The Anonymous Widower

A Bridge Strike at Kings Langley

On Friday, I went to Liverpool, by train from Euston. Some idiot, then proceeds to get his truck stuck under railway at Kings Langley, which meant that we were delayed by about 30 minutes.  It wasn’t as dramatic as the report, but they did have to let the truck tyres down and then drag it out.

It didn’t actually matter to me, as I had six hours to do a couple of hours work, but the companions at my table, had an urgent appointment to do some publicity over a concert I think.

I do hope Network Rail are claiming off the idiot’s insurance policy, as they should have known the height of their truck.  I know from seeing the statistics, that bridge strikes are one of the more common causes of delay on the railways.

September 11, 2011 Posted by | News, Transport/Travel | , | Leave a comment

London’s Sixth Airport

London has five airports that use the name.

  • Gatwick – I hate Gatwick with a vengeance, as I’ve never had a pleasureable experience in the airport.
  • Heathrow – I want to avoid Heathrow, as last time I arrived I was in a wheelchair.
  • Stansted – I have many pleasant memories and it’s very easy for me to get to.
  • Luton – It’s a nightmare by car, but then I can’t drive and it’s an easy train drive.
  • City – I’ve never used it, but it’s easy to get to by bus to Bank and then the Docklands Light Railway.

The title of this post was because a friend has to go to the Isle of Man a lot and I wondered why he went from Liverpool. Looking at prices, I would assume it’s cost, as there seem to be lots of flights from Liverpool to the Isle of Man at just under £40.  From London City, the prices seem much higher.

So how would you get to Liverpool Airport from London.  Virgin will do it with one change at somewhere like Crewe in about two and a half hours for £35 from Euston. With me that would be about £80 for the trip.  A train leaves Euston about every half-hour that connects, so you can judge the journey fairly fine.

So on this basis, is Liverpool an alternative airport for those passengers going from London to the Isle of Man and other places served by the airport?

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , | 5 Comments

Pendolino Sway

I felt a bit queasy going back and had difficulty walking down the train to the toilet.

But I’m OK this morning, so I guess I was just a bit tired and it was all  due to the tilting and swaying of the Pendolino.

April 3, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , | 2 Comments

In State in First Class

There’s just me in First Class on this late Virgin train. 

But do I care? Of course not, as I can really spread out.

Incidentally, Standard Class up to Liverpool and First Class back, cost just under £46 in total.

So I can’t complain.

March 17, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | 1 Comment

What Is The Best Time To Buy Train Tickets?

On the 3rd of February, I’m going up to York to see my old boss.  The idea was to take the 10:00 from King’s Cross and then take the  19:35 back home after a meal and a chat.

So booking the ticket shouldn’t have been too difficult, especially as I tried to book the ticket on the 18th of January, sixteen days before travel.

I tried several times to book direct on the East Coast web site, but for some reason I couldn’t get an acceptable fare. The day before, I hadn’t had any problems and was rather surprised.

I should also say that I don’t like booking through agents and always prefer to deal with the company itself.  It all stems from an incident many years ago, when I was going round the United States and had booked on British Airways to fly to New York and then two days later on a direct flight in Continental from Boston to Houston.  The ticket agent at BA had told me that I would have to confirm the second flight in New York, as it was the only direct flight of the day and could be fully booked. As instructed I went into a travel agent in New York,  and was told that BA had made a mistake and booked me on a non-existent flight.  But no matter, he could book me by Atlanta on Delta.

But it didn’t just go by Atlanta, but virtually every other city in the eastern part of the United States.  I ended up in Houston, as a piece of chewed string at three in the morning.  But the travel agent had got his commission!

A few days later I flew Continental to Los Angeles.  I asked about the changed flight and the gate staff checked and found that the flight from Boston had run as normal and for my trouble they upgraded me to First.

So after the unsuccessful attempts to buy on East Coast, I looked at Grand Central, who also run trains on the route.  For the times, I wanted to travel, they were actually offering me tickets on East Coast.  So in the end I turned to the TrainLine and booked tickets at £24.10 up and £18.80 down, which was an acceptable price. I did pay a booking fee of £1.00 and a credit card fee of £3.50 on top, which I always find unacceptable.  I’m pretty certain, that East Coast don’t add miscellaneous charges. I also didn’t like the attitude of the TrainLine web site, which seemed to expect me to sign up to all sorts of dubious spam-producing loyalty offers.  In my view there is only one decent loyalty scheme on UK trains and that is Virgin’s, where if you enter your Virgin Flying Club number, you get a few extra points. Totally painless and they don’t spam.

Imagine my surprise though when on the next day, I tried out of curiosity to see what I would be charged on East Coast.  I could go up for £21.45 and down for £16.75 on the same trains, as I’d booked the previous day.

So if I’d waited 24 hours, I’d have saved £9.20.  Not a great deal of money, but I don’t like being ripped off by agents.

So why had I been unable to book direct on the 18th of January?

