visited back in July 2015 when I had my little pushbike to ride
between nearby stations, the original date for this trip was last year but it
got pushed back to this year due to the Saturday strikes on Northern at the
time, and was a case of waiting to see when the Premier Inn at Wigan had
reasonable priced rooms for the Friday night as some weeks I checked for
research it was £50+. Originally I was
going to head back to London on the Saturday but decided to book a room in
Manchester on the Saturday evening and go back to London on the Sunday, the
idea for the Sunday was to either hunt units down for mileage needs or do some
random platform scores.
(A little background, as this is being posted to a new blog,
over the course of the last few years I’ve ridden on pretty much every unit
built before 2018 which is still in service, however a good handful of those
units were on short little hops, for example Manchester Piccadilly – Oxford Road,
and before the new units start to arrive I’ve been trying to go back to get
more of those units above 10 miles.
Random platform scores is just something random I’ve started doing,
basically stations where my previous visit(s) have all used the same platform,
for example doing linear hops on some of the London commuter lines which are
outside rover areas, i.e. Hastings line, Southend Victoria line, a lot on C2C).
I previously completed the “visiting every station to board
or alight from a train” challenge back in October 2017 and got bored last year
and came up with a list of stations
where I wanted to revisit to get the harder challenge of “Visiting every
station to board and alight from a train”.
I say challenge, but it’s more to beat boredom as I’m someone who gets
bored sitting around at home, and likes to travel to see the countryside and other
places. Over the course of the last 15 months
I’ve got the number down to 30, mostly on Northern but with 5 for Transport for
Wales (all on the Conwy Valley) and 2 for Scotland (both on the Kyle line, bit
of a long story). Over the course of the
next few months I will repost previous reports of trips on this blog as I’ve
decided to move away from the forum they were being posted before due to
various reasons.
I know it might not be the most popular blog, but writing about
my trips makes me feel better inside my head, anyhow without any further delay
onto Friday.
28th June – Onwards to Wigan
The weather was a bit too hot to do my usual Friday evening
unit hunting within London and as I had some personal business to attend to
with a branch of my bank I decided to go via Reading and enjoy the sunshine
doing linear hops on the way towards Waterloo via Ascot, mainly random platform
scores as a few of these stations I did linearly using the peak time additional
services. I managed to finish work
earlier than expected so I was in a position to get a lift to Grateley station
for the 13:59 service, which was a busy 159008 for the trip to Basingstoke
(which allowed 159008 to overtake 159004 for the title of “most travelled 159”
by a single mile). At Basingstoke I
popped outside the station to purchase my rover for the Saturday using some
vouchers (which were originally meant to be used for my Scottish trip a couple
weeks ago but things happened), saved a job for later and only cost me a few
minutes as 221122 rolled in to take me one stop to Reading (felt like the
engine underneath coach B was broken as it was a bit too quiet in there).
Once at Reading, I popped out of the station to visit the
bank to pay in a couple of cheques, before returning to the station for my
first linear hop with a pair of 455s to Winnersh, 455721 & 455704. Not the most comfortable of services due to
the heat (the units sit at Reading for roughly half an hour, all that time
taking in the heat), so it was nice to sit on the platform for half an hour
before 450570 & 450562 rolled in to take me to Martins Heron, where after a
picture of the nice wooden footbridge, it was a quick visit to the nearby Tesco
for a small supply raid for the Saturday, before returning to the station with
458517 & 458530 taken to Sunningdale, which completes the line for random
platform scores, as I sat in the sunshine watching the world go by before low
mileage 458512 rolled in along with 458519, the run to Egham being enough to
push it over 10 miles, where I noticed the new gatelines are getting installed
(probably get a few of what I like to call “pay when challenged”, the folk who
like to play the system and will only pay for a fare if they are challenged
when travelling between two unbarriered stations, playing the numbers game of
the number of times they are likely to be caught out by a commercial guard or a
revenue protection block isn’t high enough.
Anyhow less about fare dodgers and how they cost the industry money).
I knew another low mileage 458 was due to follow in the next
30 minutes, having seen it heading towards Reading earlier, what I didn’t know
was the identity of the next service, so I was happy when ultra low mileage
458514 rolled in along with 458531, it was onwards to Twickenham which pushes
458514 over the 10 mile line. The next
stopper wasn’t of interest, so it was a short wait for the next semi-fast from
Windsor which I had to catch to intercept that other 458 (which goes semi-fast
via the Hounslow loop), so I was surprised when it was 455905 & 455702,
quite busy as well for the short run to Putney where I walked over to the other
Waterloo bound platform for a low mileage 707027 to roll in from Weybridge, the
run to Clapham Junction wouldn’t be enough to push it over the 10 miles, but
every little helps.
Once at Clapham Junction, it was a short walk across from
platform 3 to platform 4 for low mileage 458533 & 458505 to take me the
last few miles into Waterloo, arriving a few minutes early (seems this service
is timed to take 15 minutes from Clapham to Waterloo, and that is
nonstop). At Waterloo I headed to the
Tesco Express on Waterloo Road for something to eat for dinner (I’ve been
caught out too many times by the Sainsburys at Euston being bare boned, and
with Boots gone WH Smiths charges £4.99 for a meal deal). Once selected I headed to the Jubilee line
with 96126 & 96009 to Baker Street (96009 being one of the few 96 stocks
under a mile), a short walk to the Met line platforms for 21087/21088 to Euston
Square (another sub-mile S8 unit), at Euston Square I had a short walk towards
Euston (noticing that the Sainsburys was better than usual in terms of stock of
the meal-deal sandwiches, I still miss the days where the Sainsburys meal deal
had a lot more options).
The West Coast Main Line had been suffering from various
issues throughout the day, the Pendo to form the 20:30 to Preston was late
arriving, so boarding didn’t start until around 20:20 as I climbed onto 390154,
my usual seat in coach E with nice shoulder room due to the lack of a window
pillar, and the service was a bit late in departing (6 minutes or so in the
end). The time was almost made up by
Warrington, but the service spent around 10 minutes around the Acton Grange
junction area as a freight service was in front. Still unusual for me to call at Tamworth
& Lichfield on a 390! Arrival into
Wigan North Western was around 15 minutes late, but for me nothing major as I
had a short walk to the Premier Inn, somewhere I’ve stayed a few times when in
Wigan on a Friday night, walking down a street with many nightclubs with
bouncers outside and in some cases pretty girls trying to encourage passersby
to visit with money off vouchers.
Once into the room, it was a quick sort out of the bag, a shower
and a decent enough sleep, no fire alarms this time round (or loud banging as “Greg’s
friend” comes back at 2am in the morning and has forgotten which room he is in,
like what happened a few years ago and was shouting out for ‘Greg’ to let in him.
No comments:
Post a Comment