Interview with Sir Alan

Took the day off today to go to London. Spent the day doing some train spotting, having a good day. But the main reason for my trip to London was that I had a interview booked with Sir Alan. No, I’m not going on the apprentice, its not that Sir Alan, but Sir Alan Greengross who is chairman of the South West Trains Passenger Panel. Been trying to get on the panel for a while. Would be so interesting to see their work and get to know the workings of a train company better. And of course to try to get South West Trains to give me a better service. Sir Alan seemed a really nice chap. Friendly and passionate about his work. I just hope that I did enough to impress him. He seemed keen especially when I talked about websites, seemed like the passenger panel might want one.

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

going senile?

Football again today with the visit of Swnasea. Who are pushing for a play off place. Again travelled by train and again went from the Down line into Platform 1 at Brockenhurst, which got me so excited last week. As this the engineering work at Basingstoke is due to finish this weekend, and the trains back to normal next week, I don’t think that this routing will be repeated soon.

You may have noticed that I’m avoiding talking about the match. Well the first 75 mins were great, going 2-0 up. It really shut yup those Swansea fans. Then they scored two and we ended up being the quite ones. OK a draw is better than most of us really expected before the match if we were going to be totally honest. Let’s just hope that we already have enough points to stay up.

I did do one worrying thing on the way home. After football Sue always picks me up from the airport station car park. As they train I catch doesn’t normally stop at Eastleigh. However, luckily the train I was on did stop at Eastleigh. You see I just totally forgot to get off at the airport station. As we were pulling out I looked across and could see Sue in the car in the car park. Oh s**t, I thought. It did worry me that I could forget to do something normally like getting off a train. OK the two girls in the seats in front of mine were getting on everyone’s nerves by constantly taking photos of themselves, and I was busy pulling faces behind them hoping that when they get home and get the photos onto the PC they could see me. But that’s still no excuse for getting off the train with your caring fiancé having come to collect you.

Down line to Platform 1

Most of the time engineering work of the rail network are a pain in the backside for passengers but not today for me. Whilst complete closure of Basingstoke station has meant a timetable re-jig, its helped me in that I don’t have to leave so early to go down to Bournemouth for the footie. I did get excited when passing Northam we went onto the up line to go though Southampton Tunnel, something I think I’ve done before but not that often. However than was totally eclipsed later when the train went from the down line into platform 1 at Brockrnhurst. Now that is something I’ve never done. Brilliant.

Oh and the footie was a 1-1 draw. We needed to win that match really to make sure we were safe.

Weekend

Well another weekend come and gone. Where did it go?

Friday night I spent a couple of hours typing out an on-line job application form. Only to discover after submitting the form that it hadn’t saved most of my information. Now some of you might think that as I do the website for the council and it was on that same website that I was doing the applying on then it would be up to me to get the programme right. Well no, the recruit system was bought by HR and is nothing to do with us web guys. Anyway I was really tired and so I sent a e-mail to HR saying that the system has not saved my info and I would e-mail it to them over the weekend. I hope this is going to be OK.

Saturday was going off to football. Walked through the Lakeside Country Park on the way to Southampton Airport Station. I wanted to pick up a geocoin in the All Steamed Up cache and to see if I could spot any interesting birds to add to my Hampshire List. Got coin OK but no new birds, Though I did see that the Great Crested Grebes that are normally on one of the Lakes did have about 4-5 young with them. Ahhh nice…

Got to the station and I noticed that the train were only going as far as Southampton. Engineering work was forcing them to have a rail replacement bus service between Brockenhurst and Bournemouth. Thinking about it. It would take me a while to get to football in that case and more importantly longer to get home. Sue was desperate to ensure we got to the party we were going to that night at the moment it started. So I decided not to go to football and went home instead. Spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out my train photos on fotopic.net. I’m planning to blog more about that another day.

Noticed that a friend of my had removed the link to my blog from his. Well two can play at that game and I removed his from mine. I know that was very childish and even though I really like this guy I hate being felt like I’m being taken for a ride. I’m the most loyal of friends but I also expect some loyalty in return. Is that too much to ask.

