(train clattering)
Morning, welcome to Lincolnshire,
welcome to Grimsby,
stayed in Grimsby town last night
I've been to Cleethorpes already this morning
back to Grimsby Docks
and now I'm gonna walk a kilometre
down the road to another request stop.
(seagulls calling)
So what you've got is this overbridge
which used to be a road but it's now a footpath
and this looks down onto the single track line
where you get some TransPennine services
we'll have a fast one later
but there's a local two hourly stopping service
between Barton-on-Humber down to Cleethorpes
and the rather odd station that is New Clee.
My train is not for like another 90 minutes,
it's ridiculous.
So not the first time I've been here,
back in early 2017 crikey,
February when we did all the stations,
Vicki and I recorded a pilot episode.
It's Saturday morning.
Which way are we going?
We're going that way.
And we visited Cleethorpes the railway down there.
Driver Aaron is gonna sit on the back of the tender
and he's gonna let you drive the engine
back round onto the other end of the train.
And then we got dropped off by John, I remember
at this station.
We've come to New Clee (laughing)
thanks John for the ride.
And I think this was the first time
that Vicki had ever done a request stop
and we've deliberately come to New Clee
so that Vicki, in a minute can hold out her hand.
So she had that moment.
I remember her kind of awkwardly holding her polystyrene box
with her sandwich in in one hand.
Is this the first time
you've ever flagged down a train before?
This is very exciting,
I'm like how do I know if it's gonna stop?
And then sticking her arm out
because it is a stick your hand out station.
(seagulls calling)
In the waiting shelter
'cause there's not much else here,
single platform station, Cleethorpes' that way.
We'll talk about numbers and frequency in a minute.
I wanted to say that New Clee,
sort of part of Cleethorpes
the word clee by the way, means clay,
thorpe is an old Viking word for a village.
So Cleethorpes means clay village
but here in Clee you've got Old Clee just down the way
and New Clee,
this is a very industrious area,
Grimsby of course famous for being a big fishing town,
big fishing industry here.
So I'm not really sure what this serves
apart from this car park
and some industrial units over there.
I can though see an abandoned platform.
Back by the entrance, such as it is.
I've noticed there's a poster
about the Community Rail Partnership
and the Humber Link Line.
All you need to know about the Barton to Cleethorpes
CRP community rail,
but the signage there seems to suggest
that sort of organised run's sponsored by CrossCountry.
On the train in this morning
I got chatting to the guard
who was wearing a TransPennine badge
and he confirmed that he was TransPennine staff
and this is clearly a Northern route
with a Northern station 'cause there's Northern posters
and yet the train was an East Midlands one.
So it's a Northern route,
I think using East Midlands stock
with TransPennine crew with a CrossCountry Rail partnership.
I'm not sure what's going on there,
if you know what's going on, let me know.
(train clattering)
(traffic)
It's a bit desolate
although there's a road there
so there's like there's traffic
but I mean I'm the only passenger
it's averaging about like four a day
or something at the moment.
It only gets I think a Monday to Saturday service
with six trains going in that direction
and five going in that direction,
so 11 trains a day.
From what I'm aware, there's no winter Sunday service
but there might be a summer Sunday service
but at the moment that I'm recording this
there's no Sunday trains.
What is interesting and confusing
if you download my request stop map linked below
which is where I'm keeping track of,
where all the request stops in Great Britain are?
And it's this little solitary outpost
just to the South of Grimsby.
As you can see on the map there,
it says New Clee
and then I put an asterisk by it
and if you look over in the key
you can see that we've had some fun and confusion
as to whether it is a request stop.
New Clee,
National Rail list New Clee as a request stop,
but with summer Sunday trains always stopping.
So the summer Sunday services aren't request trains.
However, in the Northern timetable
the station has the request 'X'
marked against it at all times.
So there's like a nationwide National Rail timetable
and then the local Northern timetable.
But as we discussed earlier
with it being EMR trains with TPE staff crew
on the Northern rail service,
the Northern franchise kind of up in the air at the moment,
it might change.
I think by May it's all going to flip over
to being an East Midlands Railway thing
but still staffed by TPE crews.
But whether they then muck about with
is it a request stop and what days
who knows?
But it is a request stop
and I will be sticking my hand out later
to get the 10:58
in about an hour's time.
There's a lot of trucks here.
(traffic)
Well this is
somewhat better.
When doing my research on New Clee
I decided that it sounded a bit like nuclear,
as in nuclear
and I got chatting to my friend Dave
and in the absence of what the heck else to say
about New Clee we came up with some terrible puns.
I now present you a,
in a feature that I'm calling
(playful music)
just for you, we came up with the following list,
New Clee waste that'd be the litter bin,
New Clee fallout that'll be litter
and there is some litter here
New Clee power, nuclear power that would be the streetlamp.
I'm gonna get cutaways of all of these
it's gonna be awesome.
New Clee shelter it's got a shelter
(laughing) come on.
I like this one,
New Clee deterrent it's the lack of trains
it makes you not want to come here
and then finally, my favourite
New Clee free zone the lack of ticket barriers,
you can just wander in,
there's no ticket machine,
there's no customer information screen,
there's no PA,
there's just a litter bin.
Sorry the New Clee waste, the New Clee shelter,
we didn't come up with a pun for the bench
New Clee seat doesn't work does it?
Puns welcome, how can we pun nuclear bench,
nuclear seat suggestions in the YouTube comments please.
(train clattering)
YouTube I kid you not,
you're not gonna believe me,
remember when we were at Faygate
doing least used Faygate
and the police turned up
well I'm squatted down here
just reading this sign
about the Saturday only service
through Brigg and Kirton Lindsey and stuff
when a car pulls up here
and two gentlemen get out
and I hear the crackle of a radio
and they're police officers (laughing)
and they've got reports that down there,
beyond that 40 sign in the distance
under the curve bridge
which is where I got the aerial shot from earlier
that there were some people like hanging out,
getting up to no good
and he showed me his badge and he went
and he walked down the line
and he checked out what was going on,
there's no one there.
I just want to get it on camera
that they genuinely just pulled up
in an unmarked police car,
it was very exciting.
Here we go,
hurray something happened at New Clee.
Yeah, there ain't much else going on.
It's 10 past 10
I've got nothing to do except wait
50 minutes for my train
and there's no local shop.
I really need to go and have a
(train clattering)
And that is New Clee request stop,
another one ticked off.
There is a link in the description to my map
of all the request stops in Great Britain
I'm slowly getting round them all.
Why is that, how that doesn't help?
(laughing)
Bye.