A Stop At Coatbridge Sunnyside
The train from Edinburgh to Glasgow, went by this appropriately named station.
A Stop At Coatbridge Sunnyside
The weather wasn’t very sunny!
Buying Tickets To Scotland
Next weekend, I’m going to Edinburgh and Glasgow and then down to Bolton to see Ipswich play.
All journeys were booked on-line in First Class and purchased using my Senior Railcard. It cost me £64.31 for the trip up using East Coast on Thursday and £57.45 for the split journey down using Virgin.
The journey down is probably cheaper, as it is effectively a typical Premium Economy journey in First Class on Saturday.
As I can now collect tickets from my local station at Dalston Junction, I was able to collect the tickets, whilst taking a constitutional walk to the pub in the evening.
Would people use the trains more, if it were easier to pick up tickets?
Some People Will Nick Anything
I saw the Big Egg Hunt in London last year at Canary Wharf, but I can’t find the post. According to this report, one of the eggs has been stolen in Glasgow. Two actually went missing in London, but were returned.
Some people would think, that as the eggs went to Liverpool, that stereotypes would say that some would have gone missing there. But they didn’t! On the other hand, Liverpool has lots of street sculpture and the Superlambananas.
Liverpool, Glasgow And Belfast
These three cities in the UK have for centuries had their troubles between Catholics and Protestants.
I grew up in London, which before the Second World War wasn’t without its religious troubles. But that generally involved anti-Semitism and those on the far right. My father was a staunch anti-fascist and claimed he was at the Battle of Cable Street. I suspect he was, and I know he used to write Cockney poetry about the war. Sadly none has srvived although, I can remember a few phrases.
He didn’t like Catholics because of the Pope’s support for Hitler in the War and my mother being of a Huguenot line didn’t like them either. But it was nothing more than the odd barbed comment, when say a new Pope was elected. I don’t think either of my parents ever saw the inside of a church except for the odd wedding.
This lack of religion, probably helped to push me towards being agnostic and of course now, I’m someone, who doesn’t believe in any religion. But that is not to say, I don’t follow the humanist principles of most of the major religions.
Going to Liverpool in the early 1960s, was the first time, I really came across religion in tooth and claw. With the massive Anglican Cathedral and the new Roman Catholic one under construction, I couldn’t avoid the fact, that I was in a city that took its religion seriously. In those days, there were parades by both Catholics and Orangemen. But any trouble had dropped off in the previous few years. Was it because the people of Liverpool developed healthy interests in music and football? But other factors were also at work inside the Anglican and Catholic churches. Although this pre-dates the partnership between Archbishop Derek Worlock and the Bishop David Sheppard, I think in the 1960s, the people of Liverpool thought they’d had enough of religious rivalries, that got out of hand.
It was then that I met C’s friend, Maureen, who was the daughter of a Presbyterian Minister and missionary from Belfast. Her tales of her home city painted a very different picture of life in Northern Ireland.
It was at that time too, that I had my first experience of Scotland, when I went to Glasgow to see Spurs play against Celtic in the Glasgow Cup. It was the first time, I saw serious football violence, as a Rangers supporter appeared in the non-segregated crowd and was promptly thumped by most of the Celtic fans around me. It’s not to say there wasn’t violence in England at the time, but in matches at Portman Road, White Hart Lane, Anfield and Goodison Park, I’d never experienced any at first hand.
Over the years, I’ve visited Belfast a few times and been rather horrified at all of the flags and religious symbols. I once went into Shorts factory in Belfast and couldn’t believe the bigoted displays I saw. If I were to put up similar posters and flags on my house attacking any religion, I’d be arrested.
In Glasgow it’s not so open, but read any forum about Rangers and Celtic and you’ll find language you never find on similar forums involving say Spurs and Arsenal or Liverpool and Everton.
I go to Liverpool regularly and even went to see the Olympic torch in the city, where the Archbishop enjoyed the parade with everybody else.
So how come Liverpool has come to terms with its religious divides and in Belfast and to a certain extent, Glasgow, they seem to be getting worse?
Scotland’s Thoughts On An Olympic Homecoming Party
I just read this article in The Scotsman, which I thought was a serious newspaper..
The celebration for the Olympic and Paralympic medallists is going to be in Glasgow, but I would have thought that there was a case for it to be in Edinburgh.
The comments are priceless.
Scots Get Their Flags Wrong
At Hampden Park today, they showed the wrong Korean flag, as reported here.
The North Koreans got annoyed, but would they be missed if they pissed off home!
I for one would have cried all the way to the toilet.
So perhaps, Glasgow has done everybody a favour.
Gary Barlow Says BBC Presenters are Going Native
On this morning’s BBC Breakfast, Gary Barlow accused Louise Minchin of picking up a Mancunian accent. He should know after all as he comes from Frodsham.
She in turn admitted, she does slip occasionally.
Now you can understand, why they didn’t move the program to Glasgow.
A friend of mine has told me, that since Radio 5 has moved to Manchester, he’s not been on the program. Apparently, he was told, his phone number was lost in the move to Manchester. I think though, it’s because his accent is not even South London, but North.
