Track bash May 2022

Introduction

Last updated 2022-05-29

In Track Bash 1 I said that "My wife gave me a 7-day All Lines rail pass as a present". Actually, she gave me two, one to be used each year. After a lot more planning, I came up with a second itinerary. These pages list the journeys I made plus some notes about happenings.

Once again, I decided that I would try to travel along as many of the rail lines as possible that I hadn't used before.

I went through my notes of where I had travelled and listed each piece of untravelled line that was at least 3 miles long (I picked that limit to avoid dealing with large numbers of short, rarely used pieces of track). This gave me 36 pieces, excluding goods-only lines (bold indicates that I actually rode that line this week):

Both in this table and on other pages, all chainages and distances are shown as miles.chains, so "8.26" means 8 miles and 26 chains (8.325 miles) and not 8.26 miles.

Of these, Blackburn to Hellifield and Gainsborough to Barnetby have no scheduled passenger trains at present, Langley Mill to Mansfield only has one, at 23:43, and Georgemas Junction to Thurso would take a whole day to reach. That left 32.

Of these 32, my plans were for me to do 27. That is 492 miles 25 chains out of 533 miles 64 chains, or over 92% of the total. Of the about 40 miles missed, over 30 are from two pieces: Wickford to Southminster and Walsall to Rugeley. The first is odd: I grew up in that area, but I've never got round to riding that branch line. The other, plus the three smaller pieces making up the last 10 miles or so, just couldn't be fitted in.

These journeys took place on 22nd May to 29th May inclusive. So that I wasn't paying a fortune, I booked accomodation in advance. That meant each day had to end at the right place, no matter where I went during the day and how well it fitted my plans.

Each page contains two tables: a "trains" table and a "route" table. The trains table lists the trains used that day, giving sequence number, headcode, train number, and start and end points of my journey on that train. Each location gives CRS code (now RARS2 code), station name, and three times: public timetable, working timetable, and actual time. Where the train consists of more than one unit, underlining indicates the one I actually sat in. The route table gives, for each route segment, the train, ELR code, start and end chainages, length of the segment, total distance travelled so far, distance travelled on "new" segments so far, and whether it is a "new" segment (track I haven't travelled on before). For the purposes of this table, I started a new segment when:

• I caught a new train;
• the ELR changed;
• I changed from "old" track to "new" track or vice-versa;
• I reversed direction.

The "trains" column removes duplicates where I stayed on the same train but it became a separate service, but not where the same train turned up later on or on another day.

Back to the rail index. To Track Bash 1. Back to Clive's home page.