Commuting part II

Apologies for the long delay since the last post, but I've got myself digs in London to avoid the daily commute. It was proving too much for me, taking too much time out of my life.

In all, I estimated that I was spending three and a half hours a day travelling, by the time I added in the waiting time caused by needing to get to the station early enough to ensure I got a seat, and the onward travel to my office from Victoria. None of this was helped by the fact that the rush-hour services are slower then the off-peak trains as they stop more, and the inbound trains seem to wait for several minutes outside Victoria in the mornings waiting for platforms.

Remarkably, I managed to find a room (courtesy of a former Brightonian) in London for less than my monthly season ticket so, even with the additional cost of Underground and bus fares, the arrangement breaks even financially.

All that has, of course, meant less time on the Brighton end of the blog. I will try to catch up in due course!

Commuting...

Well, I've had a month so far of my new daily routine of commuting from Brighton to London in the rush hours.

It's been an interesting but often depressing experience. Until now, I've travelled for work mostly off-peak, when things have seem to have run pretty smoothly. But so far, my regular inbound trains (one of the extended Gatwick Expresses) have been unfailingly late. Sometimes only by 5 minutes, and other times up to 40 minutes. But not one has actually arrived at the stated time: and that is with the slower, peak-time services which all take over an hour from London to Brighton (though I realise they make a few more stops).

Of course, I realise the performance figures refer to trains being on time if they arrive within 10 minutes of the scheduled time, but it seems the figures in the low 90s in percentage terms must be largely determined all those relatively empty trains running off-peak; peak services seem to be much more fragile.

And, is it my bad luck I've had four major incidents - roughly one a week - so far? These include a man who had climbed under a train (5 hour delay), a broken rail (3 hour delay), and the recent problem with Balcombe tunnel (where the lining needed emergency repairs). On that day I didn't even make it into work.

And of course this for well over £3,000 a year. I may rent a room up in town...

Train vs Plane

My partner and I recently went to Limoges (in France) for the wedding of some good friends of ours from London. When we got the invitation, one of the first questions was (of course) how to get there. We don't have a car, so driving was out: apart from the cost of car hire, the thought of driving 800-odd miles on a week-end - and the August Bank Holiday in the UK to boot - was just too much.

That left public transport. A quick bit of research showed that the options were to fly with either Ryanair from Stansted, bmi from Southampton, or take the train all the way.

A check on the dates proved that bmi was going to be too expensive, so that ruled them out. Ryanair started well enough with the low initial fare, but of course - as anyone who has used their website will know - the add-ons creep up pretty quickly. Because we would have to take check-in luggage (I suppose you could get a man's suit in hand luggage, but you really don't the French laughing at the sartorial faux pas of wearing anything so crumpled), we would have to pay the fees for checking in the luggage and, if you do that, no-one in the party can check in on-line, so adding the cost of boarding passes for each person for each leg of the flight. Add in taxes and the booking fee, and the whole thing rapidly soared over the £200 mark. And, of course, for us there's the cost of getting to Stansted to add in, not to mention the horrible thought of going anywhere near Stansted Airport on the Bank Holiday.

So we went for the rail option: £79 returns on Eurostar, and £40 return on the French leg from Paris to Limoges (astonishing value for a 600-mile round trip on SNCF). It worked out about the same as Ryanair on cost but, although although it was longer, the trains are pretty comfy and you get to watch the scenery flash by. And 7 hours actually compares favourably with air by the time you add in getting to the airport and allowing for check-in time.

And the result? Well, the journey there was bliss. We had an early start - checking in at St Pancras at 6.45am - but there were no queues, the new terminal seems to run very smoothly, and we slept all the way to Paris. The Gare du Nord is not my favourite corner of Paris, but we still reached Austerlitz station in less than half an hour on the metro. From there, the Corail Teoz service - TGVs don't operate this route - was a lesson in civilized travel. Bags of leg room, bags of luggage space, reclining seats in Second Class, and perfect conditions for yet more sleep. Arrival at the very impressive Gare de Benedictins (above) was the perfect end to the journey.

The return leg was pretty good as well, except Gare du Nord Eurostar terminal needs some pretty major expansion to cope with Bank Holiday crowds. Still, all in all it made for a very civilized week-end.

Oh, and the wedding went pretty well, too...

Lost property

I'm in mourning for a pair of lost gloves. It sounds pathetic, I know, but these were the best fitting, comfiest and nicest gloves I possessed, and like an idiot I left them on a train. (I'd just had a lousy journey thanks to tube disruption, and left them on an overground train while still nursing my grievance).

Of course, I've telephoned the lost property office, but past experience doesn't lead me to have much faith in the system. I lost a cap earlier in the year, and reported that, to no avail.

