...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,
Geoff’s Rail Diaries
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 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!
