good morning from shrewsbury railway station i'm taking the train from here up to inverness
and when i looked at the prices for this journey it was a staggering £141 and that was just for
standard class if you wanted to go first class for part of the journey by the way it would cost you
an eye-watering £317!! believe it or not anyway i'm going to show you how you can do that for
less than half the price of standard so why don't you come with me for the trip
i'll be showing you the prices along the way and i'll see you when i get there cheers for now
OK, so we actually started off with the most expensive leg of
the journey - Shrewsbury to Crewe on one of Transport for Wales Class 175’s.
Now Transport for Wales have recently removed their Covid 19 seat signs which I think is fine.
At the end of the day the onus should be on the public to use
their common sense in respect of social distancing
whether they're on the train or in any other kind of situation in my opinion.
The train was recently refurbished and very clean
There was normal and usb power throughout which is good to see
I do like the moquette design on the seats for the new Transport for Wales refurbished interior
Here's a sneak peak of the number of paper tickets
I'd had to get printed out for the entire journey by the way
a very quiet crewe station this morning and it's about was it 25 to 9 (08:35). yeah and
when i talk about prices i should just caveat that by saying that
it's probably unlikely that you're gonna be asked to show you ticket for much of the journey so
effectively you could probably get up there for nothing but let me see how that goes and
see if i do actually see any ticket checks on any of the trains i'm traveling on today
The next two legs of my journey were on this Avanti West Coast Class 390 pendolino.
Now of course you can see that, in order to get to Glasgow cheaply,
I had to split my tickets at Preston.
The train was very quiet and there was plenty of available seating.
I do like the double seat with the thin table on these trains if I can manage to get it.
After leaving Carlisle, I decided to have a quick wander into first class to see if anybody
was about or if there was any service. Well I didn’t see anyone so I didn’t linger too much.
Needless to say it was probably not worth the money to
go First Class unless you want the quiet and the solitude
which you can easily get in standard class anyway at the moment
So moving back into standard class,
I was already over the border into Scotland and we were making good progress.
Glasgow Central. So I need to find my way onto the bus
which takes you to Glasgow Queen St, the usual sort of thing here at Glasgow
Bit of a pain but I'm hoping to get there in about 20 minutes
So wish me luck and I'll see you on the next Scotrail service this time
which will take me up to Perth. See you in a bit
Note that, whilst all west coast main line trains arrive into Glasgow Central,
my ticket was to Glasgow Queen Street.
It makes no difference to costs as the bus between the two stations is included in the price
In fact, I’m not too sure whether you can get a train directly into Queen Street from
the south but, if you can, please let me know in the comments below. I'd be interested to find out
The new concourse at Glasgow Queen Street was really impressive and
it's defintely worth a few minutes of your time.
For the first time on this trip in fact I had to use one of my tickets to get through the barrier.
I made my way onto the platform hoping for a ride on this Class 43 waiting at the next platform.
but unfortunately ended up on another diesel multiple unit instead! Oh well,
our paths would cross again a little later on in the journey!
Again, it was cheaper to buy a ticket to Stirling then a ticket from Stirling to Perth
whilst I remained on the same train throughout these two legs of the journey
perth station a really nice station actually and it is absolutely deserted there's nobody here
at all just got off the train from glasgow queen street it's taken me under six hours to
get up here from shrewsbury a few other people got off and then they they've gone and i'm now
waiting for a train which will take me up to my final destination today which is inverness
so i've got about an hour just kicking about around here i'm gonna
maybe just have a little look into the town and see what it's about and yeah
get back here in about 45 minutes time i'll see you in a little while cheers
Yes there was a lot of impressive railway architecture on show at Perth Station.
It must have been a very busy junction in its heyday though it’s importance remains with
lines reaching out to Inverness, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
well Perth is quite a nice place anybody know what those
words mean behind me there it's actually the waterworks for perth city and apologies to anyone
who's watching who was offended by my earlier comment that i was walking into town
when it's quite clearly a city so my mistake there but it's quite nice the
sun's out i'm gonna have a little bit of a wander around before my train up to Inverness, see you in
a bit this is the
bridge for trainspotters on a single track line
i don't know where it's going i've no idea where this line goes so probably just into perth station
there which is just down that way it's a great little bridge this because you can walk alongside
the railway line and get to the other side of the river tay which in itself is a pretty impressive
river i'm going to take a few shots of that in a minute and then yeah start to head back i think
Originating on the slopes of Ben Lui in the West of Scotland, the Tay flows through Perth on its
way to the Firth of Tay. It’s Scotland’s largest river and is tidal at this point.
A class 158 was waiting for me at the station and this would be my final leg
up to Inverness. Again, I had to use one of my tickets on the barrier.
The scenery was becoming more mountainous as we
journeyed through the Cairngorms, through Aviemore and beyond.
and after Aviemore, the train runs alongside the Strathspey railway for
a while. I’ve never visited but it does give me another excuse to return to this part of the world in the future.
The blue sky and the autumnal colours of the land looked lovely through the carriage windows
though I expect it’s even more picturesque in the winter when there’s snow on the ground.
What’s your favourite time to travel on the train? Please let me know in the comments below.
well we arrived into inverness on time and
these class 43 seems to have been following me around all afternoon
after a few minutes on the platform i made my way through the barrier and into the city
okay guys and that was shrewsbury to inverness for £63.50 not too bad that if you can do it cheaper
please let me know in the comments below otherwise hope you enjoyed the journey i'm gonna go to
the premier inn tonight and have a good night there and i've got another trip lined up in
the morning so i hope you've enjoyed this one i shall see you on another one soon cheers for now