Scotland’s Weather
Carol Kirkwood, the BBC’s Scottish weatherwoman with the large wardrobe of dresses, has just given statistics to show that Scotland is having a very wet summer.
It’s funny that the weather should get worse, after the General Election, where so many Scots voted for a party that believes in total independence.
If they do leave the UK, I hope they take all that wet weather with them.
It looks like she has made her decision, as I think Carol lives somewhere in the South of England. But then she has access to all the data!
Perhaps, now is the time, for people like me, who don’t particularly like hot weather, to take a holiday North of the Border.
Racing Trains To Scotland
As a child, I was never a great reader of books, except for encyclopaedias and other factual books. In an effort to get me to read more, my mother got me a book from the library about how the various train companies in the late 1800s tried to outperform each other to Edinburgh in 1888 and Aberdeen in 1895.
All of this has come back to me, as this month’s edition of Modern Railways is talking about developments in the services to Scotland, that could happen over the next few years.
The Press of the time, dubbed this Victorian rivalry as the Race To The North and in the section in the Wikipedia entry about the rivalry to Aberdeen in 1895, this is said.
In his 1958 book about the series of races, Oswald Nock wrote of the 22/23 August journey, “And at that astonishing average speed of 63.3 mph made sixty-three years ago the London–Aberdeen record still stands today”
The time was even more astounding, when you consider it wasn’t beaten until the 1970s by an InterCity125, which still work the route today.
The time on the night of the 22nd/23rd of August 1895 was eight hours forty-two minutes with Victorian steam locomotives and today the 200 kph diesel train takes just a few minutes over seven hours. But the modern train takes the shorter East Coast route!
The East and West Coast routes obviously don’t race each other these days, but according to Modern Railways, it looks like travel between London and Edinburgh is going to get faster and more interesting, as Virgin are aiming for quite a few four-hour trains throughout the day and two new companies are applying to run direct services between the two capitals.
If I understand the article correctly, by 2020 Virgin will be running three trains an hour between London and Edinburgh. The train from London on the hour will stop at Newcastle with York in alternate hours. The one stoppers will do the journey in four hours with the others just a few minutes slower.. Hopefully by 2020, the new Class 800 and Class 801 trains will be running the semi-fast services in four hours twenty-three minutes. The fastest trains now take four hours and twenty minutes.
Two new operators are applying to run trains on the route.
GNER which is ultimately a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn is planning to use 12×9-car Pendelinos to provide an hourly ‘fast’ service in three hours forty-three minutes from December 2018. They have said, that they are aiming to tempt passengers to switch from plane to train.
The article quotes that rail has a 30% share of the London-Edinburgh market, where there are 42 flights a day. They want to push rail’s share up to 50%.
In Edinburgh – Train or Plane? I compared a journey up by easyJet from Stansted with a return in First on East Coast. Both journeys cost and took about the same time from Hackney to the centre of Edinburgh.
FirstGroup is aiming to run five trains each way between London and Edinburgh in four hours from December 2018, using new Hitachi AT300 electric trains with three stops en route at Morpeth, Newcastle and Stevenage. First has said it will be targeting passengers from the low-cost airlines.
I’ve only talked about Edinburgh in this piece, but a lot of the analysis will also apply to the West Coast Main Line, which has already hsad a dose of a competing service, in the share of First TransPennine to Manchester.
If these plans come to fruition, it would look like the slowest trains on the Edinburgh route will be the Virgin semi-fasts, which will take just a few minutes longer than the fastest trains today.
Out of curiosity, I looked at trains and flights for tomorrow (today is a Monday). I could get the 08:00 out of Kings Cross, which gets me into Edinburgh at 12:20, just in time for lunch, for a Second Class cost of £33.95 and a First Class cost of £65.95 (both costs third-off with Railcard), whereas the easyJet flight from Gatwick or Stansted costs around £60, but would probably mean leaving home well before five in the morning.
This leads me to think, that if all these train services to Edinburgh come to fruition, that the only losers will be the airlines, especially if the large increase in capacity on the route brings down train fares.
The Iron Lady Rides Again
I don’t think I saw Margaret Thatcher in a debate like last night’s, although I did hear her many times on the radio during Prime Minister’s Questions.
I was speaking to a Scot this morning, and we both felt that Nicola Sturgeon has a lot of Margaret Thatcher about her.
I’ll probably be sent to The Tower for treason or whatever the Scots do, for such a thought!
Mansion Tax To Pay For 1,000 Nurses In Scotland
This is the front page headline in The Times. It is subtitled.
Labour targets southern England to woo north.
These headlines are based on a policy statement by Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour Leader. The Times also says he didn’t clear it with Ed Miliband.
My house would probably not be worth enough to pay a mansion tax, although knowing politicians, they’d probably change the rules to make most houses in London and the South East pay the tax.
