The Station Is Rising At Custom House Station
Some of the supports for the Crossrail station at Custom House have now been erected.
I met two Laing O’Rourke engineers, who were working on the project on the bridge and they said that in three months, a lot of the station will have been assembled.
They also said that the finish of the concrete was much better having been built in a factory than if it had been made on site.
East London To Yeovil By The Long Way
Yeovil is a long way from London and when I saw the fixture list, I felt it was a game that would be impossible to see.
So when I found out that Thomas Heatherwick had designed a café at Littlehampton, a town I’d never visited, I thought perhaps I could go there on the way and have a decent lunch.
So I booked a ticket to Littlehampton from Clapham Junction and then another from Littlehampton to Yeovil, with changes at Fratton and Salisbury.
I started just after ten and took a Class 378 London Overground train to Clapham Junction.
I just missed a Littlehampton train at Clapham Junction, so I had a cup of hot chocolate on the bridge at Knot Pretzels.
The train I did get to Littlehampton was direct, but it did take an hour and thirty five minutes in a comfortable Class 377. I did walk to the beach at Littlehampton see the café and have lunch.
I just caught my train out of Littlehampton at 15:23, which was the first leg of my journey along the South Coast to Yeovil to Fratton. The train was an elderly but well-refurbished Class 313.
From Fratton it was a First Great Western Class 158, which was going all the way from Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff.
The final leg was a South West Trains Class 159 from Salisbury to Yeovil Junction. I arrived on time at 18:40.
I think this journey shows up our trains in a reasonable light. The journey times are slow not because of slow trains, but because of the frequent stops and complicated route. The journey took three hours seventeen minutes from Littlehampton to Yeovil, but there was only thirty-three minutes wasted in connections.
Although some trains date from the 1980s, there wasn’t anything as bad as the dreaded Pacers that inhabit the North. The services were pretty well-used and except for the short leg from Littlehampton to Fratton, there was a catering trolley on all trains.
Would I do this journey again? I might, but I doubt I’ll ever need to do it. My next trip to the South Coast involves a trip to Brighton, which will be a lot quicker.
I had hoped to take a few pictures, but my camera died at Littlehampton.
Could Hebden Bridge Be The UK’s Second City?
This sounds like the sort of idea dreamed up by someone, who really does think that Yorkshire is the centre of the earth.
But the BBC has published a piece entitled The Case For Making Hebden Bridge The UK’s Second City by Evan Davis on their website.
This extract sums up his logic.
The suggestion that it is Britain’s second city came from resident David Fletcher, who was active in the 80s saving the town’s old mills and converting them to modern use.
His point is that Hebden Bridge is an inverted city with a greenbelt centre and suburbs called Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.
His point was that the real second city of the UK is a northern, trans-Pennine strip that extends the relatively short distance across northern England, joining the built-up areas that lie second, fourth and sixth in the UK ranking.
I think he has a point and treating the area from Liverpool and Blackpool in the West to Leeds and Sheffield in the East, as a megacity, may be a very good idea.
Davis says that it would need a lot of infrastructure, and there would be rivalries and infighting. But there’s enough of that in Manchester already, with one of the worst bus systems in the UK.
To be fair to Network Rail, their plans for the Northern Hub, very much fit the proposal for the Northern megacity and the government, especially in the statements of George Osborne, seem to be backing them.
Is there anything I’d like to see in the North?
I would like to see London’s local transport information systems and ticketing imposed on the North. And probably on everywhere outside London as well.
- I should arrive at any station and be able to find my onward route, by foot, bus or tram without difficulty or bothering any of the station staff.
- If say, I wanted to use a bus where my bus pass is valid, I would just touch in with my pass. Every town or city seems to use a different system.
- If I need to pay for my ticket, then I would just touch in with a contactless bank card.
- All buses would have fully disabled access and at least a separate entrance and exit, like most buses in London.
- I should also be able to find out the next bus, with a simple text-based system, based on five digits for the stop and a short text code. If larger London can do it, why do cities like Leeds have a system that is so difficult.
I shall be watching Evan Davis’s program tonight with interest.
Don’t forget there would be one great argument for making Hebden Bridge the UK’s Second City. It would eventually stop all the arguments.
You also have to ask, whether other megacities could be created.
