There and back again — by “any permitted” route

If there is one fea­ture of the post-privatisation rail­way that I love least, it may well be the “Rail Replace­ment Bus Ser­vice”.  Just about bear­able on a rural line, where the bus some­times winds through leafy lanes and pic­tur­esque vil­lages, but intol­er­able on a main line car­ry­ing thou­sands of pas­sen­gers, to be shov­elled like cattle into ancient road coaches after queuing in a sta­tion car park, hav­ing one’s legit­im­ate lug­gage tut-tutted over and slung under­neath, and then ground down some dull A road to the next open station.

So, hav­ing booked for two con­certs in Lon­don on a Sat­urday night (qv) it was with hor­ror that I found that the East Coast Main Line was closed between Hunt­ing­don and Hert­ford all week­end, with an hour long bus-journey to bridge the gap. Altern­at­ively one could change half a dozen times and go via Cambridge.

For­tu­nately, if one books to “Lon­don Sta­tions” instead of Kings X, the ticked comes marked as valid on “Any Per­mit­ted” route.  I reckoned if we could do that with no more than one change, it would be worth the extra time (though still much shorter than the options offered on the ECML by National Express).

So, York to Shef­field by Cross Coun­try — OK and on time thanks to the ludicrously long sta­tion times enjoyed at Don­caster and after arrival at Shef­field. Shef­field to Lon­don St Pan­cras by East Mid­land trains.  This is another piddly short replace­ment for a 125 and so by Leicester was full and stand­ing all down the centre aisles of every car­riage.  But at least it was on time.

On Sunday, for the return, Net­work Rail advised that St Pan­cras to Shef­field was going to take forever, for some reason, and that we should travel Euston to Manchester Pic­ca­dilly and then Trans Pen­nine to York. The Pen­dolino was fast, not too full, and com­fort­able, though why any­one thought hori­zontal arrow slits for win­dows was a good idea I’m not sure (per­haps they keep them small in Italy cos its sun­nier).  We were doing well until over­run­ning engin­eer­ing works sent us round via Northamp­ton. The ten minute late arrival at Manchester meant we missed our con­nec­tion. We saw it leave look­ing like some­thing out of Mum­bai in the rush-hour, though without the pas­sen­gers hanging on the out­side.  Our Liverpool-Scarborough Trans Pen­nine was fine.  

Exten­ded jour­ney times, but OK — and no hot over­crowded smelly buses.