Evening all. I’ve just about recovered from Thursday, if you recall, going down to Peterborough for a funeral. What a day that turned into.
Up at half three in the morning, bus into Edinburgh for the 5:48 train to Peterborough. One of our neighbours has a key, we’d arranged for her to let the girls out a couple of times and feed them. Got down there just before ten, jeez it was hot even then. Funeral, reception after it then to Ging’s friends place for a wee while before heading back to the station. This is where it all started going Pete Tong! No doubt you saw in the news about the rail disruption, Peterborough was the epicentre! The extreme temperatures meant the tension in the overhead power lines went causing them to sag and end up wrapped around the pantograph on a 225 set just north of Peterborough. We were at the station for the 16:18 to Edinburgh, absolutely everything was stopped. The heat was unbearable, mid/high 30s, the air con in the ticket hall/waiting area couldn’t cope and going outside made no difference, there was a breeze but it was so hot it was like standing in front of a fan oven with the door open! Staff were handing out bottles of water but it was so warm you could have made an acceptable cup of tea with it. Ambulance staff kept appearing because someone collapsed, St John’s Ambulance staff wandering around as well. There was even a Police van arrived carrying a trolley of bottled water!
We finally got on a service going as far as Newcastle but the air con wasn’t working on the coach we were in. LNER staff advised they couldn’t get it working, there would be another train heading north “soon” if anyone wanted to wait . . . . sodthat! I knew that because it was an "old" HST set once it got on the move the open windows in the doors would create a thru draft and cool things down. I think we finally left Peterborough about 19:30, only good thing was the buffet (drinks, snacks etc) was free. It was by no means a high speed run, I presume there were speed restrictions all over the place due to rail temperature. They announced passengers for Edinburgh should get off at York and get on the train following us, which we did. Again it was a HST and we were sitting right next to the guard’s compartment and I could overhear what was being said. The master plan was that the train would go to Darlington where the driver would changeover with a train coming south. The flaw in that plan was that the driver on our train had already exceeded his driving hours! The guard announced there was another train coming in heading north if anyone wanted to get on it but it was already full and standing, we decided to stay where we were. We had to wait for the driver from the north who was going to take over at Darlington. Ging phoned our neighbour; she checked on the girls and let them out again.
I have no idea when we left York but we arrived into Edinburgh around 2am. By the time we actually got home it was 3am, nigh on 12 hours after we set off home and 24 hours since we got up! The girls were absolutely hysterical when we came in, we'd been away for about 22 hours.
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