Went to the aforementioned party in the evening. It was Sue’s friends daughters 18th birthday party. So I was expecting lots of records from people with such stupid names as ‘snoop snoopy versus snooty shirty’ or the like. But no this group of teenagers would rather listen to hits from the 70 and 80. The DJ was miffed he hadn’t bought many of those records. Not only did these kids know the songs existed but knew all the words and all the dance moves as well. Now to me that speaks volumes about the current music industry if their main target group i.e. teenagers would rather listen to stuff produced before they were born that to anything that the industry is producing today.

Sunday

Spent most of today sorting out the pictures I took at the party last night. The kids didn’t seem to mind about this strange middle-ages man taking pictures all the time. Took nearly all day to load them up and that was via a 56k modem. Heavens known what it would have been like if I used my normal PC with its 33k modem. Watched train videos whilst wanting for it to upload. Then spend another evening re-doing that job application. It’s for a Business Development Officer at the Library in case you were interested.

And now it’s Monday morning and I’m on the train hading for another boring week of work.

Have lap top will blog

Well again I’ve missed my early morning train to work and so having to wait an hour for the next one to Bournemouth. So as I write this I’m sat on Eastliegh station catching up with my blogs. I hope that I can catch up to date because I know that you are all interested in what’s happening in my life now, not a month ago.

I think this morning I’ll catch the Totton stopping service and change at Southampton. This has two advantages.

1) It will probably be operated by one of the unites recently transferred to South West Trains from TransPennine. Really disappointed in the new units. They used to be three car units, where as the ones they are replacing, the class 170’s are only two, but someone has stolen the middle unit of them on their way down South and so they are now only two car units, and really cramped they are. I was hoping that when I do ride on them on my trip home each day that I will get a seat but doesn’t look like that that will happen.

2) The next train to Bournemouth is normally quite full as far as Southampton, so by getting on it there I can get a seat.

Oops train coming, will finish later.

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OK moved on now to Southampton Station, quite here due to School Holidays. Just before my train departs there is a service to Cardiff (via Romsey, Salisbury, Bristol) and there is a whole bunch of school kids who get on, who make the St Trinian’s kids look like angels. There is such a scrum for the train when it gets to Southampton. I pity any little of lady trying to get on, She would get crushed by gangs of school kids trying to get themselves a seat. Anyway no kids around today. Cardiff service is running 7 mins late as well. No excuse given. At least my train looks like its on time… and here it comes, will finish later

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OK now on the train. Reflecting on evens over the weekend. Found out that my sister-in-law Anne has a blog, interesting read, much more interesting that the rubbish I churn out. She also on myspace.com, so I obtained my own page on there and this blog will be the first one copied onto my space on there. With in a day and old school friend found it and sent me a note. Carl was once a big part of my life, we did a lot together. I was chatting to him one day about my (then) bus and plane spotting and he said that if he did any sort of spotting that he would do train spotting, so we gave it a go. I can’t remember exactly but I don’t think he did it for very long but as you know, I haven’t stopped yet. We slowly drifted apart after that. I guess I spent all my time down at the station with my new train spotting friends, Sorry Carl, you were a good friend, even if you did lie all the time about you and Cindy Roles. And there was the time when I broke my ankle and you just went into my house and sat down, leaving me to crawl into the house on all fours, Yeah come to think of it you were quite a b’stad, weren’t you….. LOL seriously, great to hear from him, we have a lot of catching up to do.

How do I cross

Standing on the platform at the station today. Bloke on the opposite platform shouted across to me asking how I he could get onto the same platform. I suggested that he used the bridge, which I pointed to at the end of the platform. That was about the highlight of the day for me.

