18th August – Return to the Heart of Wales & London

18^th August – Return to the Heart of Wales & London

The idea of today was a nice easy day to tick of a random platform at Knighton (the Shrewsbury bound platform) before heading towards London for a few hours before retiring to the Hackney Travelodge for an early start on the Monday.

I checked out of the Walsall Travelodge, going via McDonalds for a breakfast bite before heading to the station for the first southbound service, a semi-fast Euston service via Soho.  This was a busy 350243 which was late working inbound, so was a few minutes late departing, but a speedy run and before I knew it I was at Birmingham New Street with a couple units to ID but nothing of interest so after swinging via Boots for lunch for later on, it was onto 158824 & 158833 for the slow trip to Shrewsbury, fast to Wolverhampton but then all stops to Shrewsbury (I had hoped these trains would drop the smaller stops due to there being a West Midlands Railways service doing an hourly stopper on Sundays now).

Impressive Station

Once at Shrewsbury I had around 45 minutes to kill, so I headed into the shopping area to have a browse, for I was just looking, not buying.  I returned to the station, to await the 1^st Swansea via the Heart of Wales line, and in rolled 150235 (same unit as I had on the Conwy Valley the day before!), I got a decent seat for the trip towards Wales, a few passengers on/off at the first two stations, no demand for the three request stops before I alighted at Knighton, just as the rain started...

Waiting time at Knighton

I hung back at the station for 5 minutes for the rain to clear up before heading into the town centre for a general potter, noting the Co-Op seems to be a bit of a mess interior lay-out wise [seems to be 4 buildings joined together] but in between the showers I had a good wonder before returning to the station to a decent shelter being joined by a few others before 150240 crashed the party with the service to Shrewsbury.  With thanks to Jules I knew which service was on the Cardiff – Holyhead so I was happy enough to give that a miss and remain on board the modified 150 to Shrewsbury.  Noting that the 158s from the Cambrian were heavily delayed (again), I took a seat on a busy 221107 for the run to Wolverhampton  [once more a gentleman from Telford was unhappy he got asked to buy a ticket for the trip to Wolverhampton, the sooner ticket barriers are installed at Wolverhampton the better!].

Anyhow for me, I had noticed earlier in the day a low mileage 350 working Walsall – Wolverhampton stoppers, so it would be rude to turn it down, firstly the service from Crewe wasn’t anything of interest, so it was over to 350238 working the stopper, gets another 350 over the ten mile line.  Once at New Street it was over to the next Euston service which was formed of 350127 & 350261 which took me to Milton Keynes Central (no prizes at which unit I sat in!), going the direct line and also being semi-fast to Coventry (called at Birmingham International only) which made a nice change.  At Milton Keynes Central my eyes were fixed on the train on the stopper to Euston, for it was a triple 319.  Northampton was closed for engineering works ‘trapping’ several units on the depot so the 319s were out to play, and the motors of 319005 were singing (319441 & 319216) for the run to Tring.  No real reason for picking Tring as a place to stop other for a random platform scratch (only ever done it linearly heading northbound).

350250 & 350375 were up next to take me all the way to Euston (again no prizes at which unit I sat in), where after grabbing food from Sainsburys I headed across to Euston Square, jumping on the first service towards Liverpool Street, a sub mile 21095/21096 on the Metropolitan line.  At Liverpool Street my hunt for anything low mileage didn’t get off to a flying start eventually 321435 & 321304 appeared on a Southend service to take me to Stratford, making a tight connection onto 345011 back to Liverpool Street, where my eyes picked up the next C2C service which had low mileage 357004 leading 357039, the run to Barking was enough for this 357.  I saw my first 710 in the flesh (all be locked up on platform 1 due to engineering works), the next Shoeburyness & Liverpool Street services weren’t needed, so with one eye on the time I awaited the next Fenchurch Street service for what would be a required move to West Ham.  Luck must have been on my side as it was a pair of low mileage units, both on 8-9 miles so the run to West Ham was enough to push both 357044 & 357026 over the line, taking me to only needing 9 of the class to clear them all for 10 miles, and considering a good number of them only work during the peaks is quite good.

Having just missed a Jubilee Line service, and the next not being in 5 minutes (must have been a North Greenwich terminator), it was a long wait (for LU) before 96033/96040 rolled in to take me to Stratford.  Nothing of interest on the Liverpool Street bound, but a low mileage 378256 was on the next Camden Road service, so putting my BLS hat on, I took a seat for the trip to Camden Road where the train terminated in the Stratford bound platform, before returning me back east to Hackney Central, where I had a short walk to the hotel, checked in and turned in for the night after doing some bits.

"This is the London Overground service to Camden Road"