Night Riviera

It’s approaching eight years now since I retired with the intention of doing lots of things whilst I was still able. One of those things wasn’t specifically to travel by night train but if you’ve read any of my previous blogs, you might have noticed that I’ve spent a few nights on trains hoping that the gentle rocking of the carriage sends me off to a comfortable and relaxing sleep. Up until recently it hadn’t. I’ve been on the Caledonian Sleeper twice, spent five days on two different trains in Canada, and travelled from New York to Seattle which required three nights on the rails in the USA. Whilst I enjoyed each experience, especially the crossing of Canada, I can’t say that getting a decent sleep was part of any of them. Despite this I recently had a new sleeper experience when I took the Night Riviera from London Paddington to Penzance. Would I finally get the relaxing sleep I craved? Spoiler alert: No. Was I otherwise impressed with the service? Read on to find out.

The Night Riviera is one of three UK sleeper services. The Caledonian Sleeper runs the other two, The Highland and Lowland Sleepers. Both of these trains split/join on the way with the Lowland Sleeper serving Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Highland Sleeper Aberdeen, Inverness and Fort William. The Night Riviera, operated by GWR, plies just the one route, London to Penzance. Like both Caledonian Sleepers, there’s one train in each direction every night except Saturday. The westbound train departs Paddington at 23:45 and arrives in Penzance at 07:55. The eastbound departure and arrival times are two hours earlier though you don’t have to vacate your cabin at Paddington until 06:45. The timetable therefore allows you to get a (hopefully) solid seven hour’s sleep if going the full distance in either direction. To enable this, the train takes a less direct route than the day trains and also spends more time in some stations on the way than it really needs to do.

You don’t have to go all the way to Penzance, there’s plenty of stops before you get there.

Two Class 57 locomotives? Yes, the blue one hauled us down to Penzance, the green had shunted the train into Paddington and would be detached at Reading.

Obligatory Paddington shot and the nostalgic Slam Doors of the Mk3 carriages.

With the timings sorted for a decent night’s sleep, does the accommodation on board facilitate that goal? The train has two carriages with standard seating. These are great value if you are the masochistic type who can cope with an eight hour overnight journey whilst upright. As I mentioned in the Caledonian Sleeper blog, I something similar many moons ago and would never consider it again. Absolutely brutal. Hats off to those who do it though. There is a cafe car between the seating carriage sand the rest of the train which consists of three sleeper carriages. Rather than invest in new carriages like Caledonian Sleeper did a few years ago, GWR decided to refurbish the Mk3 carriages they already had. There is just one type of cabin on the Night Riviera, unlike the Caledonian Sleeper which has three. Each has two bunked beds with the upper bed stowed if the cabin has solo occupancy. There are no en-suite facilities though there is a sink hidden beneath the bedside shelf for basic ablutions. Space is limited, though there are a small number of designated accessible cabins with room for a wheelchair user. There is room beneath the bed for bags and the world’s narrowest wardrobe with a couple of hangars. The window had a pretty effective blind and the light switches and charging sockets are handily placed next to the head of both lower and upper beds. They’ve used the understandably limited space well but how does the most important aspect of the room, the bed, hold up? It has a comfy mattress and soft bedding. There’s two fluffy pillows. So far, so good. The (very small) elephant in the room, however, is the size. It is just about long enough for me ie. Mr Average, to lie flat on without adopting the foetal position but it is very narrow. I did get the feeling I was teetering on the brink, especially if I lay on my left hand side. As such I laid on the right facing the backrest. Once I got used to it, it was in fact very comfortable. If you need a wee during the night you are going to have to wander down the corridor and use one of the lavatories at the end of the carriage. This is an area where the en-suite cabins on the Caledonian Sleeper wins but having had nocturnal corridor wanderings on the trains in Canada and the USA, and also the time I used a standard cabin on the Caledonian Sleeper, it isn’t really too much of a hassle. Just remember to take your key card with you. Finding the carriage attendant to let you back into your cabin in your night attire would be slightly embarrassing. Some people might be tempted to stay in their cabin and utilise the sink for number ones. That would be gross. Don’t do it.

More cabin views from the inside and out.

The sink, six inch deep wardrobe and my view for the night (whenever the light was on).

The cafe and the seating carriages. Eight hours overnight on the latter? No thanks.

