Grand Day Out

With my annual train season ticket I get some free travel tickets and I decided to use one of them today to go and do some spotting in London. So by 8.30 I was a Clapham Junction. Meet up with a guy from South Wales that I'd met before at Eastleigh just a couple of weeks ago. Had a good chat with him before moving on. There was a lot I wanted to do today. Trafalgar Square for a short while to get any buses passing and to see the heritage services that still operate Routemasters. Then off to Marylebone for the train to Ruislip. Caught the bendy bus up there, Slow ride but nice to sit and watch the world go by. Marylebone is the one London terminus station that I rarely visit. So got a load of new numbers and my first ride on a Chiltern Train. Quite nice. Quite comfortable but could do with on train announcements to say what the next stop was. Passed the new Wembly Stadium. Looks good.

Quick visit to Northolt to see the biz jets (of which there was 5). Then tube done to Greenford to do the First Great Western branch line into Paddington. Shocked at Greenford that there were still semaphore signals. Passing Acton Main Line station I noticed that there were some other spotters there. So I got off the train and so glad I did. Behind the station is the freight lines and it was quite busy with locos and wagon plus all the stuff coming out of Paddington. So glad I discovered this little gem. I can see me visiting here in the future. There aren't many trains that stop here and seeing that Action is served by no less than 7 stations this one is reasonable quite. With long platforms us spotters can stand down the end of the platform and not get disturbed by non-spotters.

Wanted to do the Gospel Oak to Barking branch and see the DMU’s which never go anywhere else but no time. Off to London City Airport for the tea time rush. Went via North London Line. Sue bought me a DVD of the drivers eye view of this line for my last birthday so I was good to travel on it. Quick change at Straford. Thought I’d take a few piccies of the buses whilst I was here. Got kicked out of the bus station as a guy there claimed that I needed a permit to take pictures there. Oh well it was only going to be a two min stop anyway.

London City Airport is great. Only visited here once before just after it opened and its improved a lot. Just past the terminal building is a little open area with a few seats where you can sit and look across the water and see everything landing/ and taking off. The other side is a huge Travelodge. Must stay at that one some time. Quite busy at the airport, so much so that I lost track of time a bit and it was soon time to head for home.

Took Docklands Light Railway to Bank station. As these trains are driverless there are seats right at the front of the trains and I grabbed one of these and dreamed of being a train driver. Very bumpy ride on the DLR. You do get thrown about quite a bit at some points on the route. Quick ride on the Waterloo and City Line (my first time on this line for years) and back at Waterloo and home. Great day out.

Good Things Today

1. Free train trip to London
2. Action Main Line Station.
3. London City Airport
4. Pretending to be a train driver on the DLR

Manchester and spuds

Sue had warned me that I really shouldn’t blog too much about Dopey Doris, as it would make it look like I was obsessed with her. So all I say is that I was served by her on Thursday but finally managed to avoid her on Friday, but was served by someone equally as Dopey.

Had a good day Saturday. Went to up Manchester on the train. Did a quick bit of spotting at Manchester Piccadilly train station before heading out to the airport. There was another guy there who warned me that they were being a bit tight on security and he had to sign in as a visitor. Even had a visitors ID badge. Thanking him, I took a few train photos before heading off to the airport.

There used to be a couple of small portacabins on top of Terminal 1 car park at Manchester airport. One was a spotters shop selling anything from photos, books to radios and telescopes. The other was a snack bar. Looking forward to both I found to my horror that they had both gone. There are re-doing the surface of the car park. I do hope that the portacabins will return. Good afternoons spotting before return to the city centre to photograph more trains, the trams and the odd Buses. Now do I put the tram pictures in my train gallery (as they do run on rails) or in the bus section (as they do really operate more like buses). However I do collect tram numbers as they are listed in my train spotting books, so they are trains. But who would be more interested in seeing pictures of them, the train people or the bus people? Oh the decisions.

Today was a day in the garden after the coffee trip that Sue mentions in her blog. I’ve planted the spuds. Taken up more room that I had hoped, In my grand plan I was going to go for first early potatoes, and so try to get in some more veg in the plot they were in after they had been harvested. However, Sue wanted baking spuds, so I’ve gone for main crop. Meaning no extra veg, and now they have taken up half of another plot. Some serious re-thinking here I guess.