Getting To Newcastle Urgently on the Cheap
In my trip around the country, I will have a lot of problems, because I often won’t know, which train, I can catch.
I was in Kings Cross this morning and looked up how much it would cost me to go today, if I bought a ticket. A Super Off Peak Single with a Senior Railcard would have cost me £72.40. But suppose I want to go tomorrow, how much will that self-same ticket cost on the web? I’ve just looked and if I want to travel tomorrow, it’ll cost me £36.20. Or half price.
So just by booking the day before, you get half price on the web. And I can travel on any train after 9:30.
Incidentally, there are no cheaper tickets.
So when I have to return after a busy day, I’ll have one in my wallet, as I can use it on most late trains home.
Rail Ticket Machines
The on-line rail ticket system is good, in that you can pick up your tickets from any machine you want, anywhere in the UK. They do ask you to nominate a specfic one, but I generally use the ones in Kings Cross, as they are convenient for me and are often not very busy, as there are lots of them. They are also slightly more private than some I could name.
The biggest problem is that you need to type in a randomly generated transaction number. I usually text it to my mobile phone, so that when I look at the Inbox, all I see is the numbers of tickets I need to collect, so I can hold the phone in my left hand, whilst I type with my right.
The system could be improved, by allowing you to type in a collection code, when you buy your ticket on-line. So for East Coast, you might use EC and the last four digits of your phone number. As to get the tickets, you’d need to put in the right credit card, that would probably be as secure as the current system. In fact it could be more so, as I’ve seen people take little bits of paper out of their wallet and then read the code, whilst they type it. Some machines have a Qwerty keyboard, which can be difficult for those who don’t type too well.
It would of course mean that collecting multiple tickets, as I’m doing all the time at the moment would be very easy, as I’d use the same code.
So I would end up with a pile of little orange cards, that I’d have to check before I left the station. But that happems now. It’s just that I have to type in several numbers instead of one.
I would also like to see the fact that the ticket had been collected acknowledged to me in an e-mail. That way mistakes and fraud would be spotted earlier.
And why not have a few chairs by the machines so that some like me could sit down and sort everything out.
What Do We Do With the Old District/Met/Circle Line Trains?
Last night, I travelled to and from to Upton Park on some of the old D-stock trains. They may be thirty years old and are to be replaced in 2015, but they asren’t fit for the scrap heap yet. In fact with a bit of a tart-up, they would probably last another twenty years or so, judging by how well most Metro-Cammell trains were built.
Ride to Upminster and back on one and then say that they should be scrapped forthwith. You won’t get the words out, as none of the problems on the line, are the D-stock.
The good burghers of Harrogate, who might or might not live up to that Yorkshire stereotype of being canny have proposed that some of these trains be used between Leeds, Harrogate, Knaresborough and York.
The respected rail commentator, Alan Williams, hasn now weighed in with some south common sense. It might be Yorkshire common sense to, as I think he lives in Scarborough.
- He asks why this system is not being proposed elsewhere, like for the Welsh Valleys.
- He also says that it the thinking is very much in line with the McNulty Report. I suppose one could ask, if the civil servants are in-line with it. They probably aren’t as they never travel outside of London, except by air or limousine! It would be interesting to know how many of the top civil servants, who effectively run our railways have travelled in a Pacer.
- He says too, that they could use a modern protected third rail system, where the electric rail couldn’t be touched by trespassers. This is used on the DLR in the UK and in many places abroad. Perhaps civil servants would be more impressed with the proposals after a round trip of Europe inspecting systems elsewhere?
We could have a competition, where there was a prize for the most innovative use in a railway context of the D-stock trains.
Cash For Scrap
No wonder we get so much metal thefts with big screen adverts like this at football grounds.
Where to Sell Your Scrap Metal For Cash
I took this picture at West Ham last night!
If I was the Transport Minister, I’d get them banned.
Avoiding the Rain on the Train
One of the reasons, I wanted to use the bus to get home, even if it meant a change, was that it was raining hard. If I could have ended up on any one of several routes, I would have been dropped within a hundred metres of my house. Usually when you change buses, you don’t get that wet too, if you choose the changeover with care.
I have three choices of train from Stratford. I usually take one of.
- The Overground to Dalston Kingsland and walk.
- The Overground to Hackney Central and get a bus.
- Central line to Bank and then a bus.
All though would have meant a ten minute walk in the rain. And I didn’t have an umbrella with me.
So in the end, I took the Overground to Canonbury, then back on the East London line to Dalston Junction and then a bus along the Balls Pond Road. Not the simplest, but definitely the driest. It was very wet as this picture at Canonbury shows.
Canonbury in the Rain
To make matters worse, my preferred route via Hackney Central requires a walk over an uncovered bridge and I wasn’t the only person, who on seeing the weather there, declined to get off.
The Overground is one of those modes of transport, that is very good in fine weather, but some stations get you very wet, when it rains heavily.
The amount of passengers using the line is starting to cause problems. I left Stratford in the rush hour and getting to the platforms was difficult because of large numbers of passengers going the other way. I used the lift to avoid them. The platforms also need a Next Train indicator, as is common on many parts of London’s railways, both over and under the ground.
