TRAIN # 1 – 15:32 Kirkham to London Euston
The honour of being the first train in my Interrail diary went to the 15:32 (Sundays Only) Kirkham to London Euston. The service, which had originated at Blackpool North, did nothing to reciprocate this accolade. It hadn’t even left Preston before it was twenty minutes late.
At first the delay didn’t concern me. I spent the initial part of the journey fretting about other things. I started to wonder if I had brought too many clothes. The large orange rucksack I was carrying also contained my sleeping bag and it seemed pretty heavy.
A bigger concern was the limited amount of funds. I had agreed with my friend that we would, for the most part, pool resources and share. I had purchased traveller’s cheques from Thomas Cook in £10 denominations.
Our initial combined daily budget, which would include any accommodation, transport in cities, museum entry as well as any food and drink was between £10 and £15. It would vary day by day and depend on which country we were visiting, of course.
We both had Access cards, but as neither of us had much credit left on them, we had agreed that they would be for emergency use only.
A guy came and sat opposite me at Preston, and after Wigan we got talking. He was a shipyard engineer from Paisley in Scotland and he was heading out to do a job in Hamburg. We talked a lot about his work and then about the itinerary I had created for my forthcoming trip.
I explained that I would be heading across to Brussels and Amsterdam first and then via Paris to Lisbon and Madrid. Then, after Rome and Venice, up through Germany to Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo. The final leg would include Switzerland, Vienna and Budapest.
I showed him my Thomas Cook Continental Timetable and the detailed itinerary that I had prepared for most of the trip. I told him that I would be meeting my friend at London Victoria at 20:00 and we would be catching the 20:44 Boat Train to Folkestone for the ferry to Ostend.
However, as we reached Crewe, the whole plan began to unravel. A total power failure south of Stafford meant diversion via Wolverhampton and Coventry and eventually a mammoth two hour ten minute delay into Euston. I had been supposed to arrive in the capital at 18:58; in the end I made it at 21:10.
I had arranged to meet my friend at the Casey Jones burger place at Victoria Station and of course I had no way of letting him know I would not make it on time. I dashed to the Victoria Line and managed to get to the site of our appointment ninety minutes late. He was still waiting, having had the intelligence to investigate the running status of my train.
TRAIN # 2 – 22:20 London Victoria to Faversham / Dover
Now I had to improvise the timetable. The 20:44 boat train had already gone and we had also obviously missed the connection it made at Folkestone with the sailing to Ostend. We needed another way of crossing the channel. Out came the ‘Thomas Cook’ and I quickly worked out that there was another sailing to Ostend. It went from Dover Eastern Docks at 01:00.
Our best chance now was to get a regular train to Dover. There were no more direct ones that evening but we could still reach the port by catching the 22:20 to Ramsgate and changing at Faversham. It was a three minute connection, but I was hopeful they would hold the train if we were late. If the plan worked we would be into Dover for 00:10 with fifty minutes to get to the port and get onboard.
The train, which was formed of two 4 CEP units, left London on time. Our immediate worry about the itinerary falling apart on the first day had been temporarily abated. We relaxed a bit and started to look forward to the trip.
However, we soon realised that, unlike the boat trains that went into the Western Docks for a smooth connection with the ships, our connection from Faversham would terminate at Dover Priory in the middle of the town. We would then have to find a way of getting to the Eastern Docks.
We made the connection at Faversham and as we headed towards Dover, we began to discuss our problem. We were overheard by a guy on from Aachen in Germany who was worried about exactly the same thing. A shared taxi might be the answer.
Forty Years Later….
- There are no longer any direct Blackpool to Euston trains on Sundays.
- Access was acquired by Mastercard in 1996
- There are still problems on the line into Euston, but with a mobile phone I would be better placed to inform others of my delay.
- The last boat trains ran from London Victoria in 1994 and today Eurostar links London St Pancras with Brussels in less than 2 hours
- Casey Jones, British Rail’ own hamburger chain, survived until the early 1990s when it was sold to Burger King.
