Following on from last year's West Midlands Day Ranger trip, Andy and I undertook the East Midlands version on this lovely early spring day. We found a real lack of services and equally poor connections meaning that our plans to travel had to be curtailed and considerably modified at times. Whether this was due to the COVID induced reduction of services or just a general lack of joined-up planning we were not at all sure. Most trains ran to time apart from one crucial service that caused a significant delay on our return-to-base journey.
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Andy and I used our Two Together discount to reduce the cost of the Day Ranger tickets thus limiting the start time validity to 09.30 rather than 09.00 for the non-discounted ticket. In order to get away before that time, we purchased a couple of off-peak returns (actually cheaper than a pair of singles!) from Nuneaton to Hinkley thus giving us a post 09.30 start time. We travelled from Nuneaton to Leicester aboard a lightly loaded CrossCountry Class 170. |
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After an interesting wait at Leicester observing some locomotive movements in and out of UKRL's extensive depot at the site of the former diesel depot to the north of the station, we travelled with EMR to Nottingham. Again, the train was lightly loaded which was to become a feature of most journeys taken on this day reinforcing that the railways are far from returning to normal after COVID. |
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Andy and I had intended to head to the eastern extremity of the Day Ranger area at Lincoln but realising that we would then be isolated there for a couple of hours with no returning trains we decided to take this journey to Newark Castle and then immediately retrace our steps. For Andy, this was virgin track so he was pleased to tick this route off! |
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On arrival at Newark station, Andy and I simply changed platforms by walking over the level crossing. After a short wait, the same unit that we had travelled in on arrived back again after crossing over to the east of the station. We then took this unit again all the way to its destination a Crewe cutting a swathe all the way through the north Midlands from east to west. |
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After enjoying an hour or so at Crewe with it's usual intense railway activity we retraced our steps a little as far as Stoke-on-Trent courtesy of London NorthWestern. Whilst the motive power has changed at Crewe it remains, in my mind at least, the only place that evokes the same railway atmosphere and the same kind of fuzzy head that I remember from my youth if you know what I mean! |
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This was the leg of the journey where it all started to go wrong! We were planning to get to Derby in time to catch a connecting service to Tamworth. However, this incoming service was heavily delayed stemming from its previous inbound journey to Crewe. We did think as both our train and the connecting service were operated by CrossCountry that there might have been a little discussion and joined-up thinking meaning that the two could still connect. However, on entering Derby our planned train to Tamworth passed us in the other direction. Would this have happened in BR days; I'm not so sure that it would have? |
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This was not part of the plan that Andy and I had to get back to Nuneaton. If it had not been for a late-running train we would have got to Tamworth for a quick dash down the Trent Valley route. Instead, we had to partially retrace our steps from earlier in the morning going back via Leicester. |
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The final leg of our interesting East Midlands Day Ranger found an exact reversal of our first journey of the morning from Leicester to Nuneaton. If Crosscountry had done better a little earlier in the day we would have returned via the Trent Valley route from Tamworth but the best of plans and all that! |