But I thought that the NHS in Scotland was devolved.
One thing I find, is that if I talk about the NHS to people in England and Scotland, those in places like London, Liverpool and East Anglia, are much more satisfied with prerformance than those north of the border.
The Rail Projects Keep Coming
I’ve just been reading the rail news sites like Modern Railways and Global Rail News and over the last few days some substantial projects have been announced.
The project that will affect me most is an upgrade to the Great Eastern Main Line.
It’s not any new features, but an upgrading of track, overhead wires and signalling. Network Rail say this.
As part of the upgrade, one of NR’s ‘high output’ machines will begin replacing ballast along the route to ensure the track bed is safe and well-drained. The machine is currently being used to upgrade the Great Western main line, and will move to the GEML in the New Year.
It will also upgrade one track at a time, so it’s unlikely there will be substantial blockades. Traditionally, this sort of work would have meant weekend closures and buses. So Network Rail seem to be doing sometime better.
Network Rail are also replacing the Scarborough Bridge on the Scarborough Branch Line. The work is described here and this is a paragraph.
The bridge, which was originally built in 1845 and then rebuilt in 1875, is now life-expired. Work will see the bridge decks and tracks replaced and a new walkway installed to improve safety for railway workers. The work is part of a £6 million investment by Network Rail.
So it’s only a small project, but I’m sure it’s important to a lot of travellers.
The extending of Chiltern’s network to Cowley has also been announced. I think we’ll see a lot of projects like this, where old lines are given something to do in the next couple of decades.
Network Rail has also announced a £200million project to do more work on the improvement of lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
As with the electrification across the North of England, electrification is another prime example of the failure of Central government to do the right thing to create infrastructure and fuel jobs, businesses and growth. This describes the scope of the work.
The companies will work with Network Rail to electrify the main line between the cities, complete route clearance works at Winchburgh Tunnel, infrastructure works at Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley stations and extend platforms at Croy, Falkirk High, Polmont and Linlithgow.
What will fast electric trains running between Scotland’s two major cities, do for the area? Wikipedia lists several benefits including this one.
Service frequencies between Edinburgh and Glasgow Queen Street increased from four trains per hour to six per hour, with the fastest journey time being reduced to 35 minutes. This would have resulted in a total of 13 trains per hour between the two cities across all routes;
Currently, services take from about 50 minutes to an hour and a quarter.
Global Rail News has announced that funding is in place to extend the Manchester Metro to the Trafford Centre.
An aside here is to look at the list of proposed changes and expansions to the Manchester Metrolink. Every council in the area seems to have its own pet ideas and surely this must be best argument for a peacemaker and decision taker in Manchester, like TfL are in London.
I wonder how many more of these projects will be announced before the General Election in May.
Thoughts On The Borders Railway
I’ve been looking at a page, which describes progress on the Borders Railway.
To my untrained eye, progress appears slow, but as I can’t find anybody saying it is on the Internet, I suspect I’m wide of the mark.
I did find some commentators sceptical about the railway, but unless someone drops a complete haggis, I suspect that the railway will be a success.
Just look what happened with the London Overground, which wasn’t a new railway, but the rebuilding of a zombie line, where the trains smelt like travelling urinals.
Near me, Transport for London took the old East London Railway, which had been part of the old Metropolitan Line and extended it with some new infrastructure to create the East London Line we have today.
They made two miscalculations with the East London Line and its cousin; the North London Line.
In the first place, they underestimated the passenger demand and they have been playing catch-up ever since, my lengthening trains and platforms.
And then, I don’t think they realised how much property prices would rise along the updated lines.
I also think that no-one has found a way to properly model, the novelty factor, which often gets someone to use a new railway or road in the first place.
I know the Scots are canny people and don’t exaggerate, but I would be very surprised if the costs and predictions for the Borders Railway weren’t very conservative, as they had to satisfy so many different politicians, companies and agencies.
East Londoners immediately liked the London Overground and used it, as they’d never seen anything like it. Clean smart trains running to time, even if some of the stations weren’t up to the standard of the trains, got them excited and they recommended it to their friends. Young people got a new way to get to that decent job a couple of boroughs away. New trains were so much more cool than red buses.
I have a feeling that the people of the Borders will embrace their new railway in the same way and in a year or two’s time, they will be clamouring for more trains and extension of the railway all the way to Carlisle.
So at a time when Scotland is probably getting more independence, the railways seem to be getting joined up again!
One final thought concerns the affect a successful Borders Railway may have on England. Will it give further impetus to the reopening of long-closed rail lines?
Is Virgin Atlantic Closing Little Red?
The Sunday Times is leading the Business section, with an article that is saying that Virgin Atlantic is closing Little Red.
I always thought it was an ambitious plan, especially as the airline doesn’t go to Glasgow. This might seem a mistake, but remember Virgin Trains go to Scotland’s biggest city, where probably most London-bound travellers live.