So that’s the cabin. Would I get any sleep in it? Sleeper passengers can utilise the GWR First Class lounge at Paddington from about 21:00. This is a pleasant place which used to be Queen Victoria’s private waiting room so you are following in the footsteps of giants. There’s free soft drinks and snacks – biscuits, nuts, crisps etc – and comfy chairs. We were called to board the train at about 22:30. I found my cabin and a few minutes later got the briefing from the carriage attendant. I also put in my breakfast request and obtained a slot for the showers at the lounge in Penzance. I went to the cafe car and got a beer from the cafe car. Like the lounge, soft drinks and snacks are free for sleeper passengers but I had to pay for the beer. I drank some of it in the cafe car’s lounge and took the rest back to my cabin. It was probably a bad idea to have said beer with the lavatory arrangements as mentioned above but I felt it was required to get the full Night Riviera experience. I still had time for a wander up the platform to get a photo of the locomotive and a look at the seating carriages which affirmed my decision to pay the sleeper supplement. Back in my cabin, we pulled out of Paddington bang on time and I settled in for the night. My previous sleeper train experiences have been rattly and shaky affairs. Not so much on the Night Riviera. Whilst by no means silent, the rooms offer some excellent soundproofing from what is happening outside the train. The ride of the old Mk3 carriages was much better than on the Caledonian Sleeper’s newer Mk5s with just gentle motion as the train trundled down the tracks towards the West Country. It was also a much better ride than the trains in Canada and the USA so if I was ever going to get a decent sleep on a train, this was the one to be on. Despite this, I didn’t sleep well. It took me a while and a visit to the loo before I got off and once I did, it wasn’t long before I was awake again. I reckon I managed two hours of sleep and maybe a couple more of dozing. The strange thing is that the frequent stops were what woke me up. The very gentle rocking motion when we were moving was more conducive to sleep than total lack of movement. Good as though the cabins were at keeping the external sounds at bay, any noises from adjacent cabins sounded as though they were just a couple of feet away which, as it happens, they tended to be. This wasn’t much of an issue for me but if your neighbour is an early riser or getting off at Bodmin Parkway you may be woken from your slumbers with the sound of the blind being raised an hour or so before you would like. Anyway, I finally opened my blind at 06:40 (possibly waking up the person in the next cabin – they are are quite loud when you raise or lower them) to be greeted by St Austell Cathedral and blue skies. My breakfast was delivered at the allotted time of 07:00, a warm bacon roll with a choice of sauce, an apple juice and my umpteenth pack of biscuits of the trip. It was rather nice to eat it whilst the pleasant Cornish countryside trundled by outside the window. Not quite the wow-factor of breakfast on Rannoch Moor on the Caledonian Sleeper but much appreciated nevertheless. I popped on some daytime clothes as we approached Penzance where we arrived about eight minutes late.

Good Morning Cornwall, breakfast is served.

St Austell Cathedral and, an hour or so later, Welcome To Penzance.

This was a bit after my allotted shower time of 08:00. Would they take pity on me? I needn’t have worried. The expected rush to the showers in the Night Riviera lounge never happened. In fact I believe I was the only person to take advantage of the facility, everyone else seemingly heading for the connection to the Scillonian Ferry. It was a nice shower too, a fluffy towel was provided and I emerged as fresh as a daisy. The lack of sleep would catch up with me later on in the day but for now I was raring to go. Go where I hear you ask? That’s another story which I won’t relate here other than it involved a few trains, a couple of buses and a Ryanair flight from Newquay to Edinburgh.

Ever wondered how to say ‘Night Sleeper Lounge’ in Cornish? Me neither. I never found out what ‘nice shower’ is in Cornish.

To summarise, I think the Night Riviera is a great product. A direct comparison can be made with the Caledonian Sleeper’s lowland service to Glasgow or Edinburgh in a non-en-suite cabin (Classic Room). The journeys take a similar time and level of service is almost identical. Points shared. Both have comfy but narrow beds. I prefer the Night Riviera’s layout with the upper berth stored and the ladder folded away. The positioning of the ladder on the Caledonian Sleeper was annoying whilst lying in the lower bunk. A narrow (literally) win for NR there. Where NR really won was the ride afforded by the carriage. It’s old Mk3 stock ride the rails significantly better than the newer Mk5 of the CS. The fact I didn’t sleep well on either of them is down to me rather than the trains themselves but overall it is the Night Riviera for the win. True, it’s not much of a win if you end up in Penzance and wanted to go to Glasgow but to me the Caledonian Sleeper is style over substance whilst the Night Riviera is substance over style. Was I impressed? Yes I was.

