Something strange happened last month. Several readers complained that I had not been sufficiently critical of rail services in the North! Could it be that, after a decade of everyday exposure to the shortcomings of services hereabouts, I had become inured to the constant delays and cancellations, the long waits and the need to travel before you really need to, simply to allow recovery time in case of need? Had I forgotten just how efficient a half-decently operated railway can be, as practised not only in parts of Europe, but ‘down south’ as outlined by David Horne last month?
So, with the excuse of a meeting in London, I set forth to find out, with an early start on the 06.34 TransPennine from Scarborough as far as York. A Nova 3 duly appeared from the nearby new stabling point, its Class 68 growling so loudly that I began to realise the local inhabitants who have complained about their incessant noise may not be the nimbys I had dismissed them to be. In recent years, TransPennine practice had been to both close down the engines of the Class 185s then in use while stationary at the terminus and to boast about the environmental advantages of so doing. Not only are the ‘68s’ much, much more noisy, t…
