...again
Heading north...
4/5 June 2025
We’re heading for northern Scotland, and to get there
we’re using the train - the Caledonian Sleeper will take us
from Crewe to Inverness; we’ll travel from Shrewsbury to
Crewe on a TfW Cardiff-Manchester (that’s Manceinion in
TfW-speak) service. It’s not the latest train that will connect
with the sleeper, but if anything went wrong with the later
train, we could find ourselves stranded at Crewe around
midnight. That later train would be a cl. 197 DMU. The
earlier train would be a loco and MkIV carriage set - so
we’ll travel in style for the first leg of our journey.
Arriving at Crewe around two hours before the sleeper
departs means there’s time to kill - let’s take one or two
photos!
The sleeper duly arrives, on time, at 23.40, and around 9
hours later, when we’re about three miles from Inverness
and more-or-less on time, the train comes to an abrupt
halt. It appears an alarm has gone off in the cab, and the
train manager will have to perform some checks before we
Geoff’s Rail Diaries
can move again - “It’s probably a false alarm”. Instead of
an 08.45 arrival, we draw to a halt at platform 1 at 09.19
- glad that we weren’t intending to catch the 08.55 to
Kyle of Lochalsh. For complex reasons we’ll shortly be
driving a hired car to Kyle and beyond, roughly following
the railway route.
From Shrewsbury, our train was propelled by 67 010. 92
023 hauled the sleeper to Edinburgh, where 73 970 W.
S. Sellar and 66 737 Lezia. A week later, we were back
in Inverness, for the 12.48 to Edinburgh Waverley - a
Scotrail Inter7City HST (43176 and 43144). Real
comfort, unlike the 17.30 from Waverley to Dunbar - just
22 minutes of the Azuma’s more than 7 hour journey
from Aberdeen to Kings Cross. I was really glad to leave
the train at Dunbar - another example of a seat stuffed
with spuds. Most uncomfortable! Four days later, we
were heading back to Waverley, on another Azuma (a
less-uncomfortable seat this time). At Waverley, we
caught the 10.52 Avanti Pendolino which duly deposited
us in Crewe a minute or two after 2pm, nicely in time for
the Shrewsbury train - a 5-car 197, and the only DMU
we’d encountered on the whole journey. But what a
varied journey we had!