Tuesday 28th October 2025 2025's been a fairly quiet year for new station openings - only Newsham and Blyth Bebside on the Northumberland line have been unwrapped for passengers - but one of the biggest investments in new station infrastructure, since the arrival of Brent Cross West two years ago, opened its gateline to passengers... Continue Reading →
Saturday 11th January 2025 Welcome to a new blog series featuring towns and cities around Britain which, by a quirk of history, are blessed with having two railway stations on different lines serving completely different destinations. To kick things off I've been to Hertford and had a look at that town's contrasting pair of stations:... Continue Reading →
Saturday 16th November 2024 As the Office of Rail & Road is soon to announce updated numbers of passengers using every railway station in Britain for the year ended March 2024, this monthly blog series counting down the previous year's top ten busiest stations finally reaches number 1 - which, for the first time, is... Continue Reading →
Saturday 18th May 2024 It's a measure of the impact of the Elizabeth line on London's public transport that yet another station that sees purple trains calling has a place in the Top 10 chart of Britain's busiest railway stations. Stratford appears at sixth place having clocked up 44,136,784 passenger entries and exits in the... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 19th December 2023 Welcome back to my occasional blog series which fact checks the veracity of headline grabbing negative claims about buses and trains so beloved of modern main stream and social media channels. This time I'm investigating a story that appeared across most newspapers back in August reporting a new car park had... Continue Reading →
Thursday 10th August 2023 I last did the Wherryman Way walk between Great Yarmouth and Berney Arms in 2020 and with a lovely sunny day forecast a few weeks back decided to do a repeat visit, this time with my brother Jonathan. It's a five mile walk along the banks of the River Yare and... Continue Reading →
This month's pot pourri of observational miscellany from recent travels. Not First Greater Anglia has invested in an impressive new fleet of trains including the rather nice Class 745 which offer first class seats on the Norwich to Liverpool Street service. A problem arises when one of these trains is unavailable and substituted by one... Continue Reading →
Sunday 5th June 2022 Over the last few weeks I’ve been keeping notes of the state of catering for passengers travelling first class on trains. Here’s my report complete with a complimentary coffee, biscuits and packet of sea salt flavoured crisps. It’s only long distance ‘inter-city’ train operators who get involved in on board catering... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 14th December 2021 The winter rail timetable began on Sunday incorporating LNER's new once a day direct service between Middlesbrough and London; a much improved timetable from GWR on the Severn Beach branch; a new direct hourly shuttle service linking Crosskeys with Newport in South Wales; and the return of Gatwick Express branded trains... Continue Reading →
Sunday 5th September 2021 I visited Britain's northernmost bus stop in July 2018. It's on Unst, the furthest north island in the Shetland archipelago, in the small hamlet of Valsgarth. It was a great trip. I turned my attention southwards in 2019 and visited Lizard Point in August that year to check out Britain's most... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 8th December 2020 Greater Anglia’s fleet of 33 five-car Bombardier Class 720 ‘Aventra’ trains have finally entered service after many months of delays caused by software issues and more recently due to Covid. The original train order, placed with Bombardier in September 2016 (you have to be patient in the world of new train... Continue Reading →
Friday 18th September 2020 Wherryman's Way is an eight-and-a-half-mile footpath along the north side of the River Yare between Great Yarmouth and Reedham. Half way along the River Waveney joins - at Berney Arms, famed for its no-road-access-isolated station, closed pub and disused windmill. I'd planned to walk from Great Yarmouth to Berney Arms back... Continue Reading →
Monday 24th February 2020 The rail line between Reedham and Great Yarmouth, on what's known as the Wherry Lines, closed back in October 2018 to allow for upgrade work on track, level crossings and signalling. Sixteen months later it's good to see the line has reopened today and trains are once again calling at the... Continue Reading →
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Abellio run Greater Anglia committed to introducing a completely new train fleet of 1,043 carriages across its network in its successful nine year franchise bid which began in 2016. First of these into service came Stadler built FLIRT Class 755 bi-mode trains introduced on the Wherry Lines last July. These were... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 30th July 2019 Seven months into the year and I'm reviewing the seventh new class of train to be introduced in 2019 - that's not bad going; a brand new different fleet into service on average once a month (I know the Class 230, formerly known as 'D Train' is not a brand new... Continue Reading →
Friday 26th July 2019 I incorporated Wednesday's ride on Buckland Buses' splendid 1929 Dennis on route 250 between Aldeburgh and Thropeness into an enjoyable couple of days saunter around the lovely countryside in south Suffolk. On Tuesday morning I caught the stopping train to Ipswich out of Liverpool Street at 11:04 as far as Marks... Continue Reading →
Friday 14th June 2019 Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? At a time when airports should be doing all they can to enhance their environmental credentials by encouraging passengers to use public transport you'd think a new bus route introduced in the dead of night entirely at the commercial risk of a bus company... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 4th June 2019 Sometimes it's instructive to turn up at the launch of a new rail station a day late. Opening ceremonies can be tedious affairs with dignitaries descending the scene, wooden speeches, congratulatory words, smiles all round for the cameras, pats on backs, then back to their offices. The second day often has... Continue Reading →
Tuesday 21st May 2019 First improvement in the May 2019 rail timetable I experienced yesterday on my tour around was from my own local station, Hassocks where our disjointed two an hour trains to the Thameslink Core stations and on to Bedford or Cambridge (one an hour to each but to a 40/20 pattern) have... Continue Reading →
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