10:50.

Having spent the morning completing household chores and giving the gardens a good soaking before I go it’s now time to begin my journey over to Crewe to join the rest of the Railway Children volunteers and prepare for the arrival of this years teams and the train that will be our home until Saturday night. The weather here in the Calder valley’s bright and sunny, but I’ve packed for all eventualities.

But first, I’ve got to get to Crewe. I wonder which way I’ll go? I’m not going to be walking far as I have a rather large kitbag with me as well as a fully-stocked camera bag. So, let’s see. Next stop, Halifax station…

12:30.

Dawn very kindly gave me a lift to the station which saved mucking around with taxis. I managed to make Northern’s 11:16 to Chester which was ‘fun’ as a stock shortage meant that it was formed of a single 2-car Class 195, so it was full and standing when it arrived. I ended up standing all the way to Manchester as there was no way I was going to get a seat.

By the time we left Rochdale it resembled a sardine-can but after leaving Manchester it was only around 20% full, so now I’ve time to blag a table, plug in the mobile office and relax for a while. Unfortunately, we’ve lost the good weather now. The further West we go the gloomier the skies are.

14:15.

I’m now in Chester. Yes, I know it’s a little bit of a detour but I was still working on the train at Warrington and decided to stay on to finish what I was doing. Plus, there’s method in my madness. I can catch a direct train to Crewe from here and hopefully sample of of Avanti’s new Class 805s in the process. Mind you, it’s all a bit shambolic here. One Holyhead train was 72 minutes late. Diagrammed to leave from platform 3, announcements were made it would leave from platform 4, so passengers and luggage traipsed over the footbridge to the new platform – only to have to traipse back at the last moment when the signaller decided it could leave from its original platform anyway! Here’s a few shots;

 Schrödinger’s 13:25, simultaneously cancelled and on time…

10:05.

The adventure’s about to begin…

We’re on the way! Our train left on time at 19:14, we’re now on our way to Chester and the North Wales coast before a layover at Llandudno Junction, where we let a service train pass. We’ve 42 teams aboard comprising 190 people, from companies like Siemens, train operators like Avanti and SouthEastern, engineering companies like Volker Rail and others such as HD2 and RSSB.

For the railway enthusiasts amongst my readers we have 47593 on the front and 57311 on the rear of the train.

23:55.

It’s almost time for me to go, but here’s how things have gone so far. As we hugged the North Wales coast the walkers were treated to a hot meal prepared in the kitchen cars that’s part of the train. Here’s the staff busy serving the walkers with the first course of a two course meal (the second course was cheesecake, which was divine). As you can imagine, it’s a military style operation to serve hot food to so many people in such a short time – and on a moving train! Some of the servers were ‘newbies’ to 3 Peaks , which is a challenge in itself.

We dropped off the walkers at Bangor at 21:26. Eve though they’d already been fed and watered they were provided with plenty of snacks to keep ’em going overnight.

Just as soon as they were all off the train the empty (well, empty of walkers) train continued to Holyhead where the onboard crew had the train cleared of rubbish and vehicles tanked. Meanwhile, the kitchen staff prepared a second meal, this time for the onboard crew. Now it’s time to get our heads down for a few hours before we’re up at silly o’clock to head back and pick up the walkers. Before our train departs Bangor for Ravenglass at 04:37 on Friday…

Right, see you in a few hours…

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