This Site
Copyright
The last day of any trip or the return home is always a low point but we tried to make it a bit better.
Bold = Haulage, RED = Winner, All others are sightings.
Downstairs to the bar of the Shrewsbury Hotel, Wetherspoons where we had stayed and when we arrived they told us the coffee machine was broken. The breakfast was poor. So I recommend staying there and getting food and drink elsewhere!>br /> Then the walk up the hill to the station which was not steep but certainly hard work with a large case.
Shrewsbury a strange station. There is no platforms 1 & 2 as you can see from the diagram. We headed over to platform 7 to catch our train and with five minutes to go to the platform became very busy. Initially we didn’t think we would get on the TfW train and would have to get the West Midland Railways cl.196 that would leave 10 minutes later but we did get on and we did manage to get seats. Shrewsbury does have two very large and mostly redundant signal boxes which do allude to a time of more trains.
1I04 Shrewsbury to Birmingham New Street 158826, 158832 Winners [42m 41ch]< /p>
It was a pretty uneventful journey down to Birmingham. New Street is one of my least favourite stations and has always appeared dank, dark and miserable at platform level. One of the few things there that is useful was that there is a now a left luggage facility. Not cheap but we wanted rid of the suitcase. Off we went and went ot see St. Phillips Cathedral in the centre. I informed the wife that her Great Great Great Grandparents were married in that very church in 1842. There was a service going on so we went for a walk first and ended up back there just after it finished and wandered around. I did see a few trams out and about but not many.
We went into Grand Central and had some food before heading to the train home.
1B52 Birmingham New Street to Euston 390137>/span> [112m 44ch]
Another uneventful journey and one we’ve made a number of times in the past got us in to London Euston and a walk along to St Pancras to catch a train towards home.
9S53 St Pancras International to East Croydon 700103
Then on to th last leg
2J56 Eat Croydon to Selhurst 377622 non winner[0m 77ch].
All in all it was lovely trip and we covered 712.35 miles and ticked off a fair few new lines and traction.