Welcome
To Cardiff, for the 4th Friday Club’s Rail in Wales and the West conference. An opportunity to take in the western end of the South Wales main line: I hadn’t been west of the Welsh capital for years.
A portent of things to come is when the MTUs fire up on the Intercity Express Train at Bristol Parkway. Now the Government has axed wiring west of Cardiff, Swansea passengers are set to rely on the diesel option in the bi-modes for the foreseeable future. The wiring work on Parkway to Cardiff Central is still ongoing – although if Network Rail doesn’t get it finished by the autumn, it won’t be the end of the world. Great Western considers it feasible to introduce its IET timetable at the end of this year whatever the state of the wires, as the Class 800s can cope in either mode (p8, last month).
We pass the Hitachi depot at Stoke Gifford, home to the ‘800s’, on leaving Parkway. Then its Patchway and Pilning (the latter notoriously shorn of its footbridge and reduced to a ‘Parliamentary’ service) before plunging into the depths of the Severn Tunnel, prior to emerging in Wales. The wires are up at Severn Tunnel Junction and evidence of South Wales’ continuing importance in the rail freight scene impinges on the consciousness.