The obvious ones are.

  1. A fault on my computer.
  2. A bug on the East Coast web site. 
  3. Too many people trying to book overloading the web site.

I could also be paranoid and might suggest that the East Coast web site, was being deliberately overloaded by person or persons unknown.  I should say that a friend was also trying to book an Edinburgh London ticket at about the same time and she had similar problems to those I had of being unable to buy a ticket at a sensible price.

Since then, I’ve been looking at the East Coast web site and seeing what I would pay for the two tickets. Prices are as follows.

  • 20-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 21-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 22-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 23-January £21.45/£16.75
  • 24-January £25.85/£16.75
  • 25-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 26-January £39.15/£32.50
  • 27-January £28.35/£24.45
  • 28-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 29-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 30-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 31-January £25.85/£21.45
  • 1-February £25.85/£21.45
  • 2-February £25.85/£21.45
  • 3-February £57.80/£57.80

This simple example is showing that booking about two weeks before should give one of the best prices.  I shall continue to add more data to this table, to get a more definitive answer.

But whatever you do book direct! And judging by the last figure, when I attempted to book on the day of travel, the last minute option is not on, although I think that if I’d booked in the evening of the 2nd, I’d have got a better price!

Incidentally, when I went to Cambridge on Tuesday, I tried to book a ticket online at First Capital Connect.  They referred me to the TrainLine.  So I bought the ticket at the station.

January 27, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | 2 Comments

A Day in the Second City

To me, Liverpool is England’s second city, despite the claims of Birmingham and Manchester, which are pretty weak really.

If I was to show you pictures of Birmingham or Manchester cathedrals,  would you recognise them? Probably not, but most people know both of Liverpool’s two iconic and world-class ones; Anglican and Catholic.

Liverpool too, has a compact centre behind the world famous waterfront which together make up the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Liverpool also has some of the best collections of art in the UK outside London.

Then too, we all know musicians, actors and comedians from Liverpool, but lists of those from Manchester and Birmingham are noted for being rather short. The latter may have produced Tony Hancock, but I can’t name a second comedian for Birmingham. A lot of people think that Beryl Reid was from the city, but she was born in Hereford.

I’d actually sold the tool-kit for an XJ-S on eBay to someone in the city, who is restoring one of these classic Jaguars and as I always like an excuse to visit, I used the proceeds to deliver them personally.

So at 10:07 yesterday morning, I boarded the Virgin express for the city. A few minutes over two hours later I was in Lime Street Station. I’m a great believer in what I would call destination stations, where you could go to meet a friend, client or business colleague and have a meeting or a meal. St. Pancras is obviously that type of station, Euston and Edinburgh are definitely not and Kings Cross is getting there fast.  In a couple of years, Lime Street will be a place to visit in its own right, especially, as it is opposite one of England’s greatest buildings, St. George’s Hall. Pevsner rated that building one of the finest neo-Grecian buildings in the world.

So the evidence that Liverpool is the second city is overwhelming and now that Virgin Trains have a very good service from London, I’d add it to the must-see list for any visitor to the UK.

I’d first arrived in Liverpool with a tatty cardboard suitcase containing my clothes and a few books in 1965 to start my course in Control Engineering at Liverpool University.  Then the station was grimy and dirty and as the train crawled into the station after a four hour journey from London, I did wonder what I’d let myself in for. But in a way it started a love affair that has lasted nearly fifty years.

I should also say, that I had been given an unconditional offer by the University of a place, so I’d never even had a visit or an interview.  In those days you either accepted those offers immediately or you might lose them.

January 7, 2011 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Travelling to the Ricoh at Coventry

Radio 5 this morning, is headlining a story that there is a bug in the iPhone. What do they think?  I’ve been writing software for nearly 50 years and if you show me a man, who says he’s got a bug-free program, I’ll show you a liar.

To tell my story of yesterday, I send an e-mail entitled “Fix the iPhone, How About Fixing Coventry First”

I went to Coventry to see Ipswich play.  As I can’t drive because of my strokes, I took the excellent train from Euston.  However, there were no buses running from the city centre to the Ricoh Arena. Coventry was like a morgue too, with few restaurants and shops busy.  In the end two kind Coventry fans took me to the stadium, but the taxi back cost more than my lunch and almost as much as a one way ticket on the train. No wonder a only a small crowd turned up to the match.

Surely, if cities like Coventry want to attract visitors, they should put in public transport that works.  I suspect though that they’re all still in bed, as the Christmas iPhones don’t work. 

I tweeted the whole journey on my elderly Nokia 6310i, that has no bugs and an alarm that works.

After I’ve posted this, I’ll be sending copies to disinterested parties, who don’t care. I don’t anymore, as I won’t go to Coventry again to see football, without a cast-iron guarantee that buses are running to the Arena from the Station.

January 2, 2011 Posted by | Sport, Transport/Travel | , , , , | 3 Comments

    Next Entries »