First train day of the year

I’m in good time at Lowdham station. Last time, it took me ages to work out my requirements on the only ticket machine and it still wouldn’t give me a railcard deduction on my return journey. This time the screens are completely blank. As there is no sign of life, I ring the adjacent help point. I am directed to “Just board the train and tell the conductor the machine is not working”. By the time we reach Nottingham, where I change for Leicester, the conductor has not put in an appearance, so I go to find him. “Go out of the station and buy a ticket at the ticket office”, he says, but I’ll miss my connection if I do that. “I’ll just see if I’ve got a charge on my ticket machine, then”, which unsurprisingly, he has. I nice relaxing start to my day out, then. I’m only here for a bit of unhurried and unworried gentle escapism, after all. Leicester station is as busy as usual. Loads of purposeful business people wait for the London trains. Many are engaged in earnest conversations via their headsets, “The only thing I’d say is two things….”, is a noticeably loud offering that makes me smile. The train back from Leicester is late leaving and signal-checked all the way into Nottingham, by which time I’ve missed the Lowdham train by three minutes and have an hour’s wait, instead. Not the most straightforward of journeys but I didn’t care a bit. I had enjoyed a few hours of mindlessness on Leicester station and even got quite excited when Class 60 No. 60028, which I had not seen before, crept out of the depot before reversing back in and onto another siding. Some new Hitachi Aurora sets were in service with others being tested out. There was no sign of the new Class 99s, unfortunately, but I can wait. In fact, I’m already looking forward to trying again before long. Perhaps they’ll have fixed their platform ticket machine by then, as well. 

   

GCR Winter Steam Gala January 2026

The trains were solid on the Saturday of the gala, which was the best of the 4 days, weatherwise. With 3 visiting engines and regular freight movements, including the oil tanks and the wind cutter set, it was the usual rapid action that we have come to associate with GCR gala days. The only stretch of double track main line on any heritage railway in the country really is the GCR’s own distinctive USP.

Shed Bash

We didn’t refer to it like that in the old days, though it has become spotters’ common parlance since those times. I don’t think we did, anyway. Mists of time, etc. The forecast was for light cloud, which actually turned out to be thoroughly overcast, dark and dismal all day. Additionally, that was an all-day in which whatever daylight could be mustered for photos ended shortly after four. Undetered, I set out on my intended circular tour.

Realtime Trains suggested a light engine movement to Worksop that I could photograph in the station, so I timed my departure accordingly. As I was in good time, I chose instead to go straight to Tesco’s car park where, round the back of the superstore, you get the best view of whatever is being parked outside the Swietelsky maintenance depot. Currently, it is playing host to the first ten Class 93 Stadler-built tri-mode locomotives [electric, diesel and battery] manufactured in and shipped from Spain, whilst they undergo tests on the national network.

The whole concept of bunking round the sheds like we once did is consigned to the dim and distant past. Motive power depots today are guarded fortresses, surrounded by unsightly and off-putting palisade fencing. Spotters are left with two alternatives – lurking near the main gates in the hope of a glimpse of something, or locating a nearby spot where you can get a partial view of the facility. In Worksop, this means round the back of Tesco’s.

I’m immediately joined by a bloke in his car who draws up next to mine. It turns out he is a former employee at the depot and has even been invited to witness a naming ceremony for two diesel shunters this very afternoon. I’m encouraged to see that there are 5 Class 93s present and just visible through the barrier of trees, which as the gentleman points out, are rather more of a problem in summer.

The Class 37 from Derby is now set for an early arrival so I stay put to take my photo of No. 37607 from the same place, as it does a zig-zag approach on the up line, reverses onto the down line at the station and then reverses again to access Worksop Down Yard and the entrance to the sheds, where a high-vis clad operative is waiting to switch the points by hand. We are joined in time to see the action by another two like-minded blokes who are on more of a marathon day trip taking in Leeds Midland Road, which they have already been to, then on to Toton, which is where I’m heading next, before taking in Derby and Burton, at least, before the light fades on them completely.

There they are again on the bank at Toton. The bank is made of boulder clay and it has been raining a lot recently. The paths are all a sticky quagmire and my shoes and the legs of my tri-pod are already decorated with the red mud. My old telescope has a loose eyepiece and I have difficulty focussing it at all, but it’s still useful when it decides to play ball, because Toton depot is some way away over the intervening tracks and sidings. My companions are relying on binoculars and I’m able to help them with a trio of otherwise indecipherable, stored Class 60s.

I complete my round trip after a meal deal at the nearby Morrisons supermarket with a nose into Colwick’s depot on the other side of Nottingham. The light engine movement I’d hoped to intercept on the way at Netherfield had gone past by the time I’d extricated myself from a snarl-up on Main Street. I’d noticed by then that there was no suitable parking space available anywhere near the station, anyway, so that would have been a tricky one to reach in the first place. The depot entrance at Colwick is in an unwelcoming and unsurfaced off-road car park with plenty of large pot holes and puddles, where I stayed long enough to note the two long-term stored locos that were visible, Class 56 No. 56087 and Class 60 No. 60057. Then I went home to sponge the clay off my footwear with a bucket full of warm water.         

