A Game Of Four Odd Goals
Yesterday, I went to the football at Ipswich on a very cold evening.
As I needed to go to the dentist in Felixstowe at lunchtime, I went early. This meant that as the cost of my dentist in Felixstowe is so much lower than one in London, I effectively was able to buy a First Class ticket on the saving, thus avoiding the need to pay rush hour prices to get to the match.
The idea was then to come back to Ipswich and waste time by going to a museum, watching a film, exploring the shops and having a pizza in Pizza Express.
All I did was have the pizza and get very cold, as Ipswich shut down virtually completely around five, giving me nearly three hours to find something to do. Since, I worked in the town, all my friends there have either moved away or now live way out of the town.
The biggest disappointment was that the first showing in the cinema was 19:30, whereas in Cambridge today several films start at around four. I could have walked to the multiplex, but I wanted to go to the cinema in the Corn Exchange, where C and myself had so many happy memories.
Even Debenhams and Starbucks shut at six, whereas John Lewis in Cambridge and Norwich shut yesterday at seven.
No wonder the town centre was as dead as a doornail.
But then the crowd at the football was less than fifteen thousand, which is very low for Portman Road.
The game was a pretty good one and memorable for four rather odd goals.
Luke Hyam and Carlos Edwards seemed to stumble over the ball before they put it in the net and Jordan Rhodes, for Blackburn, got the best of the Ipswich keeper in a rush for the ball.
And then to seal the match, Frank Nouble, thundered in on the Blackburn keeper and stole the ball, before slotting it in the net. Mick McCarthy, summed it up as follows on the BBC report.
He is a handful and a frightening prospect when he is bearing down on you.
He certainly scared the goalkeeper. For a big man, Nouble’s pace is astounding.
At least the train was warm, going home, even if it wasn’t a Class 90 and Mark Three coaches.
A New Bus for London Gets Lost
My Google Alert for “New Bus for London” picked up this story from Ipswich in the local evening paper. Here’s the first paragraph.
People in Ipswich will have the chance to travel around the town on a new London bus this week.
I’ve looked up the free Ipswich shuttle bus, on which the New Bus for London is running and the details are here. Effectively, it runs around the town centre linking the various shopping areas and car parks.
It is an idea that many towns and cities could use. In fact I think Ipswich had such a route in the 1970s and Liverpool certainly did until the infamous 1960s bus strike.
If you are going to have such a free bus route, what better bus than a New Bus for London is there for the job. It’s very low emission, the access for the disabled and buggies is excellent and with three doors and an open platform, it loads and unloads quickly. If it’s free, you don’t even have to bother with a fare collection and a conductor, although it probably helps to have someone to organise the passengers in busy times.
There are some excellent photos here on David Warren’s Flickr Photostream.
Norwich In Ninety
I travel regularly on the Great Eastern Main Line to Ipswich and have used the line since the 1970s, when we lived just north of Ipswich.
In those years, there has been very little improvement in journey times, although the trains are newer and perhaps slightly more comfortable.
So I was interested to find this report on the Treasury’s web site. Here’s the first paragraph.
Plans for a new expert group charged with finding ways to speed up rail services to the East of England by as much as 25% have been set out by the Chancellor.
Personally, I will be pleased if the speed improvement to Norwich, is matched on my shorter journey to Ipswich.
At present Ipswich and Norwich take 67 and 110 minutes respectively on a typical train. If Norwich were to be reached in ninety minutes, then Ipswich should be a few minutes or so under the magic figure of one hour.
Given that these trains would probably interface to Crossrail at \Shenfield, Stratford and Liverpool Street, it should be possible to go from Ipswich to Heathrow in under a hundred minutes. The Norwich figure would be two hours ten minutes.
I would think that this could be one of those small improvements, that show a very high return on the money invested. At least the line is fully electrified and all of the major stations can accept long high-capacity trains.
The major problem of delays caused by freight trains going to and from Felixstowe is also being solved with the Bacon Factory Curve, so I’m hopeful that by the end of this decade, we’ll be seeing much reduced journey times to East Anglia.
Will we also be seeing more electrication in East Anglia, like Ely to Norwich and Ipswich to Peterborough? I doubt it, although the latter would really help with the movement of freight out of Felixstowe.
A Pre-Match Meal In Ipswich
Yesterday, it was football at Ipswich at 19:45 due to SKY, so it was an early train to avoid the rush hour and a pre-match meal in Pizza Express on the waterfront.
PX is the only really coeliac-friendly restaurant in the town centre. I’ve yet to find a good Indian one, close to the football ground.
PX was heaving, so it does appear that the demand might be coming up in the town, which in my view and those of some of my friends is a restaurant graveyard. I always wondered if East Suffolk people go to bed early, ever since my father and I used to walk home from his club in Felixstowe at about 21:30 and see all the houses cmpletely dark.
But getting to and from the quay and PX in the dark is a walker’s nightmare, with uneven pavements and all sorts of barriers everywhere. How many drunks will tip into the dock?
However there did seem to be a lot of good development going on at the waterfront, but knowing Ipswich as I do, I doubt that it will be complete for upwards of five to ten years.
