Satunnainen

"Ooooh, more Helsinki posts!" said no reader ever.  It has gone on a bit, hasn't it?  It's gone on so long that when I wrote the first post someone messaged me to say they were going to Helsinki later in the year on holiday so they were looking forward to reading about it.  That person has subsequently had their holiday and come back to the UK and I'm still here writing it up.  In my, defence, I've had a lot going on at home so I've not had the space to carve out two hours to yammer on about Finland.  Also, I loved it all, so I wanted to give it the attention it deserved.

The point is, though the Helsinki Metro is all finished, there's some other transporty things I did in the city, so here they are, gathered together for your "pleasure".

The 15

Last year, when I travelled on the Lidingöbanan in Stockholm, I made notes as I travelled, a stream of consciousness that I put on the internet.  Finding myself in Helsinki with no more Metro stations to collect, I decided to go on the 15 tram and do the same again.  If you recall, this is a loop line that goes from Itäkeskus to Kellaniemi via the north of the city, entirely avoiding the middle of Helsinki.  Unlike the trams in the city centre, this has been built to modern light rail standards, with its own rights of way and bridges. It takes over an hour to get from one end to the other (time via the metro: less than thirty minutes) and nobody would do it unless they're an absolute nerd.  Oh look, that's me.  Here are some vague thoughts, hammered into something resembling a blog post.  It's ok, I don't mind if you don't read it.

Oh they are request buttons! I wasn’t sure. An old lady has pushed one to get off at Roihupelto. It seems to be a large retail park. 

I went to swap seats to the little two - I’m currently on a 4 - then I spy it’s for disabled people and back away. Here I have a little table with a USB socket but I’m charging off my battery anyway.  

Running down a grassy median with a lane of traffic and cycle lanes either side. Rocks and forests and now we’re on devoted track through fields. How far out are we going? This is positively rural.  I thought it would be suburbs all the way. Two old ladies, one in floral, one in animal print, haven’t stopped talking since they boarded. Meanwhile across from me is a straggly bearded fat man in denim reading a comic. He puts it away and takes out another one with Donald Duck on the front, looking annoyed in a snow drift. Donald Duck, not the man.

An expanse of large glass buildings that scream business park; it is completely devoid of life until we get to Viikin tiedepuisto, a park, and suddenly there’s a shopping mall and a quaint little red cabin. Floral has got off here but animal print remains. The seats are faux yellow leather but the best part is the aircon, blowing at maximum throughout. Stops are plain with minimal seating. An entire family gets on at Viikinmäki, three generations, and they spread themselves around the hinge in the tram. 

I’m still wet with sweat.  My face is dry but my shirt is disgusting. I should’ve changed it. At Oulunkylä there’s a railway station, cream clapboard and looking like it’s from the 19th century: a K train passes through and pauses as we move on. A woman takes the seat opposite me but she perches on the edge so that she can face the direction of travel. There are new apartments everywhere. Is Helsinki experiencing a boom or is this the effect of the tram? Five, six storey buildings with retail at the ground floor. A building site with a crane and more being built and then some older, more 1980s blocks. The family get off and the grandad whips out a camera and starts filming the building works. What a loser. Ahem. 

Across the motorway the buildings are starker and more old fashioned, though the tram has clearly caused a new quarter to be constructed. Houses now, little tin looking buildings in pastels and surrounded by thick gardens. Hämeenlinnanväylä is under a flyover, and it’s like being back in Amsterdam. Three young men in white vests board, one Black, one Asian, one white, oozing attitude and cockiness. They only last one stop. The white boy has a cigarette behind his ear. 

All weather football pitches with people actually playing football in this scorching weather then we’re in a tunnel under Huopalahti station. Yellow tile at the stop then another new neighbourhood under construction. 

We pause at Vihdintie - to even out the schedule no doubt - and Donald Duck packs up his comic and moves to the door to exit at the next one. A roundabout over a motorway junction, thick trees and daisies and past a McDonalds drive in which is empty even though it’s lunch time. There’s a huge hole in the ground to my left with the remnants of a building at its centre; I’m guessing an old factory. 

A man got on stinking of BO and I wonder if that’s what I smell like too. He had crutches and a coat on and a thick beard but he disembarks at the next stop. So many trees, mature and high, between buildings, along side tracks, like construction is only permitted in clearings. Another tunnel, unlit, smooth. The track is hidden behind fences and we end up at Ravitie where two twelve year olds get on, one with blonde dreadlocks poking out from under his baseball cap. The road we’re passing down is silent. No cars. A single walker in athletic gear. Starting to feel hungry. May have to invest in a sandwich. 

