The High Peaks Hustler
26 February 2005
Rowan and I were booked on the Pathfinder High Peaks Hustler tour from Birmingham,
scheduled to leave Crewe at 09:50. We played safe and caught the 07:15 Virgin
departure from Bangor just in case the Arriva half an hour later was cancelled,
which would have meant Game Over. Plus the extra time would allow us to survey
the scene at Crewe and see if it's as dull as we'd been led to believe. It
is.
This was my first Voyager trip for a while, and they're just as horrible as my memory of them. I felt as though I was trapped inside a giant vibrator as the throb of the underfloor engines carried through the structure and rattled the plastic luggage racks. I escaped to the shop and asked for a coffee. The fed-up assistant told me she'd switched off the till as it had been sounding a continuous alarm which had given her a headache, and that was the only way to silence it. She said she'd serve me if I had the correct change, which fortunately I had. In what way are these things an improvement over "the old trains inherited from British Rail?
The only remotely interesting activity was class 57s coupling up to Pendolinos
to drag them along non-electrified diversionary routes.
Coupling 87s and 47s to Mk III stock never required this amount of effort
Our train arrived eaqrlier that we'd expected so we missed the approach shot.
Here's 37 427
37 669 was at the other end. This is the same pair that was used
on the recent tour to Pwllheli but EWS have so few operational members of
the class that choice is very restricted.