Now I might hear you saying that I can easily get another pair of gloves. Wrong. It took me ages to find these: they are black leather, but fit very closely, and have a button fastener. I recall them being hard to find when I bought them ten years ago: my main problem is that I have small hands for a man, somewhere between a size seven and seven-and-a-half. Ordinary 'medium' sized gloves end up having an irritating empty bit at the tips of the fingers, and that just won't do. I've visited John Lewis, Peter Jones, House of Fraser, Liberty - you name it - but to no avail.

Next time I'm putting nothing in the luggage rack above or behind the fold-up table in front...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

After the snow, I suspect every other blog will about the weather this week, either carping on about how a few inches brings everything in the UK to a standstill, or how wonderful it is to have a day off.

I'm firmly with the latter. We've had a good six inches here in West London, falling all in one night, and it's the worst single snowfall for as long as I have lived here. So we can't be expected to gear up for it: the cost of all those snowploughs sitting doing nothing for years on end would be something to grumble about in its own right. And one day off every ten years is hardly a disaster (especially when most of us do loads of unpaid overtime). Clearly, places like hospitals have a torrid time, with ambulances struggling through snow-bound side roads, and wards being short-staffed just as there's a surge of broken bones and twisted ankles from people slipping over, but for the most part we catch up pretty quickly.

Actually, not everything did grind to a standstill, despite what the news media would have you believe: I travelled yesterday morning from Barry in South Wales back to Kensington, and the journey was pretty smooth: OK, my train from Cardiff was cancelled, but another one (from Swansea) turned up around the same time, and made it to London Paddington, taking only five minutes longer than usual. There was no District Line south, but by a combination of the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines I was still home in half an hour. The worst bit was the last few hundreds yards from the Underground station, as the pavements were snowy. But, as you can see from the photo, it did look glorious, and a succession of charmingly eccentric snowmen have been built in the gardens over the last 24 hours.

There were a few surprises in what kept going and what did not: the Heathrow Express was suspended, despite the rest of the Great Western main line working normally, and despite the fact that the Piccadilly Line - with its vulnerable ground-level electric rails - was operating normally through to Heathrow. Apparently, trains cancellations were caused as much by the fact the staff couldn't get to work, as by snow on the line.

Still, things around here seem to be back pretty much to normal, so roll on spring!

Cough, splutter

Yuck. Here comes my first cold of the winter. I woke up on Saturday on a week-end away in Brighton, feeling absolutely fine. But by 10.30 had a streaming cold and a sore, sore throat. So, off we went to those nice people at Watts & Co for some medication, leaving some time later with a small hamper full of pharmaceutical goodies.

Apart from feeling hopelessly sorry for myself (ah, a case of man 'flu, I hear you say...), I was pondering where I'd picked it up. I've been out for meals twice this week, and made a visit to the new Westfield Shopping Centre, so could have picked it up there, but I suspect it was more likely to be the packed tube and overground trains I caught on Thursday and Friday.

The sardine-like conditions we're expected to endure, travelling in the capital, really are the perfect place for exchanging germs: warm, stuffy carriages, with lots of close contact. When someone sneezes (without covering their mouth, naturally), you can almost hear the cries of glee from the little bugs as they are propelled on their way to infect a new victim.

Something I don't understand about my fellow travellers in these conditions is why no-one thinks of opening a window, to let some fresh air in and blow a few of the bugs out. So often the windows are all steamed up inside, and it's suffocatingly stuffy, yet every window remains resolutely and firmly shut. I often feel I'm a one-man window opening service: I force my way onto the carriage, and then hear myself say, 'could someone open a window, please?'. Invariably, someone obliges, but I don't know why it didn't occur to them to do it before.

Another of life's unfathomable mysteries, I suppose...

New railway stations in West London

It's not often that new stations are an item of news - for years we've been more accustomed to station closures, but there's a whole raft of them currently appearing in West London - including one opening today.

The stimulus for all this work - at least around Shepherd's Bush - has been the development of the huge White City shopping development by Westfield. Included as part of a £200m package of transport improvements, financed by the developer, are two new stations and a refurbished one.

The first to open, on 29th September, was the brand new station on the West London Line at Shepherd's Bush, adjacent to the existing Central Line station. Part of the 'Overground' service and now operated by London Transport, the station features fully accessible platforms and a light and airy ticket office. There were teething troubles in its construction - a mistake on the platform width led to some expensive rebuilding, as well as delaying the opening - but it should now be a huge boon to the area. It will be served by the half-hourly Willesden Junction to Clapham Junction service.

Second was the re-opening of the Central Line station next door, which has been closed while the station was enlarged and refurbished. As well as the Westfield development, the station will also act as an interchange with the new Overground station 200 metres away. It has new escalators, a shiny new silver metal entrance block and lots of additional ticket gates, to help cope with the additional passengers anticipated once the shopping centre gets into full swing.