Apartment blocks and a large wide ring road. The boys are watching a video on their phone and we can all hear it, of course. Leppävaara station, under the overpass, then a stop beside the shops around the corner. An A train waits at the platform as we pass. The boys get off for the mall. It’s a popular stop. Their place is taken by a teenage girl with a badminton racket who immediately starts talking on her phone. We pause again, probably because this is such a popular stop - time to accommodate crowds. 

Take a swig of Pepsi Max - the aircon is now getting to my throat. How long have I been on here? An avenue between seven story blocks, new with the tram line, the trees still young but the flower beds blossoming. Up a slope past multi storeys and office blocks. Another motorway crossed and then a stop in the middle of a forest, apparently; there doesn’t seem to be anything around and nobody boards or alights. A few small houses, white homes behind fences, parasols poking up, then back into the countryside via a dizzying bridge over a motorway. The driver puts his foot down until we stop at another one with seeming no purpose; it’s right by the motorway junction and that’s all. Still, a young woman gets off here and she doesn’t look like she’s going hiking so who knows. 

Following the highway.  Maari has a huge drum like building like an atrium which looks impressive but is probably just an office block. We’re in the back of Aalto University and now there are teaching blocks and laboratories but the students have seemingly all gone home for the summer. The tram pauses at a square across from the metro station - a different entrance to the one I used. The next stop is the one I disembarked at before, Otaranta, and I can get glimpses of water through the trees. Badminton girl gets off here. 

Now it’s the final stretch to the terminus, four or five of us left, me the only one who came all the way - an hour and change to travel round the edge of the city. The voice cheerily announces metro station and terminus in three languages and then we stop. 

Tikkurilla

My last day in Helsinki was an awkward one.  I had checked out of my hotel at ten am, but my transport out of town wasn't until the evening.  I had my big heavy backpack with me so I didn't want to go to a museum or something, and it was roasting hot again, so I simply rode some trains and buses and metros all day to keep myself amused.  It doesn't take much.

I took a random local train from Helsinki Central and got off at Tikkurilla.  This was a stroke of good fortune, as it turns out this is something of a star station.  A wide glass bridge dotted with shops and facilities spans the tracks.  It was big and impressive while also being incredibly practical.

Either side were shopping malls with direct connections to the station.  I had a bit of a wander round, smirking gleefully to myself, then went back down to the platform for another random train north.

Yes the Swedish name for this station is Dickursby.  No that isn't why I stopped here.

Kerava

My randomly selected train terminated at Kerava and I disembarked in a small town on the edge of the city.  The station building was getting a lick of paint as I arrived, refreshing its soft pink woodwork.  I used a wood-panelled subway under the tracks to reach the station square.

Everything about it was charming.  The building sat neatly surrounded by open land; the lack of ticket barriers and fencing made it feel so much more welcoming.  Buses idled outside in a small exchange, ready to take train passengers onward.  There were a couple of small cafes and shops in the buildings nearby.

I hovered outside the bar, mulling whether to indulge myself with a quick pint.  This is where I'm meant to go off on a rant about the price of beer in Scandinavia, but have you been to a pub in the UK lately?  The A frame outside said a half litre of beer was €9, about £7.80 at today's prices.  I'm writing this with a pint of lager beside me which cost £4.80 so that fabled gap between British and Finnish beer prices is considerably narrower these days.  I passed on the beer in the end, because I knew I wouldn't be able to have just one, and I had a long day ahead of me.

There were, incidentally, some posters on the wall advertising an upcoming concert from Erika "Ich komme" Vikman.  Europe may not have embraced her at Eurovision but clearly Finland still loved her. (Käärijä, of "Cha Cha Cha" fame, had performed at an open air festival in a Helsinki park on the previous Saturday, and I had genuinely considered going until I realised I would only know one song and the rest would be in Finnish.  Also, going out on a Saturday night?  No thank you). 

Can I use this point to mention just how massive Finnish trains feel?  When I got on the one back from Kerava it was like boarding a space ship.

Oulunkylä

If you did read that load of old nonsense about the tram journey further up the page, first of all, bless you.  Secondly, you might have noticed a mention of Oulunkylä station, one of the points where the railway lines and the 15 tram cross.  I decided to jump off and take a closer look at it.