A Very Unhappy Bunny
Whilst travelling from Crewe to Lancaster on Day 21 on the very overcrowded Glasgow train, I came across a very unhappy bunny. She had booked the previous Glasgow train, but had then missed it because of a tube journey that took twenty minutes longer than it should. So to get to Glasgow, she’d had to buy a new ticket at £130 and stand all the way. She was saying she wouldn’t use the train again and would fly next time. But what would have happened if she’d turned up late for her flight?
The trouble is that many expect that when they use a train, they just turn up, buy a ticket at a good price and go. If I’ve bought a cheap ticket, I always make sure I get it, although in a couple of trips, I’ve bought a new ticket to get home early. It has cost me, but I’ve got to bed a couple of hours early.
I have read that a lot of people get to the station early for their trains. The trouble is that most stations don’t cater for those, who do and then have a coffee, buy a paper and have a read. It’s why you get so many people standing in front of the departure boards at stations, blocking the path for those hurrying to get on a train. So as more people travel by train, it just means that stations will get more and more congested.
I do wonder whether this congestion, meant that the unhappy bunny, deliberately delayed until the last minute to avoid the crush.
I’m lucky in that I’m a 30 minute or under bus ride from Liverpool Street, Kings Cross, St. Pancras, London Bridge and Euston, so if I watch the buses on-line through the Countdown system, I can usually have a better experience than most. It also means, I can catch the very early morning trains before six in the morning, when everything is less crowded. But if you live more than 30 minutes from the main station and there is no all-night bus, this isn’t possible in London. that it is like in Manchester or Birmingham say, I do not know.
But to return to my unhappy bunny. She was at fault for missing the train. But in her support, getting to stations early, is often not the best experience.
Virgin Trains Glasgow Services
Inevitably in the last couple of weeks, I’ve ended up on some of Virgin Trains services that have started at or are going to Glasgow. If I take Day 21, where I went from London to Milton Keynes and then from Crewe to Lancaster for Morecambe, before going from Lancaster to Carlisle, all on trains going to Glasgow. The early train had plenty of space, although, a lot of people use it to commute to Milton Keynes, but the other two were very overcrowded. I didn’t have a seat reservation on either leg and although I got a seat from Crewe to Preston, it was stand up for the rest of the way.
It almost seems that there is a division, where trains are bearable south of Warrington, Wigan or Preston, but often unbearable to the north. More capacity is urgently needed, both on the Pendolino and Super Voyager services. I think the problem is compounded, by the fact, that the trains get used by locals, travelling just one or two stops. I met one guy commuting from Lancaster to Carlisle.
There are a few TransPennine services from Manchester Airport to Glasgow that use the route, but they are short 100 mph trains, which at best add a few seats to the route and at worst make it more congested. I experienced one going south and detailed it in this post. Perhaps, there is a case for a couple of High Speed Diesel Trains to replace the small Class 185‘s on this route until the line is fully-electrified and electric multiple units arrive.
It has been announced that extra Pendolino trains will be available soon, but some seem to have been put into store, rather than service. Surely, if the sums added up four years ago, and we’ve had an increase in passengers since then, that they are better earning revenue rather than getting rusty.
Remember that my particular expertise is resource scheduling. I just think, that someone’s objective function is not comprehensive enough or there are some dark politics involved. If nothing, adding extra seats to the Glasgow services might encourage people to use them rather than flying, which would reduce our carbon footprint.
Given the overcrowding, something should be done as soon as possible.
At present all I can advise, is make sure you have a seat reservation when you travel anywhere between Warrington and Glasgow.
But the real problems of the West Coast Main Line are historic, as Wikipedia states.
Because of opposition by landowners along the route, in places some railway lines were built so that they avoided large estates and rural towns, and to reduce construction costs the railways followed natural contours, resulting in many curves and bends. The WCML also passes through some hilly areas, such as the Chilterns (Tring cutting), the Watford Gap and Northampton uplands followed by the Trent Valley, the mountains of Cumbria with a summit at Shap, and Beattock Summit in southern Lanarkshire. This legacy of gradients and curves, and the fact that it was not originally conceived as a single trunk route, means the WCML was never ideal as a long-distance main line, with lower maximum speeds than the East Coast Main Line (ECML) route, the other major main line from London to Scotland.
And this still means that for long distances north of Crewe, that only a double track is possible. So this limits the number of paths available, which means that running say a slower connecting service from Warrington to Carlisle, is just not on, even though it would remove the one or two station travellers.
And then you have the freight trains!
So perhaps the problem is not actually about trains, but is more about tracks and paths. The only way then, to get more through, would be to increase the size of the trains from nine to eleven coaches, for which many of the carriages have been built and are in store.
But at some point, the West Coast Main Line will have to have extra tracks, especially if more and more freight trains need to run to and from Scotland from the south. As I believe has been shown around Ipswich, the more freight trains you can run, the less trucks use the roads and you get greater capacity for cars and coaches.
I add the latter, as there is now a London to Glasgow coach service with sleeping berths.