And today, a third station was opened in the area, this time a completely new one on the Hammersmith and City line at Wood Lane. Built on the western side of the Westfield development, this will be additional to the existing Shepherd's Bush Hammersmith & City station, which will be renamed Shepherd's Bush Market to avoid confusion with Shepherd's Bush Central line station. Wood Lane is again fully accessible, with four lifts, and a modern steel and glass structure enclosing the existing Victorian brick arches. Indeed, it claims to be the first new station on an existing tube line for 70 years.

Finally, a bit further south, another new station is beginning to take shape on the West London line at Chelsea Harbour, as part of new housing and hotel developments at Imperial Wharf. The station is not due to open until 2010, but will radically improve access to what has been a bit of a public transport dead end in West London for many years.

With all these new stations, the West London Line will move from being something of a Cinderella line to an integral part of West London's transport infrastructure. However, there are already questions about its capacity, given that peak-hour trains are already full. Plans are in place to help tackle this, with new air-conditioned trains on order, with four rather than three coaches, and a new timetable planned for 2011 which will see four trains an hour rather than the current two.

So - some good news for a change!

All aboard!

Last Saturday I escaped the horribly close weather we are having in London, and headed north to Loughborough for a day out. Now, most people will only know Loughborough from its University, famous for engineering and sport. But this otherwise unremarkable Midlands town has another thing going for it: the Great Central Railway.

The Great Central is generally regarded as one of the best of the UK's heritage steam railways. It is unique in preserving a former section of a main line, and having double track running, enabling it to recreate the great age of steam-hauled expresses. (Other preserved lines tend to be former branch lines).

Its history goes back to the mid-19th Century, and the vision of Edward Watkin. He envisaged a railway running from Manchester and Sheffield, via a new high speed main line, through London to Dover and then under the Channel Tunnel and thence to France. The line would be built to the larger European loading gauge, enabling the wider, longer and taller Continental carriages to run through directly to the North of England. And all this in the 1860s!

Watkin was Chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, the South Eastern Railway (connecting London with Dover), and also the Metropolitan Railway, so he was ideally placed to make the vision happen. A brand new line was built to link these various companies, from Sheffield down to the end of the Metropolitan line in London. The 'London extension', as it was called, was the last 19th century main line built into London, and opened through to Marylebone Station in 1899. It was renamed the 'Great Central Railway,' and quickly became famous for its fast and comfortable expresses.

Alas, the Channel Tunnel vision had to wait nearly another century before becoming reality, thanks to cost, engineering and security concerns. The Great Central was in many ways a successful line, although the company was never able to pay a dividend. But being a latecomer, and traversing the territory of more established companies, was to be its downfall: it became a victim of the 1966 cuts in British Railways, and was the only complete main line to be closed - ironically, the most modern and the only one built to the European loading gauge!

In 1969 some enthusiasts got together to reopen part of the line, and after a lot of hard work the trains started running again in 1973. The railway now runs from Loughborough to the northern outskirts of Leicester. It has a large collection of steam locomotives, from every pre-1947 company, as well as British Railway standard designs, and a wide range of preserved diesel trains and railcars. This varied collection is a delight for the enthusiast, and really helps to recreate the feel of railway in the early 1960s.

The stations are delightful: Loughborough recreates a large, busy town station of the early 1960s, Quorn & Woodhouse recreates the railway in wartime of the 1940s, and Rothley, the Edwardian period. Quorn & Woodhouse and Rothley are both excellent examples of the Great Central's standard design of small stations with a single island platform.

The line is double track from Loughborough to Rothley, allowing a real taste of how a main line railway would have felt in the 1960s. It runs through rolling countryside and passes on two viaducts over part of the lovely Swithland Reservoir (something of a hidden gem itself). All stations have some form of refreshment facilities, and there is a souvenir shop and bookshop at Loughborough.

Apart from the trains, additional attractions include the locomotive shed and workshops at Loughborough and the Ellis tearoom and miniature railway at Rothley. Also at Rothley are the workshops of the Railway Vehicle Preservation group, who aim to preserve rolling stock such as carriages (vital work, of course, but lacking the glamour of locomotive preservation). Their pride is two sets of Travelling Post Offices, and they organise week-ends demonstrating the old automatic mail drop-off and pick-up system, made famous by the 1950s film 'The Night Mail'.

The current southern terminus is Leicester North, just south of the site of the former Belgrave & Birstall station. There are plans to extend both further south into Leicester, and northwards to join up with a section of line still extant towards Ruddington and the outskirts of Nottingham. At present there is a gap of over 300m between the two sections, with an embankment and several bridges missing.

As you would expect, the line is extraordinarily popular with 'children of all ages'. They run a number of special 'themed' days, some suitable for the die-hard enthusiast, (eg Travelling Post Office demonstration) and others orientated more towards children (eg Thomas the Tank Engine days and Santa Specials).

As it is a full working railway, children must be appropriately supervised, and the locomotive shed is messy underfoot - stout footwear would be a good idea, and it is not really suitable for small children. Full details of access and parking can be found on the Line's website.

For further details, see their website at: www.gcrailway.co.uk