I was sadly disappointed.  Though the station building looked lovely from the street, closer inspection revealed it had been converted into private homes.  It's tremendously disappointing when that happens, no matter where you are in the world.  I want railway stations to be stations, dammit, and even if you don't want to have the full ticket office experience (though you should) it's nice to have a waiting room for the passengers that's not just a bus stop that thinks it's fancy.

There is at least some artwork at the station, in the form of a giant slanted clock at the entrance to the subway.

The theme continues in the murals on the wall.

I'm not sure why Oulunkylä is time-obsessed, but I'm going to take a moment to pat them on the back for at least having a clock that works.  It's a modern miracle.

That definitely says Oulunkylä.  The sun was in exactly the wrong place to to get a decent photo with all the text visible.  As usual, if you would prefer I went back and took a proper sign picture, please feel free to send me a Finnair ticket.

After that there was a lot of buses, which are great; today Diamond Geezer wrote about the consultations for Superloop 13 in London and it was a reminder that Helsinki has a load of trunk route buses that do express services and they don't feel the need to hype them up as a fantastic innovation that will change the city.  Helsinki's just great to get round.  It's fun.  Go if you can.

And yes, I did go on one of the old trams.  It was rickety and noisy and packed.

So I'd taken a plane to Helsinki.  I'd gone on the underground and commuter trains. I'd ridden the buses.  I'd gone on the trams and the light rail. What possible form of transport was there left for me to take?

A ferry, of course.

The Shock Of The Old

I was at Lime Street, waiting for a train to West Kirby, hoping, as I always do these days, that it'd be a new one.  I heard the rattle and crash of an old Merseyrail train coming round the corner, but when it finally emerged, I got a nice surprise.

As a farewell present for the old trains, 507 001 has been decorated in a rough approximation of the British Rail livery it had when it first came into service 46 years ago.  Seeing the return of BR blue was a heck of a shock to the system, even if, when I first came to Merseyside, they were long repainted into yellow and white.  There was something so strange about the new, gleaming, white Lime Street Lower Level with this streak of 1970s design poured through the centre.

The train was actually headed to New Brighton but I got on board anyway.  You have to, don't you?  As I've said a million times - and someday someone will believe me - I'm not a train fan, I'm a station fan.  And when I do like a train it's because it's new and modern and gleaming.  I have no nostalgia: steam trains were cold and noisy and smelly, diesels are the same, and old trains didn't have aircon or electronic displays or CCTV.  Trains have got better and smarter over the years and we should applaud that and not hark back to when you sat in a compartment with a murderer bringing up phlegm for the eighteen hours it took to get to Truro.  

That being said, I do like a unicorn, and as the only Merseyrail train in the BR livery, 507001 is special.  I'd have been annoyed if I didn't rid it at least once.  I rode it as far as Birkenhead Park.  Sadly, they've not decorated the interiors to match the exterior; it's still the 00s revamp inside.  I was hoping for a return of those yellow and green seat covers that were always, always, hanging off the cushion underneath.

A quick trip under the river later and I was getting off to wait in the rain for my actual train.  507 001 is going to carry on looking like this until it's either dragged off to be scrapped or Robert and the Class 507 Preservation Society manage to rescue it from the dumper.  They're doing their best to have this train kept alive for future generations to visit and admire and go "Jesus, you mean to tell me they kept these going for nearly fifty years?".  If that appeals to you, please, give them a shout and a hand.  All donations gratefully accepted.

My train to West Kirby was one of the old trains too, but in the boring yellow and grey.  I know they're all dying but is it too much to ask that Merseyrail carry on cleaning them?  My one was absolutely filthy, with long streaks of dirty black marks all over it.  Ah well.  Here's a video of 507 001 on its way out of Birkenhead Park.  We shall never see its like again.  Well, we will, for probably a few months yet, but that's not quite the poignant farewell a blog post like this needs at the end.

The Future Is Now

It's been a long time coming.  A very long time.  But finally there are new trains on Merseyrail.

Yes, the 777 trains finally went into service this morning - well, one of them - and I was there to witness this historic event.  I was there with Robert, who'd taken the morning off specially, and we headed into Central along with roughly eight thousand other rail enthusiasts to see the future in action.  I didn't get a press pass; I didn't want to overawe the journos from Granada Reports and the Echo with my astonishing bona fides.  Instead I boarded the train with the great unwashed and found a seat.