Ugly Sod Me 4 AFC Bournemouth 5

Back on to trains today , off to the football.. went for the Romsey-Totten stopper to get me one stop to catch the fast train. Luckily we had one of the units just transferred from TransPennine. So it was a new units for me both in terms of seeing it and riding on it. Then on to a Virgin Voyager for one more stop, and luckily yet another unit that I hadn’t ridden on before, Southampton to Brockenhurst was yet another new one, My god a Hat-trick of new units, haven’t had that for such a long time, seeing as I’ve ridden on most of them now, its getting more difficult to rid eon new ones. Anyway, feeling pickish at Brockenhurst so we into the shop to buy a chocie bar (yes I know I’m trying to give them up but its hard, anyway the odd one here and there is OK. Girl serving was on the phone to someone and wasn’t going to hang up just because she had customers to service. She did thank me quite a few times during the transaction. The person she was on the phone to must have commented about this as I heard her day to him/her, how she likes to be pleasant to customers and that customers think she is so polite, I nodded me head, even though I though she was rude to carry on conversations like this.. There you go she said to her friend, he thinks I’m polite. I walked out, just as I got to the door I heard her say to her friend, ‘Oh I was only like that ‘code he was ugly and I felt sorry for him. Well thanks a bunch. That’s one shop I will never go into again. Anyway stopping train awaits and yes it was another new one. Four in one day , unheard of.. Then to football .Bournemouth we were already two nil up when I got into the stadium, we took Leyton Orient apart and won 5-0. We’ve struggled to get wins this season so a 5-0 nil put us in dream land. Also sold 81 of my Matchday draw tickets, a record for recent times. So apart from the unfortunate incident at Brockenhurst a good day all round.

aargh

What a horrible journey home. Left work a couple of mins after I should have done. Ran to get the bus to go up to that station. Normally I walk but I was taking the lap top home with me and I didn’t fancy hauling it up the hill to the station. Anyway the bus journey was a nightmare waited at the Square for ages then every stop had morons getting on the bus not knowing where they were going, didn’t have their money out ready etc. So missed the train I was going to get. SO I two choices now, catch the next one which was the stopper and hope that my connecting train in Southampton was late or just wait the 45 mins for the next fast train. Got on the stopper as I thought I could spend the extra time blogging on the lap top. Sat in the very last carriage, which is normally OK, Big mistake, St Trinian’s kids were on board. All of who were very excitable. Running up and down the train shouting at each other. Turns out that Jennie was having a party that night at some restaurant or other, and that all of her friends should meet at her place, but don’t come early as she had a piano lesson at 6. I changed trains at Totton, Whilst I wasn’t going to get home any earlier I might as well get on the connecting train a stop as soon as I could and grab a seat. Yeap the train filled up at Southampton and then we had to wait 20 mins for the train crew to arrive, (WHY!! they never wait for me) So I got home at 6.15 having left work at 3.30 The thought of buying a car raged in my mind. With a car I would have been home at least 2 hours earlier.

Stupid Kid

One disadvantage of getting the later train into work in the morning is that I have to put up with school kids from some school in Bournemouth. There is a whole group of them that get on the train from Brockenhurst onwards. Funny thing is that classroom rules as to seating still exist, even on a train. You know, good kids sit in the front and the bad kids sit at the back. Now I’m only basing whether the kids is good or bad on how they act and dress but there is a definite split with the good kids sitting in the front carriage and the bad ones the last but one (the last one being first class) . This doesn’t normally affect me as I always sit in the second carriage. However today my early train was well late, So much so that is was running just ahead of the later train. So the Brockenhurst kids managed to catch my train and were forced to sit in the same carriage as me. When it was announced that my train would run non-stop to Bournemouth one of the younger kids got a bit worried. How would her mates catch the train. Where would they all meet up? The older kids explained that her mates would just have to catch the train behind, and they would all meet up at Bournemouth Station. The little ones concern about her mates was kinda nice. At my school if we were on a train/bus etc that were going to wiz past our mates we’d just wave and laugh as we wizzed passed them.

New Travelodge

Following last night at brothers, stayed the night at the Travelodge in Guildford. A new one for us. One of the biggest we’ve stayed in. Nice room over looking the railway line. I know that there is a site which lists good hotels to plane spot from, perhaps I should do one for train spotting.