One for the railway heads

[tobester]

Oh, and when you're searching for times on National Rail, make sure you specify a Glasgow Central departure, rather than all stations or Queen Street, or you'll get overwhelmed with all the other routes!

forgot about that...put GLC into the station box for central, GLQ for queen st, EDB for edinburgh

[tobester]

Yeah, National Rail is the website I used to check those time and prices. Probably best to buy in advance - use a train company operator's site for this, like Cross Country's own:

http://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/Tic ... ables.aspx

and elect to pick it up from the ticket machines in Central (which you can do anytime from around 20 minutes after you make the booking - they give you a reference number which you punch into the self-serve machines, and you can pretty much choose to get them at any station which has these)

The ticket says it's an anytime ticket, but it's specific to Cross Country trains only, and they're not frequent - if you miss the one back at 3.11pm, there's not another till 4.57pm. I guess it must be available from the ticket office, but you'd need to specify that you wanted a Cross Country Anytime return.

Ticket will be available from office, have also noticed it on the avantix machines too, but as i said sometimes the english companies are strict, ive heard it on services saying that if the ticket isnt valid on that service youll be charged a full single fare

[Mori]

Cheers guys thanks a lot, all the info was very helpful.

[tobester]

Popping this in here....today was the first day of the new trams in blackpool, and it went swimmingly....first service tram 006 derailed at Fleetwood....d'oh

Was caused by sand in the track as it rounded from the terminus at Fleetwood round towards where the old stop was outside the pier/ferry

http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/traffic-travel/first-fare-paying-tram-derailed-by-sand-1-4414985

Few pics from someone on FB

[gap74]

Oh dear....

But at the same time, end of an era, I loved the older trams that ran in Blackpool, not sure the system will have the same charm with all new vehicles.

I Pendolino'd it up from London today - ended up 35 mins late because we hit something left on track between Preston and Lancaster. No idea what it was, but made a fair old racket battering off the underside of each carriage, had to stop to have it checked out!

[Jockissimo]

Obviously the wrong type of sand!

[Godsgift]

Popping this in here....today was the first day of the new trams in blackpool, and it went swimmingly....first service tram 006 derailed at Fleetwood....d'oh

Was caused by sand in the track as it rounded from the terminus at Fleetwood round towards where the old stop was outside the pier/ferry

http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/traffic-travel/first-fare-paying-tram-derailed-by-sand-1-4414985

Few pics from someone on FB

Looks a bit like our LUAS trams in Dublin. Fast, clean and handy but absolutely no character or personality whatsoever. Just functional.

[tobester]

Obviously the wrong type of sand!

Funnily enough thats what was reported in the blackpool gazette by a BTS spokesman

[Jockissimo]

You are havin a bath?

It was the "wrong type of snow" for the trains a few years ago if you remember.
'

[tobester]

You are havin a bath?

It was the "wrong type of snow" for the trains a few years ago if you remember.
'

Seriously thats what was quoted...all i can think of is the sand was wet and hard rather than the dry soft stuff, and maybe the wheel hit it and instead of going thru it went up and over....can only wait until the RAIB report is published

[tobester]

New offer starting Sunday 15/4/12 in the sunday mail and daily record

Enter 2 codes found in the paper over the next 5 days (15-20 april) into a voucher or booking form (handed in to a booking office) and you can get 2 return tickets for £19 anywhere in scotland...im taking the form will be in the paper

This is basically the same as the sainsbury offer.

Travel valid for outward journey between 16th April and 31st May, return ticket is valid for the following month.

Offer is valid on all scotrail, virgin, transpenine, cross country and east coast trains (however you CANNOT use east coast aberdeen and edinburgh on a sunday)

Restrictions are the same as for a saver ticket....not valid for travel before 0915, nor between 1642-1809 (or the 1815 edinburgh-glasgow or 1815 glasgow-edinburgh) mon-fri, however no restrictions on a sat or a sun

[Dexter St. Clair]

New offer starting Sunday 15/4/12 in the sunday mail and daily record

Thanks for that.

[gap74]

Two-thirds of a BBC documentary from 1981 about the APT - much of it spent in Polmadie depot!



As a young lad, it was always tremendously exciting to spot the APT whizzing past my local station (Newton). Think I saw it 7 or 8 times. Shame we're unlikely to see such a thing as an experimental, scratch-built prototype train on UK tracks in the foreseeable future again...

[Dexter St. Clair]

Dalmarnock Rail Bridges

[stranger]

having fun on Flickr playing spot the railway location but i'm stumped with this one, the building in the right background makes me think of Glasgow, anyone recognise the location?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29644579@N ... 631975474/

if anyone can help, this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29644579@N ... 7166784504

and this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29644579@N ... 7166784504

are in Scotland but no one has managed to identify them yet.