The quay might end up as a good place to go, but it’s not that close to the town centre, the railway station and the other attractions in the town, like Christchurch Mansion, the Wolsey Theatre and the football ground.
If ever a town was crying out for a free circular bus-route that ran around the town centre like Manchester’s Metroshuttle, it is Ipswich!
At least though the meal was good and walking down the hill to the restaurant from the station was easy, even if I didn’t find the quickest route back to the football ground in the dark. In the light, I’d have had the liths to guide me!
I shall go again in the light!
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.
Greater Anglia Get It Together
I travel to Ipswich regularly to see Ipswich Town play.
My last two tickets cost me £34.95 and that was made up by buying a Senior ticket from the Zone 6 boundary (Harold Wood) to Ipswich and then upgrading it to First.
Yesterday’s ticket was much simpler in that it was a Senior First Class ticket all the way and back for £32.60.
I’ve just looked it up the 19th of October, when Ipswich play Burnley and I can now buy one on-line for £32.60.
it also looks like that for a Tuesday night match, I can get an Off-Peak First Return to Ipswich for the same price, provided I leave before 16:30. I don’t remember that being possible before. i could of course be wrong. The only returns to Ipswich I can find in my credit card statements are £34.95.
It looks like the price has got down for me and I’ll now be able to avoid the queues at Liverpool Street station on a Saturday morning, by buying my ticket on-line. I’ll also have time for a proper lunch before I travel.
That’s progress.
I’ve never found any fault with the staff on the trains to Ipswich, but today they seemed to have gone up a gear in cheeriness. The steward was also offering more than the usual single complimentary drink with your First Class ticket.
I have no complaints and let’s hope it all gets even better.
For instance, it is known that Herculean efforts are sometimes needed to keep the Class 90 locomotives on top form. As passengers generally like the smooth riding Mark 3 coaches, could a small injection of the new Class 88 locomotives, allow some Norwich services to be extended to Great Yarmouth, as they used to be in the past. Would they also enable proper trains to be run to Bury St. Edmunds and Lowestoft?
Dealing With Late Trains
Last night after the Yeovil match, there was a spot of bother on the trains at Ipswich. A freight train had broken down and the knock on meant that all of the other trains were delayed and cancelled.
I’d just missed the 21:43 back to London and the next one, which was the 22:23 had been cancelled. So I had to wait nearly an hour until the 22:43 arrived. Thankfully on time! It was on time at Liverpool Street, despite having to make two extra stops.
GreaterAnglia dealt well with the problem and there were staff everywhere. The only place I didn’t see any staff was on the train, but that didn’t of course matter.
Because of the delays getting to Sudbury from Ipswich was difficult and GreaterAnglia were providing extra transport from Colchester to get people home.
So their response was excellent and totally at the other end of the spectrum to what I got from Deutsche Nahn at Osnabruck.
A Pair Of Ipswich Liths
I took these pictures in Ipswich today.
It certainly is the way to go with on street navigation for walkers.
Can a city afford to be left out of this revolution?
Developments At Cheltenham
Cheltenham is a town, I’ve been to several times. Usually, it has been to go to the races, although I did go there on my 92 Club trip. I went by train to Cheltenham Spa station.
This month’s Modern Railways describes a substantial proposed development at the station, which adds extra platforms and capacity. Given that there is a large development being started at Cheltenham Racecourse and getting to the racecourse by road is a nightmare, I think it would be a good idea to expand the station, so that racegoers could at least get to Cheltenham by train. Provision is made in the station scheme for perhaps a light rail system to link to the racecourse station.
But obviously, a heavy rail scheme would be better, so that luxury special trains could run from Paddington direct to the racecourse. First Great Western are now running Pullman Dining services on InterCity 125 trains to Plymouth, so perhaps the soon-to-be redundant trains could be refurbished as luxury go-virtually-anywhere trains to take visitors to special events in style.
There’s a lot to think about!
But the proposed reworking of Cheltenham Spa station, does show how if you think properly, you can improve a mundane station for the benefit of the rail companies and passengers alike.
Here’s a personal example.
With the simplification of movements at Ipswich, due to the new Bacon Factory Curve, will this make possible, some small improvements? It would be much easier for a train from say Cambridge to come in to Ipswich station and then reverse out to either Lowestoft or Felixstowe, as there won’t be freight trains reversing in the yard outside the station.
I hope Network Rail has got their thinking cap on!
They certainly seem to have got it right with new stations at Cambridge Science Park and Lea Bridge, but they seem to have been unlucky with building a Coventry Arena station, and then have Coventry City move away.
But as I indicated in this post, are Network Rail expanding the railway, by doing lots of small high return projects.
Stratford Is Well-Lithed
I went to Stratford in East London, this morning to take some pictures.
These were two of the many Legible London liths, that make walking easy in the area.
I do wonder if other places are starting to use similar designs. In Ipswich yesterday, there were several as I walked to Portman Road. Ipswich calls it’s system Walk Ipswich and the web site is here.
Both systems in London and Ipswich were designed by Applied, so the similarity may not be a coincidence or plagiarism.
The Anonymous Widower 