- Newcastle-Sunderland-Middlesbrough
- Glasgow-Edinburgh
- Wolverhampton-Birmingham-Coventry
- Southampton-Portsmouth-Brighton
Are four that come to mind.
A Pleasant Surprise In Middlesbrough
I like nice cafes and it was only as I was leaving Middlesbrough, that I found the Traveller’s Rest in the station.
From a quick perusal of their menu, it would appear that there is something I could have eaten, which was a pity, as I didn’t get anything to eat until I got home about five hours later.
There’a positive review of the cafe here.
I did chat to the owner and he also indicated that Northern Rail had been very encouraging in his venture. Are they repeating the philosphy, which was obviously at play with the Overground at Crystal Palace station and South Eastern at Margate?
Let’s hope so, as all fair-sized stations need a distinctive and spacious cafe or restaurant for the passengers.
Mind The Gap – Threeses Style
I got off a Central line train at Bank station tonight and it was all a bit difficult for a family with a set of threeses, who were probably about three years old.
The platform there is rather curved and there must have been at least a twenty-five centimetre gap between the train and the platform.
But ushered by their parents, they jumped it successfully!
It really is a gap that needs sorting. This page has more details.
Visitors To The UK And The Two Together Railcard
The Two Together Railcard has just been launched in the UK.
I’ve since found out, that it is available to any two people, who habitually travel together in the UK, even if they aren’t resident here.
So it would be an ideal way for say an American, German or Vietnamese couple to get a third off rail fares, provided they didn’t want to travel before 09:30.
An Idea For Which Time Has Come
This article on the BBC’s web site talks about robot cargo ships.
A a control engineer, I can’t see any reason, why this will not be the norm in a few years time.
Trains To Bexhill
I went the one-train way to Bexhill from Clapham Junction. This may by convenient, but it is rather slow. It takes one hour fifty three minutes from Victoria and there is just one comfortable Class 377 train every hour during the day.
Class 377s At Bexhill
You can do the journey in one hour forty one minutes using HS1 and changing at Ashford from St. Pancras, but as with Victoria, there is just one train an hour.
To illustrate the poor train service in this part of Sussex, if you go from Charing Cross to Hastings, you can do it normally in about one hour forty-five minutes, on a train with innumerable stops. At the moment a lot of the services are replaced by buses due to landslips. If you read Wikpedia on the Hastings Line, you’ll see how it was built by the worst of Victorian gerry-builders and how some of the line has been single-tracked, so that normal-sized trains can use the line. Until 1986, the line was operated by special narrow trains.
It would seem that something ought to be done.
There is an unelectrified line called the Marshlink Line, that links Hastings to Ashford. There is a proposal to upgrade and electrify this line, so that high speed commuting services from St. Pancras, can serve Hastings, Bexhill and Eastbourne.
As an aside here, some years ago, I looked at a business proposal in Hastings. After driving to meet a guy there, I had to go to see a client near Gatwick. It took me nearly two hours to cross half of Sussex in a fast car, as the roads were completely inadequate. Since then the Hastings by-pass has been chopped, so surely creating a modern railway from Ashford to Eastbourne and on to Brighton and Portsmouth, should be a priority?
I can’t find any reference to how much it would cost to upgrade the line, but it would surely benefit more people than the proposed hundred million pounds, that are being spent according to reports in Somerset.
Navigating Around Bexhill
Why is it that so many towns that want to attract visitors, have such poor maps and information? I saw just one solitary lith by the De La Warr Pavilion.
A Lonely Lith In Bexhill
But the worst crime was the only usable walking map at the station, which was positioned for those, who were tall enough to be basketball players.
How many people after visiting a town, where they got lost, go back and tell their friends about their experiences?
Let’s hope that Bexhill increases the number of liths and especially puts one outside the station.
Should Oyster Become A Bank?
This suggestion was put forward by the Social Market Foundation in a report yesterday.
Oyster is a trusted brand and it handles billions of transactions in a year, so expansion into a contactless bank, would probably be something that could work.
I also get better information from my Oyster card than I get from my debit or credit card. I can see my last journeys at most ticket machines in London, but can I find out the last five transactions on my debit card at a cash machine? I don’t think so!
So perhaps the other side of this suggestion, is should bank cards be more like Oyster?
The Anonymous Widower 