Know Your Ticketing
My trip yesterday illustrated one thing, in that you can save pounds and pence by being smart with ticketing. This picture shows my six tickets from yesterday.
Tickets To Huddersfield
I travelled virtually along to Sheffield on the 07:24 for £17.15 and back on the crowded 20:49 for £19.15. Both tickets were for use with a Railcard in First Class and bought on-line from East Midlands Trains.
If I wanted to do that journey today, the cheapest ticket I can find on the web is £48.85
My Return from Sheffield to Huddersfield was bought from the ticket machine in Dalston Junction for £6.20, which was incidentally ten pence cheaper than one of my tavelling companion’s ticket bought on-line some days earlier.
Why the North Needs Electrification And Pacer Eradication
Huddersfield is one of these classic Northern towns and cities that do not have a direct train to London.
In the past, when Ipswich have played there, I’ve either taken a fast train to Manchester or Leeds and then taken a train across in a twenty minute ride or so ride.
A typical trip via Leeds takes about ten minutes under three hours, with one via Manchester Piccadilly taking perhaps ten minutes longer.
On my trip north to Huddersfield, because I wanted to do take some photos in Sheffield and because the West Coast Main Line was closed, I decided to go via the old steel city from St. Pancras. With just one change at Sheffield this journey takes ten minutes short of four hours.
So imagine, you were perhaps a businessman needing to go to Huddersfield to check something out or a fan going from London to see your team play Huddersfield Town, would you bother?
I probably wouldn’t except for the fact that I got First Class tickets to Sheffield £36.30. That was Advance tickets with a Senior Railcard and I did buy them several weeks ago, but both journeys were in two hours, so it was probably good value.
I then took a local train from Sheffield to Huddersfield on the Penistone Line, with the journey taking over an hour in a dreadful Class 142 Pacer, as it meandered through the Yorkshire countryside, stopping at stations with interesting names like Wombwell, Denby Dale and Silkstone Common.
At least I wasn’t alone, as I shared the journey with an Ipswich-supporting student and another guy, who like me had been to Loverpool University. So at least it was an entertaining journey.
When you arrive in Huddersfield, you aren’t greeted by some dreadful pile of bricks, which has suffered the excesses and poor imagination of British Rail’s in-house architects, but a regional station that is second to none and is up there with Kings Cross for grandeur and setting.
Huddersfield station deserves a lot better than it is currently getting. The Wikipedia entry, says this about the views of those who knew about architecture, trains and stations.
The station frontage was described by John Betjeman as the most splendid in England and by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘one of the best early railway stations in England’.
The only blot on the station, is that in front is a statue of one of Huddersfield’s most famous sons; Harold Wilson. When he was Prime Minsister, he could surely have done more to put an electrified railway across the Pennines from Liverpool and Manchester to Sheffield and Leeds via his home town. Wilson also has the dubious claim to fame in that despite the recommendations of Beeching, he was Prime Minister, when the only electrified line across the Pennines, the Woodhead Line was closed to passengers in 1970.
But things could be getting better.The number of Trans Pennine trains has been increased in the last couple of years and the Huddersfield Line from Manchester to Leeds has been funded for electrification by 2018.
Six fast electric trains every hour between Leeds and Manchester via Huddersfield will be a big improvement in terms of speed and capacity, even if for a few years, they are just refurbished Class 319 trains. For example, journey times between Manchester and Leeds via Huddersfield will be down to forty minutes.
I find it rather ironic, that an electric train based on a design started under Wilson’s Prime Ministership, which was designed for the mountains of the South East, has such an important role in the exorcising of his sins as regards to railway electrification across the Pennines. It probably shows that engineers know a lot more about providing good infrastructure than politicians. But although Class 319 trains may be ugly buggers, underneath and behind that extremely tough steel bodywork, lies all the suspension and power systems to create a comfortable, fast and reliable train, that rides with all the smoothness and finesse of a top of the range car. The one I rode on in Liverpool recently had certainly scrubbed up well.
But this 100 mph electrified railway across the Pennines will be ruined for many, if there is no improvement in feeder services on other routes, which are generally worked by the dreaded Pacers.
To be fair to Northern Rail, yesterday’s example did have new seats and had been smartened up, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they should be sent to the Army for use as targets in gunnery practice.
Take the Penistone Line on which I travelled to Huddersfield. It has four major stations at Sheffield, Meadowhall, Barnsley and Huddersfield, with a host of what look like to be well-maintained stations in smaller and often rural communities. A Pacer trundling along the line once an hour is not exactly a passenger-magnet.
Northern Rail probably don’t have enough trains to provide a more frequent service, but surely in an ideal world, there should be at least two trains an hour along the line. Hopefully, with electrification in the north and transfer of trains from other parts of the country, in a few years time, we’ll see a better service on the line, provided by something like Class 172 trains.
Around the end of this decade, Sheffield will be electrified to London and fast electric trains will do the journey in well under two hours. As Huddersfield will also be electrified, the electrification and modernisation of the Penistone Line and the related Hallam Line between Sheffield and Leeds , could be a logical step to take. In fact the recent report on Electrification in the North has recommended this.
This would open up all possibilities for services, such as providing direct electric services from Leeds, Barnsley and Huddersfield to London via Sheffield and the HS2 interchange at Meadowhall, in addition to very much improved local services.
I look forward to the day when voters in London and the South East start moaning about all their money being spent on electric railways in the North. Hopefully by then, London’s Mayor will have a lot more freedom on how to fund railways in the capital.
The Anonymous Widower 