Costs: I booked the train two months in advance. It cost £57.50 for the ticket with a Senior Railcard plus £109 for the sleeper supplement, total £166.70. Pricing is dynamic so you might pay more or less but I think what I paid was about average for a midweek, summer trip. The price sits midway between a Standard Room (£140) and Club (ie, en-suite) Room (£195) on the Caledonian Lowland Sleeper. (Railcard Prices)

Cross Country

Apologies for the lack of action on this blogging site. I tend to do mini blogs on Facebook, usually day by day on any trips I make. I feel this is adequate for the stuff I’m doing but I really ought to make the effort to blog about entire trips or anything that takes my fancy. It’s not been happening though and it is possible that I might wind the site up when it comes to the annual invoice from WordPress. We will see. To prove to myself I’m still in the zone for blog writing, I’m sharing with you a little trip I did recently. A year or so ago I travelled down to Stourbridge in the West Midlands to ride on the Stourbridge Shuttle, a train ride that lasts all of three minutes. You can read about it here although it was more about the reaction to it than the journey itself. It turns out that that particular train trip is the shortest in the country. Yes, there are stations closer together but the trains connecting them do not start and end there. The Stourbridge Shuttle completes an entire 0.8 mile journey between its point of departure and final destination. So what? I hear you say. Well, if that is the shortest, there has to be a longest. Once again by longest we are meaning a complete journey by one train. You could travel from the far north of Scotland to the extreme south west of England but you would have to change trains a few times. The longest single journey is, however, from the not quite far north of Scotland to the extreme south west of England. It departs Aberdeen at 08:20 each weekday and arrives in Penzance at 21:31. As the return service doesn’t go all the way to Aberdeen, the southbound service is officially the longest train ride in the country at 13 hrs 11 mins and 774 or 785 miles depending on which source you believe. I had to do it, didn’t I?

Unlike the Stourbridge experience I couldn’t do the journey to Aberdeen and back from Penzance in a day so I had to do a bit of forward planning. I’d head to Aberdeen the day before, spend a night in a Premier Inn, do the trip, spend another night in a Premier Inn in Penzance and return home the day after. All tickets and hotels were secured at the beginning of January which was handy as there was a sale on, part of Railway 200 celebrations. The hotels were inexpensive too. I’ll reveal the costings at the end. To get to Aberdeen I took the local Scotrail service to Glasgow Central, walked to Queen Street and took the Inter7City service to Aberdeen. The nice thing about the latter service was that it was on board an Inter City 125, the world’s fastest diesel train, the grand old lady of active British trains. Whilst their days of doing 125mph have past they still provide a comfortable and pleasant ride between Scotland’s seven cities despite being well over forty years old. Having obtained them from GWR and refurbished them to modern standards seven years ago, Scotrail have stated that they are going to get rid of them and replace them with something almost certainly less exciting and probably less comfortable too. This seems to be the way with trains at the moment. Whatever happens, I was glad to get this opportunity to ride in one and it delivered me to Aberdeen on time. A wander through a strangely quiet town centre got me to the Premier Inn and a handy curry house nearby.

Class 43, aka Intercity 125. Looks cool. Is.

Retracing my steps the following morning, I returned to the station in good time for the 08:20 departure. The train was sitting at the platform having arrived from Dundee earlier which allowed me to take the necessary photographs before boarding and finding my seat for the next 13.5 hours. The train was a Class 220 Voyager operated by Cross Country Trains. The train and indeed the company are not particularly well loved by the travelling public. It was a four car unit which gave it a passenger capacity that would prove woefully inadequate later. The front carriage was reserved for First Class passengers and it was here where my seat was situated. There was a not insubstantial premium to travel in First Class, an amount that was far more than the value of the included catering we were supposed to receive. It was, however, worth it for the extra amount of personal space it gave you and the fact it meant avoiding the overcrowded Standard Class carriages further back. If I was going to be on the train for over thirteen hours I wanted to be as comfortable as possible. The chair itself was nothing special – it was a bit worn and not particularly kind to the old bum but there was a bit of recline which was nice and being a solo seat there was no need to worry about facing or sitting beside some other traveller. I had read that a forward facing seat on the left hand side was the best for the views. Mine was rearward facing and on the right. I wasn’t too disappointed but I did miss out of photographing most of the interesting sights on the way which is possibly a blessing as there’s not many worth including in this blog. We departed Aberdeen right on time and were immediately subjected to a ticket check. The carriage steward came down the aisle and served us hot drinks and some seventeen minutes after departing we made a stop at Stonehaven. This was the first of 39 intermediate stations we would call at including some biggies like York and Birmingham New Street and some small ones like Ladybank and Liskeard. We would sit at some stations for a few minutes as the train crews were changed and supplies were reloaded but for most of them we spent no more than a minute. Before the second stop, Montrose, the steward handed out bacon rolls which looked a bit insipid but were not actually too bad. For the next few hours we were regularly visited by the steward with drinks and snacks. No alcohol though, my request for a beer went unheeded. I could have gone in to Standard Class and bought one from their trolly service but I wasn’t that desperate, not a 11 in the morning at any rate. The first of several notable bridges was crossed after leaving Dundee. The Tay Bridge, which we crossed seemingly at snail’s pace, impressively spans (of which there are many) the Firth of Tay and deposits southbound trains in the Kingdom of Fife where the aforementioned Ladybank is one of the small towns we would visit in that grandly named county. We left Fife by way of notable bridge number two, the Forth Bridge, possibly the most impressive piece of Victorian engineering in Britain. Like most bridges it is better seen when not on it but it is still an impressive sight seeing the bits of the structure pass by just a few feet away.

