London Euston – Llandudno – Holyhead – Llandudno – London Euston – London Waterloo – Portsmouth & Southsea

This day was largely based around a rail tour to Holyhead. I met Tim on Euston station for the arrival of our HST. It seemed to look even more polished than yesterday, if that was possible. These are not the trains of my childhood, but I love the enthusiasm that people have for them, and there were a few misty eyes on the platform this morning.

The journey north passed without incident. After a slightly odd departure from Euston because of track works in Camden we were soon up to speed, touching 110mph a number of times. The HST doesn’t tilt so there are few opportunities to get up to 125mph on the West Coast Main Line.

Just short of Stafford we pulled alongside another rail tour which was also making its way to Llandudno, where the Transport Festival was under way. This one was steam hauled and had come from Birmingham. As we waited on the holding line they came into the station and left ahead of us.

We followed them as fas as Chester, where we passed while they were being turned round. Llandudno is a great destination but has nowhere for a steam train to turn so they have to run part of the journey in reverse after Chester (led by the Class 37 diesel on the other end.)

At Mostyn we passed the former British Railways steam ship, Duke of Lancaster, which has been here for many years. Various attempts to make her into a business have failed over the years, but she’s still a bit of an attraction.

At Llandudno we were greeted by large crowds of visitors to the Transport Festival, here to see both our arrival and that of the other excursion a little while later. This is also the point at which some people on our trip left for a day in the town and others boarded for the run to Holyhead. We stayed with the train.

At Holyhead we had a bit of time to walk around and take photos. It’s a shame we were pulled into a back platform, the “proper” station here is quite attractive. The train crew were busy doing jobs, changing a wiper blade at one end of the train and even fitting number transfers onto the newly painted stock.

At Llandudno we had another pause, both for the swap back of passengers and to allow photos to be taken, with the two trains in adjacent platforms.

A cheeseboard has become a bit of a tradition on our rail tours. Due to lack of suitable supplies in Holyhead, Tim had prepared one earlier, from an excellent cheesemonger in Birmingham, where his journey had begun.

The “winner” was the excellent French Langres (the one in the wooden tub) but as ever they were all excellent.

Our return journey was planned to be slow, fitting around scheduled services . I had an onward connection in London so after a bit of discussion decided to leave at Nuneaton, before a particularly long pause in Northampton.

I had a bit of time to look around the station, which I’ve passed through many times but have never stopped at. The old parts are quite lovely, but it does suffer from a lack of maintenance, with part of one platform fenced off seemingly because the roof leaked so badly. I found a rather strange structure at one end of the overbridge, but couldn’t work out what it was for.

My train to London arrived a little late but even so I was through Milton Keynes well before the rail tour had left Northampton. As we travelled I looked at my train options out of London. I’ve never seen an “Evening Out” ticket type before, but I guess coming from the north we don’t have any late enough trains home for such a ticket to be offered!

I crossed town on the tube to Waterloo, in good time for my selected service. I was happy to have made this as the two later options were both bus replacements for the last section of the journey, so I would have arrived extremely late into Portsmouth.

This service was absolutely packed as far as Guildford, but by the time we reached Portsmouth I was one of a handful of people still on board. The station entrance here is lovely, though I have no affection for Portsmouth town centre.

I took a short walk to the bus stop, from where I was able to get a direct service to my hotel, very close to the International Ferry Port.