A hard seat.  It was fine for the time but I wouldn't fancy going from Hunts Cross to Southport on them.  The little leatherette headrests are scant consolation for the numb buttocks.  Still, we were off, and the train was pleasingly quiet.  Anyone who's ridden the soon to be decommissioned 507s and 508s knows that, for electric trains, they're surprisingly noisy.   Clicking, chugging, whirring, not to mention the clatter over the tracks themselves, and when they get into a tunnel it's virtually impossible to have a conversation.  The 777 (in this case, 777 049, for those of you of a trainspottery bent) glides out of the station with a whirr.  It's not got the sexy purr that Birmingham's electric trains had but it's pretty cheery.

The interiors are bright and clear.  It feels more spacious, which might be because of the lack of carriage doors; this is one long train you can move down easily.  The days of people moving from one carriage to the next and forgetting to close the door behind them, leaving it banging irritatingly all the way to Aughton Park, are gone.  There's WiFi - which I couldn't get to work, but that might've been me - and charging spots under every seat.  Bikes are catered for, and so are pushchairs, and there are luggage racks and grab bars everywhere.

The most exciting feature for me is the glowing LED display telling you where you are en route and what the facilities at each station are.  I love it so much.  I'm so easily impressed by a gadget.  It tracks along the line, flagging up each station and the arrival time (which proved a bit of a mistake on the return leg when the sheer weight of enthusiasts taking pictures and leaping on and off caused it to be delayed, making all the arrival times a nagging red).  Alongside it is a scrolling message space telling us these are OUR trains and plugging Saveaways and season tickets.  I'm guessing there's already an ad seller trying to flog it to Pantene and Cadburys.

There was an honour guard of staff at every station, yellow tabarded, some snapping pictures and all of them looking thrilled.  It's a big day for the Liverpool City Region.  These trains are owned by the local authority, and so basically my Council Tax paid for it.  I asked if they'd name one after me but so far I haven't heard back.  They're replacing trains that have been on the rail network for as long as I've been on Planet Earth and I think people are going to be delighted when they see them.

Somewhere outside Sandhills the set of four seats in front of us was cleared and Andy Gill from North West Tonight appeared with a camera man.  Right behind him was the man himself, Mayor Steve Rotherham.  They proceeded to sit in front of us, holding an interview, while I felt a blush rush up over my face.  Still, it means, for the first time in my entire life, I've been on telly: gurning and trying not to look at the camera.  

Robert never made it on air, which is payback for that time we went to see Pointless and he, Ian and the BF all appeared in an audience shot and they cut me off the edge.  No I'm not bitter.

Steve finished his interview and did a bit of glad handling, asking a potential voter nearby what he thought of the trains.  Unfortunately he'd not taken into account the, let's say, devoted personalities of us train folk.  His question of "what do you think of the new trains?" was met, not with a resounding fabulous!, but a "better than I thought they were going to be".  Steve quickly skulked away.  Similarly, a reporter from Radio Merseyside prowling the aisle realised not to canvass the opinions of any of the middle aged men about the train or she'd get a load of information about bogies she didn't know she needed.  Instead she pounced on the slightly bewildered looking civilians who hadn't realised the magnitude of their journey and just wanted to get to Fazakerley Hospital.

At Kirkby, the end of the line, we all disembarked to take a picture of the front.  It's interesting that the M logo is accompanied, not by Merseyrail or Merseytravel, but by Metro.  Is there a rebrand coming?  

A train man literally sighed with disgust when I took a selfie in front of this train, as well he might.

We all got back on board for the return trip, for some reason passing up the opportunity to sample the delights of Kirkby.  More photos were taken, more videos - I apologise to all those people who got my fat head in the back of their YouTube presentations.

Back to Central, and we stayed on for another round trip.  The dignitaries all got off, while a lot of the train fans did too so they could film it departing, leaving it much like an ordinary train trip to Kirkby.  It meant I got to look out at the scenery a bit - Everton's new stadium rising in two curved halves on the dockside, like an upturned crab; Kirkdale's broken lift "until further notice", a reminder that even what was once new and exciting falls to the ravages of time and lack of maintenance; the row after row of new trains at the depot, waiting to join their brother over the next year or so.

The new trains will make Merseyrail feel so different.  Modern, forward thinking, exciting.  I hope the rollout is fast enough to mean that they can ferry people to the Grand National or the Open or Eurovision, these big events that will act as a showcase for the City region.  I hope people are proud of them.  I hope the scallies don't tear them to pieces.

I got off the train at Moorfields so I could get the Wirral Line home, promising to have a drink with Robert at a later date (he was staying on until Central to maximise his new train time).  I filmed the train departing from the platform.  The first train of many.