Incidentally, I have only heard of one person, who has used the airline to get to Scotland and they live near Heathrow.
But after my experience with flying easyJet to Edinburgh, where it took as long as the train, due to security delays, I just wonder if flying to Scotland now, is a second class option to many travellers. As an example, one of my Edinburgh friends, who frequently travels down to London, always seems to use the train.
So you have to have a good reason to fly, such as your company is paying and you get the reward points.
Security delays are obviously a problem at some airports and these could get worse, unless terrorism worries actually reduce our desire for air travel substantially.
But two other factors probably have more effect; Manchester Airport and the trains.
Traffic at Manchester Airport has risen by nearly twenty percent in the last few years and this has been substantially helped by better rail connectivity across the North and to Glasgow.
So why would a Glaswegian spend more money to fly to Heathrow, when he or she can do the total journey quicker, by taking a convenient brand-new First TransPennine train to Manchester Airport and getting his flight from there?
But the trains are so much better at journeys a couple of stops short of a full London to Scotland journey. And how many Scots who live in the Central belt want to go to places other than London like Birmingham, Peterborough or Milton Keynes?
The trains are getting better each year and there seems to be no sign of the pace of the improvement slowing. Station upgrades at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Peterborough and Birmingham will be completed and extra paths for more trains will be available, as alternative routes for freight trains become available. The real game-changer will happen at the end of this decade, when in-cab signalling becomes available, allowing the trains to increase maximum speeds from 125 mph to 140 mph.
Presently the fastest London Glasgow trains take four and a half hours, but the improvements could deliver a time around four hours.
As Virgin obviously have all the figures for both train and plane to Scotland, if they are closing Little Red, I suspect it was somewhat of a no-brainer.
The Borders Are Getting A Top Class Railway
The Borders Railway is starting to take shape and according to this article on Global Rail News, the first track has now been laid. This is the first couple of paragraphs.
The first section of track of the new 30-mile Borders Railway has been laid in Bowshank tunnel.
Although the Borders line is a single track railway, the 200-metre tunnel has double track which is part of a 6.4-kilometre dynamic passing loop. In the tunnel clearances are tight due to the requirement for passive provision for electrification. Hence the tunnel has slab track.
The interesting point is that the railway is being built so it can be electrified in the future.
Two Very Different Beds
I had two nights in Scotland and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was in the Premier Inn at Lauriston Place in Edinburgh.
I’ve stayed there before and although not the best placed, it was easy to get to from the station after we finally found a taxi.
But I wasn’t prepared for what I found, although the receptionist said that my top-floor-room might be a bit hot.
A Greeting From Two Fans
I’ve never been met by two fans as I entered a room.
It was hot and so I opened the window as far as I could. But in the morning, this is what I read on my hygrometer/thermometer.
This Is Just Too Hot!
It is the worst case I’ve found of top-floor-overheating I’ve found.
It was much worst than the room, that I’d suffered in Iceland.
My second bed was on the Caledonian Sleeper. I took this picture lying in the comfortable enough bed.
Looking Around My Cabin
When I got up it was nineteen degrees on the train, with a very pleasant humidity of 26%.
Strangely the quality of the sleep on both nights was about the same, but I have felt a lot better today, than I did yesterday.
The interesting thing though was that the single-occupancy bed on the Sleeper was cheaper than the night in Edinburgh.
Searching For The Kelpies
On my visit to the Commonwealth Games, I had to travel back to Glasgow, so I thought I’d go via Falkirk and see the Kelpies. On looking it up before I left London, I found that the web site was rather vague This is what it said.
From Edinburgh to Falkirk High (25 minutes) or Falkirk Grahamston (35 minutes)
From Glasgow Queen Street to Falkirk High (20 minutes) or Falkirk Grahamston (50 minutes)
From Stirling to Falkirk Grahamston (15 minutes)
From London direct to Falkirk Grahamston (5 hours) or change at Edinburgh or Glasgow
There are also services to Polmont Station, Larbert Station and Camelon Station.
It mentions several stations but which one is the nearest?
On the way up Princes Street, I got talking to a young lady and by chance, she said she’d been and had taken the train to Falkirk Grahamston station and then walked.
I though I’d check in the Tourist Office at Waverley Station and they said to go to Falkirk High station.
As I’d got one vote for each Falkirk station, I decided to ask a Scotrail Customer Service Agent. He gave me exactly the same story as the young lady, so I went to Falkirk Grahamston.
I took these pictures at Falkirk.
You will notice that none show any information on how to get to the Kelpies. One does show a distant picture of the Kelpies (?) from the train as I approached.
So in the end I walked back to the station and got another train to Glasgow.
Give Falkirk this, they have got the station name in Gaelic and two good maps, even if neither shows the Kelpies or the Falkirk Wheel.
The Anonymous Widower 