1st September – A delayed return home

1^st September – A delayed return home

After a decent sleep in the hotel, it was time to get back on the rails (even though I could have happily stayed in bed for longer), swinging via McDonalds for breakfast and picking up my Daytripper from the ticket office before boarding 350232 on the first service from Walsall, featuring a ticket check before departure (with a couple passengers asked to leave the train to buy a ticket).  This service is semi-fast to Birmingham New Street and to be honest I wasn’t in the best frame of mind, so after walking around the station I jumped on a Cardiff bound 170519 & 170113 for the run to University to give 170113 a small mileage boost, returning to New Street on 323205 & 323211 before walking across to Moor Street.

168004 took me to Snow Hill, before heading to Leamington Spa, meeting up with some members of Rail UK for a quick catch-up of various bits.  I was shocked when 172331 arrived from Coventry as I didn’t know a 172/3 worked these services on Sunday.  It was mostly empty for the run to Coventry where the group had a short wait before 172008 arrived from Nuneaton to take us to Nuneaton.  I said farewell to the group who were continuing towards Rugeley later on, and returned to Coventry on 172008, unexpectedly bumping into Stu at Bedworth for a quick catch up.  We parted ways with Stu heading towards Leamington on the 172/3 and myself heading to Birmingham International on 350245/350242 leaping onto 390134 to take me back to Coventry.

An unusual sight of a 172/3 at Coventry

Next up was 350258/350371 for the run to Wolverton which is my last West Midlands Trains operated station for random platforms, and I had a 20 minute fester before 350258 & 350119 arrived on the next New Street - Euston, this one running semi-fast after Leighton Buzzard.  The plan was to head towards Waterloo for the 17:15 service, but that had been cancelled, and a request for an additional stop at Grateley on the 18:15 service was turned down.  So faced with some extra time I walked across to St Pancras, with a Gatwick Airport bound 700152 taken to London Bridge, followed by 46034, 465931 & 465901 to Charing Cross, 465926 & 465173 back to London Bridge, 466039, 465047 & 465190 back to Charing Cross [047 being ultra low mileage, whereas 173 was now on 9 miles], with 465901, 465931 & 466034 taken for the second time to Waterloo East which pushes 931 over the line.

A nice ticket office building at Wolverton

I exited Waterloo East, picked up dinner from Tesco and headed across to Waterloo to board 159007, 159108 & 159013 for the run to Andover, expecting it to be mega busy but in the 2^nd coach of this 9 coach set it was quite empty, I even had a private table all to myself, an hour later another triple 159 took me back to Grateley for a short walk home.  A reasonable day other than the 2 hour delay getting home,

I was glad to get home, I think I was just tired from the busy week being back at work.