A Post About Trains For People Who Don't Know Anything About Trains

I'm not a train nerd.  I mean, I am, but I'm also not.  There are whole subcategories of train nerdery.  I like the stations, I like the maps, I like the lines.  The actual trains?  Not bothered.  Are they clean and fast and quiet?  Great, thanks, that's all I need to know.

I do like new trains, in the sense that I like that there are new innovations and technological advances being spread onto the network.  (This is one of the reasons I despise the D-Train - it's an old train that's been tarted up a bit).  But I'm fascinated by new tech in general.

In short, this is going to be a recap of my visit to the prototype of the new Merseyrail trains, and if you're really into rolling stock, you're going to find it very shallow and irritating.  On the other hand, if you're just someone who happens to use Merseyrail on a regular basis, you might find it illuminating.

The first impressions are very good.  We were greeted by a member of Merseyrail staff, who proudly showed off the new features.  One of the most notable is also one of the most controversial - customer operated doors.  These are one of the causes of the Merseyrail guards strikes that plagued the network, but they're still there.  Push the button and a small step slides out to meet the platform edge; this enables level boarding for wheelchairs and prams, and is the first time it's been seen in the UK.  It's also why all the stations are being closed in shifts to have their platform edges adjusted to accommodate the sliding step. 

On board it's as bright and shiny as you'd expect from a new train.  These will be space trains, so it'll be possible to move from one end to the other with no annoying doors between carriages.  Bars are provided for standing commuters.  In the door vestibules there's a pole in the middle to grab hold of, though the staff lady did say the design would be changed on the real trains.  At the moment it's just a single bar but people realised that on a Saturday night that'd become something for people to twirl on; it's going to acquire three outer handholds to discourage this.  Looks like my dream of recreating Nomi Malone's iconic pole dance from Showgirls somewhere outside Freshfield will have to wait a little longer.

The new seats are... ok.  They're a mix of fours so you can sit with your mates and airline style, meaning there are more seats in every train, and they come with headrests and plug sockets and tiny tables for your cappuccino.  Some of them fold up, and the single seats now face forward so that, for example, mothers can sit alongside their pushchairs.  They were, in the opinion of my buttocks, less comfortable than the existing seats.  They felt like they were made out of some kind of hard foam.  Perhaps they'll soften with time. 

The driver's cabin has windows in it so you can spy on him and see where you're going; at the push of the button the driver can turn the glass opaque for his own privacy.  I'm guessing the glass will be opaque 99% of the time.  I didn't take try the driving seat, so please enjoy this picture of it being modelled by friend of the blog Paul: 

It looks a lot comfier than the passenger seats.

My favourite feature of the new trains ("Class 777" if you're nasty) is the moving next train indicators.  On the prototype they're just photos, but on the finished trains there will be LED screens showing the line route and updating in real time with your position.

LED screens in the cabin will also tell you what the next station is, and it all looks lovely.  I'm shallow like that.  Stick a glowing TV screen in anything and I'm sold.  The rest of the train could've been an open carriage with bench seats and I'd have been captivated by the shininess.  Just to really get me excited, there'll be free wi-fi, even in the tunnels - a side benefit of the new CCTV, which is live streamed to the control centre.

The train prototype was on display in Pacific Road in Birkenhead until today, but it will be moving to Lime Street in the near future for you to have your own gawp at it.  That smiling LED at the front of the train will then be heading to a station near you in 2020.  I'm quite pleased.

Ambush Makeover

So.  You've got a fleet of trains that, if they were humans, would be balding and have little pot bellies and would be making "aaaaah" noises every time they sat down.  The polite thing to do would be to send them out to pasture, but you can't afford to replace them.  What to do?

Why, give them a make over!

First Merseyrail applied vinyl to the side of their trains, to make them look peppier.  Now the interiors are getting a new look as well.  I rode on one last week, and I'm happy to report they've been done well.  It's not as radical a change as the one a decade ago - it's purely cosmetic - but it's made the trains feel fresh and bright again.

The new moquette on the seats is very nice.  Yellow and grey, obviously.  Was there ever any doubt?  Big orange strips have been applied to the doors as well, just so you know where to get off.

The most radical improvement is tucked between the seats though.

A bin!  An actual bin!  About time too.  It probably won't make much of a difference - for some reason, Merseyrail's passengers treat their trains like the floor of a cinema; chuck anything down there, someone else will pick it up - but it's nice to see.  If it swallows up just a few of those errant Metros, it's more than paid back the investment.