Charing Cross

I had never set foot in Charing Cross station, and so having just missed a bus to King’s Cross on the Strand, we took a few minutes to have look round. The gates and cobbled forecourt still provide access from the main road. The imposing Charing Cross Hotel dates from 1865, a year after the station itself was opened by the South Eastern Railway. The ground floor is now a row of retail outlets. In 1986, a vast new complex, Embankment Place, was erected over the roof and the tracks in the approach to Hungerford Bridge. Southeastern now operate the suburban services that head over the river towards Kent and Sussex.

   

Leicester, by train

Prompted by the Leicester and East Midlands Open Art Exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery and the added attraction of a possible sneak preview of 4 new Class 99s in their shiny new depot, we had a day out in Leicester. The Stadler-built 99s were wrapped up tight in their purpose-built shed with the doors firmly shut, so no easy cops for me there. The art display, however, was many and varied with a few interesting items spread over two large gallery spaces. The only railway-related offering was Sidney Jordon’s Ben’s Hut, a watercolour on paper, which was still available, it seems, at a modest £60. It shows a Midland Railway Johnson Class 2F 0-6-0, No. 52898, about to pass a platelayer’s hut and a wayside crossing, once Ben gets out of the way. I thought it was a nice scene, but without any stand out features that might have attracted any of the star prizes, from a technical point of view. The loco’s wheels look a little wobbly, for a start. The museum is being done up at present, though the dinosaur section is open and reminded me of the local importance of various significant finds within the Midlands fossil record.

We wandered off down New Walk and found the absolutely excellent Bread and Honey café nearby, for lunch. Leicester is steeped in history, whether it’s the Guildhall, the markets, the cathedral with its Richard III connections, or as the home of the tourism pioneer, Thomas Cook, remembered in a statue outside the station, and more recently, the near miraculous 2015/6 Premiership win of Leicester City by ten clear points. I’ll have to come again when the doors are open, though, to get my 99s.   

   

Lincoln in the rain

What to do on a thoroughly wet day? We went to the Usher Gallery in Lincoln to see Richard Ansett’s Liminal Presence display, subtitled A Street Photography Experiment. Richard went around Lincoln city centre on a summer’s day with an accomplice holding a bright light on a pole to counteract back lit imaging. He took pictures of city dwellers going about their business in an approach not unlike that of Martin Parr and quite spontaneous in terms of his subject matter and their responses - or lack of them. It was described as an immersive experience capturing a moment in time and all wrapped up on the day. The resulting display was a series of bright, ceiling to floor splashes of colour showing some purposeful shoppers going about their business contrasting with others with just hours to fill. Hardly mind-blowing stuff but mildly entertaining all the same.

Newark Castle’s station Italian restaurant is open again under another name, which is encouraging and the replacement station totems in Midland Region maroon reminded me that the MR reached Newark before the GNR, hence this historically significant and architecturally notable building.

I stopped rather abruptly on my way into Waterstones to shake the rain off the umbrella. The lady behind me bumped into my arm and dropped her white cardigan into a mucky puddle just outside the shop. “Oh dear”, I exclaimed as I turned to see what had happened. “No worries”, she said with a smile as she stooped to pick it up. “Good job its not a white one”, I quipped, but her smile quickly turned to a glower. Maybe not, big mouth, I thought, but it was too late.

The train to Lincoln had been facemask busy with Port Vale supporters heading to the match at Sincil Bank. On the way home, it was full of revellers heading for a good night out in Nottingham. It was only half past three, though the boozing had begun on the platform and continued on the train, which perhaps says as much about pub prices in the city as anything else.

 

 

Congleton station

I have a copy of the splendid book, Britain’s 100 Best Railway Stations alongside me. Yesterday, I dropped in on Congleton station in Cheshire, on the main line between Stafford and Manchester Piccadilly, via Stoke on Trent. To say that it was a disappointment was an understatement, though admittedly, it was raining, which didn’t help. It made me think that I should write a book about Britain’s 100 worst railway stations. In my admittedly limited experience, as we did not stay long, Congleton would certainly be up there.

Up the hill and quite a way out from the centre of town, the station was opened by the North Staffordshire Railway in 1848. In 1966, the original station buildings were demolished and rebuilt when modernisation and electrification of the West Coast Main Line took place. The unimaginative, flat roof, Brutalist architecture from the period has become so tired and faded in the intervening years, and north west England certainly got it bad. Reports show that it had won regional best kept station awards in the 80s, but more recently it has been highlighted as having suffered from vandalism.

I couldn’t get an adequate picture of the frontage as it was blocked off by a string of Network Rail vans, parked up for the weekend. There was no obvious dropping off zone, so to avoid forecourt parking charges, I had to cross a cinder path and make use of an extensive lay-by next to the approach road. How dismal is all this, I thought. Does it really have to be like this?