Wot No Spidermap!
In common with many others, I like the bus spidermaps that London uses.
They effectively solve the problem of when you are out of your normal area and need to get someone you know. Often a point on a map will be well-known to you, so you just get the bus that goes there. In East London, there are also well-known points like the Angel, Aldwych, Bow Church, Clapton Pond and Walthamshow Central, where bus routes tend to cross. With the spder maps, which list every stop in a vague geographic way, it is easy to locate the place where your local route crosses one from the place you are.
But there is no spider map for Stratford City, despite it having an impressive bus station.
Stratford City Bus Station
I was told that it was coming and to look on the Internet. All that was there was this piece of designer tosh, that is very useful, if you know the bus you want, but useless if like me, you don’t know your way home. It doesn’t even have the detailed list of places where the buses go, which is common to all spider maps.
So in the end I came home by train.
A Disappointing Trip to Eastfield
The Waitrose at Westfield Stratford City is the only place I’ve found the delicious Genius gluten-free fruit bread.
As I needed one or two other things and also a prescription dispensed, I took the train to Stratford and walked to the centre.
But I didn’t get anything I wanted, except for the drugs.
- Waitrose were out of the gluten-free fruit bread and also the normal Genius bread as well.
- Marks didn’t have any gluten-free bread either, but they did have three gluten-free ham sandwiches. So at least they must be stocking them now!
So I left a few minutes after I got there and returned home.
I think though, I can recommend the Boots pharmacy there. I got everything I wanted without waiting, as obviously, the store isn’t the place where people would normally go for their prescriptions. It’s lovely to shop without queues.
One thing that annoys me about the centre, is that to get between the main entrance and Marks at the front and Waitrose and John Lewis at the back, means that I have to run the gauntlet of a crowded corridor and lot of shops with the exception of Starbucks and PC World, I never have visited and never will. It would be much better if the two end escalators were round the other way and I could walk across at first floor level, descending as required. There is also no direct link between John Lewis and Waitrose inside the store, which puts me off visiting both on the same visit. I should say I don’t buy much in Waitrose on most days, as I’m only getting my supper. For a big shop I go to Waitrose in Islington and get them to do the carrying.
East Coast Tickets Are Not Exchangeable For A Sensible Fee
For my Day 1 trip from Accrington to London, I booked an advance ticket on the 10:05 from Leeds to London, that arrived at 12:30. The ticket cost me £26.45.
But at the time I booked, I hadn’t thought that I could fit in the Aston Villa part of the trip.
So I found that if I took an earlier train from Leeds, it would give me more time. But no matter, it said that I could exchange the ticket for a fee.
So I looked it up on the web this morning and found that there were tickets for earlier trains still available, albeit at a higher price. There were also Super Off Peak tickets available at £28.90, which is probably what I should have bought in the first place.
So I went to Kings Cross and found out that to exchange the ticket for a named train would cost me a fee of forty-one pounds or so. I’ve changed advance tickets in the past and I think I got charged five or ten pounds or so. That would have been reasonable, but not ideal, as in fact, I’m not sure which train I want to take. As it’s a Saturday, I have a feeling that a Super Off Peak ticket allows me to travel on most, if not all trains.
So I left, after realising I had a nice story for my blog and of course, I still had a valid ticket on the 10:05, even if it is a bit tight to get to Aston Villa.
At home, I found that the £28.90 ticket was still there, so to see if I could get it cheaper, I tried the TrainLine. But that wanted £40.90. I don’t pay booking fees to anybody, so they can go and find some other mugs.
So I went back to East Coast and eventually bought the ticket at £28.90.
It’ll be interesting to see what price, I could pay for a walk-up ticket at Leeds on Saturday.
To return to the title of this page. I don’t consider, a forty pound plus fee acceptable, when I can buy a fully flexible ticket for about two-thirds of the sum.
This trip is starting to get interesting. Perhaps I should follow Tony Hawks lead and travel with a fridge. The problem is that I’ve had enough medical problems in the past few years, I don’t want another caused by humping a fridge.
Kings Cross to Waterloo and Back
Waterloo is south of the river, so it doesn’t connect well to civilisation using the Underground.
On my trip between Accrington and Aldershot, I’ll need to travel from Kings Cross to Waterloo. I’ll also have to come back to get to the Arsenal. I did do a recce earlier, but today I checked out using the Bakerloo and then the Piccadilly or Vict0oria lines.
Going south, it’s just a Victoria line to Oxford Circus and then a cross platform transfer to the Bakerloo line for Waterloo.
Going north, you walk to the left on coming off a train at Waterloo and take the escalator down marked Bakerloo. At the bottom, you go through the gates and take another escalator. Then you can actually turn immediately left and take a shirtcut throgh to the northbound Bakerloo, where I found it was better to get in about the middle of the train. This means at Piccadilly Circus, you just walk to the back of the train to take the subway to the Piccadilly line. Get in towards the back of the train and you’ll be well placed to go straight up the escalators at Kings Cross. But as on Day 1, I’m going to Arsenal, I’ll get in towards the middle.
Hopefully, I’ll save a minute or so.
The Anonymous Widower 