(Yes, that's two posts about trains in a row.  Don't worry, I'm doing a bit of station collecting later in the week).

Fast Electric Trains

This is a blog about railway stations.  I feel the need to put this up front in big black letters because I'm about to delve into the world of actual trains, and people do get very steamed up about it.  I can pretty much blag my way through a post about stations because I know a bit about architecture and I know a bit about history and I know a bit about geography.  Trains though?  You have to be absolutely right or a thousand people will descend on you and tear you to shreds, like a school of piranhas on Helga Brandt.  So please forgive any factual errors that may follow, and take heart in the knowledge that I don't really care.

I was at Liverpool Lime Street with Robert so we could ride an electric train.  The line between Manchester and Liverpool has finally been electrified, and as a result, Northern have started rolling out new trains in a new shade of purple.  They've been going for a few weeks now but this was the first chance Robert or I had to actually experience the joys of electric traction via Newton-le-Willows.

Of course, they're not actually new trains.  They're London's cast offs.  While the capital is getting a new fleet, these trains have been sent up north.  For twenty years they plied the Thameslink route i.e. the line from my home town of Luton to London.

It meant that while Robert was positively giddy at seeing these trains in the flesh, I was a bit underwhelmed.  I remembered these when they were actually, properly new.  I used to ride them all the time.  Obviously they weren't purple then, but they were still the same trains.

I think my lack of enthusiasm may have infuriated Robert.  He's a proper railfan.  Throughout our conversation he referred to the trains as "319s", and he was able to identify the train we were about to ride on as the one called "Northern Powerhouse" just by the number on the front (319362).  I admire that level of knowledge, but I can't equal it.  I'm only able to remember that these trains are Class 319 because I can hear Victoria Wood and Julie Walters repeatedly saying "319" in that sketch where Duncan Preston is a disgruntled hotel guest ("319 was down for a continental breakfast, a tart and a Daily Telegraph."  "Well, I can assure you I didn't have a woman in my room all night."  "Did you get your Daily Telegraph?").  If all the other classes of trains could somehow tie into skits by much loved comedy performers I'd be a lot better at remembering them.

Robert going for a position as the new hostess on Wheel of Fortune, there.

We got on board, and I was disappointed to see that Thameslink's silhouettes of the London skyline had been replaced by a blank wall.  Could they not spring for a Liver Building or a Beetham Tower?  Something a bit Northern and special.  Still, the moquette on the seats was pleasant - purple, obviously - and there were scrolling LED screens to tell us our next station.  Or, more specifically, our next "station stop", which is a horrific abuse of the language and a frustrating tautology.

It was all weirdly familiar, like a lenticular portrait where you can see two things at once.  As we got going, especially on the fast stretch over the Chat Moss, I was simultaneously in the North and on Thameslink; I was thirty eight and sixteen.  Memory and reality in collision.

The trains are faster and quieter than the current diesel services, though they won't be at their full potential until all the slow old trains have been stripped out of the timetable - probably around December.  Then the travel time between Liverpool and Manchester will be cut severely, and about time too.  It's always taken a bafflingly long time to get between the two greatest cities in the North.  Making them an easily commutable distance apart will help break down some of the "them and us" between them.

We rode the train all the way to Manchester Airport, the slightly-common computer voice being sure to tell us this was a Northern Electrics train.  It was certainly a smoother ride than I was used to over this route, though I will say these trains don't have the same beautiful electric whine as Northern's other electric services, over the Burnage line.  You might remember that I liked the noise of those trains so much I recorded it.  Those were Class 323s, and they have a soft, slow rise to their engine noise; the 319s are a little more mechanical and clunky.  Still, you didn't have to shout over them, and when we were held at a junction in Manchester, the whole train fell silent.  No more listening to the chug of a thirty year old diesel engine ticking over.

On the train back, which was 319363 by the way, I used the toilet.  These were always a tiny moment of hell on the Thameslink route; you'd open the door and find yourself trapped in a shit smeared cubicle with a pan bunged up with all the paper.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it was clean and fragrant (though the air freshener still had First Capital Connect written on it), and the graphic they've used over the window to give you a bit of privacy was surprisingly pretty.

So those are the new electric trains to Manchester.  As the year goes on, more and more of them will be rolled out, including taking over the Preston services, so what's special right now will quickly become ordinary.  Soon people will complain about these trains the way they complain about all trains, but I like them, and not just because they made me feel young again.

Robert was chuffed anyway.