GB RailRover – Day 4

Notes:
As before my thanks to Real Time Trains for the material in the links.

Operations on the Day

The day starts well – breakfast on the Penzance Quay at Sullivans – and even though it is 6:30 in the morning the sun is shining and they have outdoor seats and it is a great way to start the day!  A couple of weeks later even Rishi Sunak is using it after using the sleeper!

First up is the little line to St Ives – the first service of the day uses the through connection and then the unit gets locked into the branch for the rest of the day until the final working in the evening with the token being collected from the signal box briefly after serving St Erth station.  Whilst the beach at Carbis Bay is unoccupied this early the train is seeing a number of users besides myself.

The timetables work fairly well at this point and re-joining main line after the branch perambulation means that I can take first class to Truro where I disembark for the second new branch line of the day to Falmouth Docks.

Picking up the main line service again at Truro is straightforward and there are then announcements that there are possible problems in the Weston-Super-Mare area and I am conscious that the service to Severn Beach sometimes interworks to and from Weston and therefore that my timings may be disrupted.  In addition I remain aware of the possibility that the Cross Country planned to Bristol Temple Meads would be heavily loaded after the experience yesterday.

So a further replan of the next part of the journey is undertaken.

Plan Dep	Headcode	Route	Plan Arr	NRT miles
09:53	1A82	Truro to Tiverton Parkway	12:29	122.25
12:40	1S49	Tiverton Parkway - Bristol Parkway	13:43	65.75
14:05	1B15	Bristol Parkway - Cardiff Central	14:37	33.5
14:50	2Y55	Cardiff Central - Barry Island	15:24	9.25
15:26	2M42	Barry Island - Barry	15:30	0.75
16:05	2E40	Barry - Bridgend	16:38	19.0
16:58	1B19	Bridgend - Swansea	17:30	27.25
18:19	2M12	Swansea - Llandrinod	20:48	69.75

NRT only provides distances via Weston-super-Mare (presumably because there are no stations on the avoiding line).  The loop line is about four miles and the avoiding line is less so the above mileage is slightly overstated, subsequent digging in the Sectional Appendices identify that the direct route is physically a mile shorter than the loop via the town so not overly significant.

So I lose the mileage to Severn Beach and add the rather modest distance to Barry Island from Barry having passed over this route before it was added back into the passenger network in June 2005.  It also eases a slightly tight connection at Swansea which might have been problematic.  I did not subsequently check the trips I would have taken – but better safe than sorry.

I therefore stay on the GWR service to Tiverton Parkway and then pick up a Cross Country service to Bristol Parkway (which I had planned to catch at Exeter but decided to stay put to minimise time on Cross Country).  The Cross Country service is well laden again and we are held for a few minutes before coming to a rest at Bristol Parkway.

My train westwards is delayed by a slow freight which has been pathed in front of the service and we lose a few more minutes on the journey through the Severn tunnel and into Cardiff Central.  The various perturbations seem to have hit GWR again today.

TfW class 150 for the journey down to Barry Docks where the adjacent fun fair is undergoing pre-season maintenance.  There is a large multi-generational family traveling together from Cardiff on this service and they disembark en masse and seek to exit the station – except that they don’t and they rejoin the service (as do I watching closely).  Once we get back to Barry they all disembark again and this time the leave the station.  Looks like they went a stop too far.

I have time to walk to the far end of the platform and observe the new trains currently stabled in the new stabling point at Barry having recovered the site from the former preservation railway.  The trains are due to enter service in the near future as the local valley lines are upgraded.

A further 150 takes me onto Bridgend along the line re-instated to passengers in 2005 and using terminal platform 1A at Bridgend (avoiding the hated platform 0 designation used elsewhere).  The next service is running late and loses time all the way from Swindon as it heads to Bridgend.  I had hoped to use the time in Swansea to find something hot to eat as a takeaway on the next journey as I fear that dinner at my destination will be limited.  Quickly poking my nose outside the station shows no obvious take aways and with time now limited I return to the station – but cannot join the waiting train as the crew are not there.

A celebrity is spotted on the service into Swansea – the actress Sian Phillips is identified leaving the train and heading off along the platform – she comes from South Wales originally.

It is a long time since I last traversed the Heart of Wales line but I do recall some stunning scenery – it is still there but much of the line now runs through an effective tree-lined route and the scenery is therefore hard to see – the trees have been allowed to grow here (and elsewhere) so the views are simply impossible to see.

The service on this line is thin and is to be reduced in December – and yet the trains are well loaded and one wonders if running a more frequent service might raise more revenue than the marginal costs.  Unfortunately these days such approaches are rare.

All is going well until we get towards Llanwrtyd Wells where these days the two crews swap over with the Shrewsbury crew returning home and the Swansea crew doing likewise.  Except that tonight each crew has decided that they want to take their own train home and all the passengers on the two trains have to walk along the train, over the foot crossing and join the other unit.

The unit on which I arrived heads off happily back to Swansea.  However we remain stationary.  And now the potential impact on my ability to get anything to eat is starting to worry me.  The northern set of points had been reset to allow the other unit to depart north after our arrival and apparently nothing would now change them to enable us to move off to the north.  If the decision to swap units had been conveyed to the signalling team the points need not have been changed after our arrival (although possibly they had to to permit the other unit to enter the loop).  So until permission is obtained to hand crank the points and that has been done we cannot leave.  Over 30 minutes late.  In the December timetable change the crossing point will move to Llandrinod Wells because there is a larger population and it is not so remote – so one wonders just how often this happens.

Going downhill we recover some time but the only place to get food has already stopped cooking fish and there are a couple of fishcakes.  Why do the Welsh give up so early?

At least I am able to book into my hotel, eat the fishcakes (not particularly palatable either), and catch up on the score as Southampton are playing the second leg of the play offs which they win.

Rolling Stock

A real mixture today with modern inter city stock and class 150 units at the other extreme.  Services generally well loaded – even the Heart of Wales line unit is well loaded on the departure from Swansea and Llanelli as it takes passengers home up the line having had a day out.

Ticket Checks

Very mixed – obviously checked on the branch lines but little evidence on the main line trains.

Summary

Not a good day for time keeping.  Obviously the initial cancellation of the planned Cross Country service which was the planned highpoint of the entire trip.  Then GWR seemed to have a problem in the Swindon area delaying trains and then the problem with TfW / Network Rail at Llanwtryd Wells which is presumably down to equipment failure – but it took the edge of the good running enjoyed over the other days and indeed on the decent times on other trains today.