We’ve had an excellent start to community rail week with a very well attended opening event at Oxford station this afternoon. The festivities culminated in a canal side walk followed by snacks and drinks at ‘Yellow Submarine’ in the city. The rain that was predicted held off, making the event even better.

Getting back has proved to be more stressful.

I hung around in Oxford to download and edit the first pictures from the event in order to get stuff ready for the press release, then spent some time taking a few pictures for myself as Oxford stations changed a bit since I was last there due to the construction of the new through platform and the rebuilding of the Botley Rd bridge which it’s necessitated. That meant I was leaving just before the evening peak, heading North on a rammed and late-running Cross-Country service. That was unfortunate, as I had a ten-minute connection time at Birmingham International. Our dwell times increased at each station due to the sheer volume of people squeezed into a five-car Voyager., which meant that at Coventry my connection was sat in the opposite platform. Thankfully, signallers put us out ahead of the Pendolino I was meant to catch and I made my connection at International with minutes to spare. I was hoping for a pleasant journey but ended up having to seat next to a surly young girl with attitude who stank of BO. Thankfully, she bailed out at Sandwell and Dudley, leaving her aroma around to linger!

But, at least I was heading home. As it sped North through deteriorating weather the Pendolino emptied out, making for quite a reasonable journey from Crewe to Wigan. I even managed to blag an empty table bay!

Swapping between stations at Wigan I caught my last train of the day – and one of my favourites. As much as I enjoy a tilting, 125mph Pendolino, there’s something to be said about the old Class 156s. They may not have the same catchet, but they’re a great train for rural lines.

The only problem was the vista. Remember I said the weather was getting worse the further North I got? By the time it came to cross the West Lancashire plain it was persisting it down – and had been most of the day, apparently.

Still, if this weather continues tomorrow it’s not too bad. I have a massive backlog of pictures to edit and things to do indoors for my sister. Let’s see what happens…