Roll up of the Daily Summaries
| Day | No of services used | Routing | NRT mileages | Lost time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 Part 1 | 2 | London - Edinburgh | 400 | 0 |
| Day 1 Part 2 | 9 | Edinburgh - Tweedbank - Glasgow N - Inverness | 363.75 | 0 |
| Day 2 | 3 | Inverness - Far North - Aberdeen | 458.25 | 0 overall |
| Day 3 | 4 (plan was 1) | Aberdeen - Penzance | 787 | |
| Day 4 | 13 (plan was 12) | Penzance - Llandrinod Wells | 406.25 | 44 minutes overall 26 late at end of the day |
| Day 5 | 10 | Llandrinod Wells - Newcastle | 352.25 | 0 |
| Day 6 | 7 | Newcastle - Glasgow - Oban | 392 | 0 |
| Day 7 | 7 | Oban - Sandhurst | 568.75 | 0 (Some in to Euston) |
| Totals | 55 | 3728.25 |
Highlights
Not encountering a delay which ruined the overall plan – so out there a lot of good work is happening to ensure that the railways run and largely run to time.
Getting a meal on an LNER train when my catering plan for the day was limited – on a train I had not planned to catch.
Scenery – Dawlish Coast, Northumbrian Coast, St Ives branch, Cumbrian Coast (and Hills), Oban branch in the evening sunlight, Northumberland, Heart of Wales line, Flow Country.
New track – many miles and some odds and ends in terms of passenger lines – all of the Far North has now been covered, all of Cornwall plus other pieces such as Barrow in Furness station line. Lines where passenger services have returned – notably Tweedbank, Anniesland, Glenrothes-with-Thornton, Cardiff to Bridgend (Okehampton was never contemplated as I have previously been to Meldon Quarry).
Lowlights
The cancellation of the Cross Country service from Aberdeen. It runs once a day so you would think that Cross Country would move heaven and earth to ensure it runs.
The need to swap units at Llantwryd Wells as without that the points failure would not have been a problem. That caused real concern. I have no doubt that there was a good engineering reason but the staff could and should have done more to keep us informed.
The recurrent problem where Scotrail seem unable to get doors open at terminal stations a decent amount of time prior to departure – in the worst case opening them at the timetable departure time. This is simply not good enough and it was evident on at least three departures – something is wrong somewhere for this to recur.
Cross Country – the overloading on the couple of services I used was significant – mid-week and not in the holiday season. I know a few more units are coming – but the services no longer radiate to Portsmouth, Brighton, Kent Coast or other destinations and it is all a long way from the promises of Operation Princess – much more capacity appears to be needed given the predominance of leisure travel.
Value for Money
The ticket was £599.25 and I covered 3728.25 miles – so that is around 16p per mile which I reckon is pretty good value. The total cost including hotels, meals and so on took to the cost to around 50p per mile, so not excessive. I might be a little more discerning over hotels and costs next time – but I say beware of Premier Inn offering rooms for around £50 – none of the bookings were less £120 and several were higher. I reckon their advertising is by the same team that advertise on behalf of DFS. If you do get a bargain out of Premier Inn let me know how please.
Next Year
A plan will be devised. There are a lot of railways south of Glasgow (particularly if Stranraer re-opens) to be covered which will take some time. Leven has re-opened. There is the Merseyrail network to cover and then the network between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds. Plus the completely revamped lines in South Wales will need to be addressed. However so much of that does not have first class that a standard class ticket may be the solution.
And a need to revisit past railtours as they are not necessarily correctly recorded in my earlier records.