Full Function Ticketing On The Overground
As I came up the stairs at Dalston Junction station, this morning, I thought the ticket machines at the station had been updated for ticket collection.
Full Function Ticketing On The Overground
So after I’d bought my ticket to return from Sheffield on Saturday on-line, I visited the station and picked it up. Not only does the updated machine deliver on-line tickets, but you can buy a ticket to any station in the country.
A similar machine is in operation at Dalston Kingsland station, but not at Highbury and Islington station.
This development will make some of the journeys I do a lot easier, as I now have a convenient place to pick up on-line tickets.
Often big improvements can be made to travel, by doing small improvements all over the place. I suspect, this was just a software change.
More Money Than Sense?
I like these two stories on the BBC web site.
One is about expensive motors parked outside Harrods and the other is about a Lamborghini clamped for no insurance in Newham.
I say bring on the crushers.
How about a portable crusher which lifts the car in and then crushes it whilst everybody watches? It has some of the fascinations that used to be associated with public executions centuries ago. But it is very humane and no-one gets physically hurt!
Two Non-Drivers
You don’t meet many people, who have made a conscious decision not to drive, especially when they are successful businessmen, without any disabilities in their forties and fifties.
But I’ve met two this week. Both use trains, taxis and buses. Neither were originally from London, where non-driving is a lot easier to manage.
I think it’s a choice many more will take!
Eurostar Go For The East Coast Franchise
I have noticed that Eurostar are bidding to run the trains to the North and Scotland from Kings Cross.
I do hope that if they do run it, they bring the excellent gluten-free food from their continental services.
Do People Shout More On Trams?
I travel on buses and trains a lot.
In Manchester on one tram in particular there was a lot of shouting both directly and into mobile phones.
So do people shout more on trams? Or does the noise echo up and down?
A Crazy Day!
Yesterday was a day I won’t forget.
As I said in this post, I was having a lot of frustrations with East Midland Trains, and decided to come back by Virgin from Birmingham.
I also decided to make a day of travelling, as I had someone with an idea, to meet in Manchester, so I decided to go via Preston and then come in to Manchester from the north west.
I left on the 08:30 from Euston and my main reason to go to the city was to see Preston bus station and the city’s buses. Although, I did walk around the market and the shopping area, visit the Preston Martyrs Memorial, looking unsuccessfully for a cup of coffee. It is not a city centre of which to be proud, as I mused here.
I left around 13:00 and took trains 2 and 3 of the day to get to Eccles via Huyton.
Arriving in Eccles, I bought a day travelcard for the trams and then explored some of the new lines, before going back Carluccio’s in Piccadilly station to have my meeting.
I then took trains 4 and 5, from Manchester to Derby after my meeting, saw the match which was a crazy four-all draw and then came back into Euston at 01:30 this morning, using trains 6 and 7.
I’m a bit tired this morning, but it was a good day and it could have been much worse if Ipswich had lost. It would also have been a lot more expensive, if I’d decided to partake of some of dubious and very expensive hospitality of East Midlands Trains.
I must say this for Travelodge, who when I decided to not use the room I had booked, allowed me to painlessly cancel it with no charge over the Internet.
A Crazy Football Match For A Crazy Day
I was running a few minutes late after my meeting in Manchester Piccadilly and eventually, I got on a train to Sheffield. It was the usual overcrowded TransPennine Express going to somewhere like Scunthorpe. Hopefully, when they finally sort out and electrify the cross-Pennine routes and Piccadilly station, you’ll always go to the same platform to get trains to places like Sheffield and Liverpool. at least though there were plenty of staff about and the train I needed was not in the platforms at the back of the station.
But I didn’t get to Sheffield in time to get a train to Derby that would get me to Pride Park in time for the start of the match. Nothing was late except my start time at Piccadilly and I caught a Cross Country train that would get in to Derby at 19:51. However, someone decided to try a spot of attempted murder on the train and when we got to Derby, the Police locked us all in for a few minutes until they made an arrest.
So I decided to take a taxi. If you know the area, walking to Pride Park from the station is not that far. But the taxi driver gave me a tour of the city and then dropped me at the point of the ground furthest from the Away Supporters End. By the time I got into the ground, Ipswich were leading by three goals to one.
We were all ecstatic at half time and wondered how many it will be. But in the Ipswich were almost lucky to hang on for a four-all draw.
I then walked back to the station to get the 22:02 train to Birmingham for the Virgin train home.
But it was running thirty minutes late. Luckily there was another train and I piled in to try to get to Birmingham in time.
I made the Virgin train, by the skin of my teeth and it was a few minutes early in London at 01:15.
But why did I need all that hassle to get back, when most train companies, but not East Midland Trains, provide a train back to the capital after a match.
Manchester’s Metroshuttle
Manchester has a free city centre bus called the Metroshuttle.
We need more of these in city centres. The Manchester Transport Authority, TfGM, also provides other systems locally in Bolton, Stockport and Oldham. But I have only seen one other recently and that was in Huddersfield. I can remember buses of this type in Liverpool in the 1960s and later in Ipswich and Cambridge. Liverpool’s City Circle was probably a victim of the infamous bus strike of the 1960s and then it’s route was replaced by the underground railway. But Ipswich and Cambridge you either have to walk or find a bus that might go where you are going. Cambridge is particularly bad for the inexperienced visitor.
Riding Manchester’s Trams
I had hoped to see some Eccles cakes at Eccles, but I didn’t even see a bakers, as I walked from the train to the tram.
I took the tram from Eccles to the interchange at Cornbrook, from where I went south to Didsbury Village and then back up to the centre of Manchester.
The new line to Didsbury wasn’t open, the last time I used the system and new stations seem better than the old with to me, much welcomed local maps and other improvements.
Manchester is fairly unique amongst UK tram systems in that it runs two different types of tram; the voriginal T68 and the new M5000. The new ones can also be coupled into pairs to make a four car train.
Electrification At Eccles
I got off the train at Eccles station and took these pictures of the electrification.
It’s all coming on at a pace faster than I had expected. And it looks a lot more robust than I’m used to seeing on railways in the UK. More details on the electrification of this line are given here in Wikipedia.
The first benefit for rail users will be Manchester to Scotland services by Trans Pennine using new Class 350 electric trains,, which are scheduled to start at the end of this year. Liverpool to Manchester services should start in a year or two, using refurbished Class 319 trains.
The Anonymous Widower 