Great Western Coffee Shop

(This was canal related + a friends significant birthday, so, a  triangular journey)

Out from Bath on the first train of the day to Bristol, the 6.28 - it turned up as an *immaculate inside and out* 158. It connects into the 7 am Crosscountry to Manchester - also clean inside and out, and the failed exterior displays have been fixed.. This leg was pretty quiet as far as Birmingham and abruptly busy after that, though being four carriages it wasn't a heavy lifter.

Heading for Kidsgrove and a boat, the boat had got lucky with an early-ish southbound passage through Harecastle Tunnel and Kidsgrove would have been touch and go, so, wondering how the world worked before mobile phones, I switched destinations to Longport, catching a spotless London Northwestern train for that - the first electric train of the day.

Off at Longport, which bears no resemblance to the bustling place it was the last time I was off the train and onto a boat there - the clear recollection of a shop window display with a vast range of brushes for decorative purposes stands out. Longport has lots to offer for placemaking and desparately needs cash and a plan that doesn't involve flattening things.

The day involved heading south, the boat heading for Stone, after which i was headed for London. Not being sure of how far we'd get before I needed to head for a train, at Bath Spa I'd taken the precaution of buying a single from Barlaston to Esher - the ticket office at Bath Spa probably hasn't sold many tickets from Barlaston, as trains haven't called there since 2004.

in the event, the boat reached Stone in plenty of time for me to take the train from there, so I further added to Barlastons stats by buying a Stone-Barlaston ticket at the machine there as I intended to head back to Stoke and onto...

... the 17:10 to Euston, which gets in at 18:40. The journey was very straightforward, the pendolino, clean, internally refreshed and only 15 minutes late at... Euston, which may now provides the worst interior environment of any railway station in Europe, a remarkable degrading of the 1960s concourse, as Network Rail had sorted out its ambience very well. Despite being in fairly plain sight, it was difficult to find the underground, at which point I escaped the concourse with a feeling of relief, then partly obliterated by heading southbound on the Victoria line, which is now *very* warm indeed. On to South Western Railway services at Vauxhall and a train to... Thames Ditton as it happens.

Walking the mile to my final destination, an air of surrealness in the empty and now dark suburban streets when I came across a single vehicle road traffic accident blocking the pavement and fouling the road. The occupants of the vehicle had left the scene along with its numberplates. Kicking a couple of the more aggressive pieces of debris from the road, I thought i'd better ring 999, retreated 100 metres and did so. After checking, yes, they did know about it and they had it down as a non urgent attendence, so officers would be at the scene in due course. At this point two guys in a hatchback turned up and started pffaffing about with the crashed vehicle. I wasn't keen on approaching them but did relay this to the 999 call handler. All this did reinforce something from the past month or so - that there's still backup should someone need help, but the point at which it kicks in often doesn't address the need. In this case it probably didn't particularly matter but in the other issue I'm thinking about, it turned out to matter a lot...

One rail trip in London before I returned stood out for the wrong reasons. Woking to Blackheath. Aboard a Waterloo-only train from Woking, the line's pretty straight, and and for the first stretch, the up main, at speed, was like a fairground ride, with a few sharpish lateral displacements, several wobbles, and the feeling that the train was going to start doing a barrel roll. But... Waterloo in a bit over 20 minutes and a newish electric train too. With large windows, but the exterior wasn't clean which was a pity.

To Waterloo East where it all went a bit pear shaped as this is the territory where South Eastern Railways made an unpopular recast of the timetable with many trains switching from Charing Cross to Cannon Street as a terminus and imposing a change of trains at the new London Bridge the design of which is not optimal for changing trains. Since this was introduced, South Eastern have partly backed down on this.

Down to platform D at Waterloo as one of the two an hour evening peak trains to Blackheath was pulling out, so, a half hour till the next. On reflection, I should have waited for it. As it was, I went aboard the next train in order to change at Lewisham. Packed carriage, and a family of six unwrapping Maccy Ds. You couldn't blame them, but the atmosphere grew thick, the train ran slow, and at London Bridge I left it.

At the train doors, people standing at either side and not alighting. Note to self, next time, ask one of them to move in order to use the handrail - as I left the train, the person behind gave me a bit of a shove but I managed to avoid faceplanting on the platform. Then, to the next train to Blackheath which involved going down the ten metres to the concourse, across that and up the ten metres to Platform 1 from which most of the Blackheath trains run. On to the platform at the moment the Blackheath train doors closed...

The following train to Blackheath turned out to leave from a different platform again, so, back to the... ah, no escalators from the down end of platform one at London Bridge, you need to go to the other end, or take the lift, or walk down a ten metre flight of steps. Then back up an escalator to platform 2, and at the third attempt, managed to arrive before the train left.

The final leg back to Bath was straightforward - avoiding the London Bridge thing completely with a bus to Woolwich and a short, straightforward (though not well signposted) hike to the Elizabeth line, which station is more or less invisible from its approach. There are just two ticket machines there, but little queue and they sell national rail tickets from any starting point, so I was able to buy a single to Bath as I needed to use Oyster to pick up a refund from the Elmers End issue a month back. Paddington was busy but not very busy, which surprised me for a bank holiday Saturday morning. The 10:30 to Bath was going to be ten minutes late leaving with its many passengers held on the concourse. The gallop down the platform is always a race that I lose, but heading for the bridge and then to the platform from there allowed me five minutes to revisit the scene of the unpleasant crush a month back when the gallop down the platform met the second set of passengers off the full and standing train on which I arrived.

The Bath train departed a bit late and only 80% full, so, comfortable. It ran through not pleasant weather, lost a bit more time as it caught up with that late running charter at Challow (allowing a quick reflection on how different the railway is to the one upon which Adrian Vaughan the author worked), picked up a *lot* of passengers at Swindon, travelled out of the rain and into the sun, dropped me off at Bath and made its onward way to Exeter, arriving there around half an hour late.

Ticketing: mostly off peak / super off peak singles with one peak time leg on Crosscountry, all with a railcard. LNER's current ticketing vision would have made the cost far less attractive (as would no railcard) and advance booking and boats is a recipe for... ticket bonfires.

Mark

I might have the wrong end of the stick, but the XC Voyager sets they've recently received from Avanti all had their exterior displays upgraded to a much brighter/better quality one when they were with that previous operator.  Was it one of those you travelled on?

All their normal sets still have the original design displays, though with the big fleet refurbishment starting soon you would hope they will all get upgraded as part of that.

It looked to be one of the original crosscountry ones - at least one exterior display on this one had been replaced with a new panel using different technology, clear white characters on a black background.  A clean Crosscountry interior, exterior and windows too, which meant that despite the fact that they're a bit well worn, they don't leave a bad impression.

Over the course of the three cornered journey, GWRs IEPs are a bit of an outlier on this and for much of the journey, it was good to find most trains clean in and out. not sure what it is with Hitachi as, don't they also maintain and present LNER's Azumas and those are clean. (The latter being also white, it's just as well...)

(Photos of the train below, though, not the display...)

Mark

(https://i.postimg.cc/rmcjQgrb/voyager-interior-at-Bristol-1000.jpg)

(https://i.postimg.cc/6300SRVQ/voyager-leaves-stoke-1000.jpg)

That's definitely the type fitted to the ex-Avanti units.  Though they may have started to replace the original XC ones as well, but I haven't noticed any myself yet.  They are much better.