My seat for the next 13+ hours. It was ok, not exactly plush but better than Standard Class.

First Class Catering. No silver service on Cross Country.

Tay Bridge, it has lasted longer than the original.

Forth Bridge. Scotland’s Eiffel Tower, only better.

Edinburgh Castle in moody silhouette and Arthur’s Seat hiding behind a fence.

My rather pathetic attempt at capturing the Scotland (unicorn)/England (lion) border.

Tyne Bridges and Durham Cathedral. As with the Tay Bridge I had to sneak over to the other side to get the photo.

Our first extended stop was Edinburgh Waverley where there was even enough time to stretch my legs on the platform. That brought back memories of ‘smoke’ stops on long distance trains in Canada and the USA, not that anyone could have a fag of course. The train then followed the East Coast Mainline which for some of its length runs along the coast either side of the Scotland/England border. That border was passed nearly three and a half hours after departing Aberdeen. At Newcastle we got a crew change but the galley wasn’t restocked as it should have been so any chance of something warm for lunch was gone. Leaving the ECML just to the south of York, we entered the best part of God’s Own County, the West bit. Passing through Wakefield I caught sight of the mighty Emley Moor Mast and was tantalisingly close to the place I spent my formative years. Not for long though, we entered South Yorkshire with the stop at Sheffield being the half way point of the journey. I was feeling good, if slightly peckish. The train, however, was getting busy. The seat reservations were confusing a lot of people in First Class. Back in steerage the aisles and vestibules were filling up with standing passengers. Passing through the East Midlands on what for me are unfamiliar tracks, the scenic stretches dried up somewhat. The West Midlands was no improvement, Birmingham is a huge industrial sprawl when seen from the train.

Emley Moor Mast, proudly thrusting skywards and Chesterfield’s spire, wonkily thrusting skywards.

I finally resort to listening to IQ as outside the window the midlands didn’t have much to offer. Except the HS2 work in Birmingham.

Our arrival at New Street allowed the galleys to be restocked, not that we’d find out until much later. The train was, by now, absolutely rammed which may have had something to do with the horse racing at Cheltenham. If it was not that, several gentlemen on board were going to a fancy dress party dressed as turf accountants. Arriving at Cheltenham itself didn’t improve the situation and it wasn’t until Bristol that things started to ease and Exeter before there were any unoccupied seats. Meanwhile someone discovered that there had indeed been some provisions loaded in Birmingham but the trolly service was suspended due to aisles and vestibules being blocked. If you wanted something you had to visit the galley. By the time I realised this the only hot option was a sausage roll so I had it. After Bristol the catering ended although we were welcome to raid the remaining snacks and soft drinks. Scenery wise, things had picked up after escaping the Birmingham conurbation as we skirted the cotswolds before Bristol and enjoyed a pleasant Somerset sunset after. By the time we reached Exeter at 18:45 the light had faded and the rest of the journey was completed in darkness. This meant missing seeing the stretch of line along the seawall at Dawlish, the Royal Albert Bridge and the scenic Cornish countryside. With the last three hours of the journey taking place in darkness, things started to drag. As the last few stations were ticked off, however, Penzance was getting closer and at 21:42, some eleven minutes behind schedule, we pulled into Platform 4 and came to a standstill. Britain’s longest (single) train journey done and dusted.

A Somerset Sunset means the solar panels are little more than rural artwork until sunrise the following day.

Your correspondent reporting from Penzance, his epic journey completed.

Penzance welcomed me when I arrived but I waited until the morning to photo the welcoming committee. The train that delivered me there is behind and just about to depart, destination Edinburgh.

That evening’s Premier Inn was just across the road from the station and a little further was USA Chicken which, thankfully, was open. It was more kebab shop than a KFC clone but it provided me a fried chicken wrap the size of a well inflated rugby ball. My hunger didn’t last long. My journey home started at 09:10 the following morning with a ride in a GWR Class 802 IET to London Paddington. This is another train that is loathed by railway enthusiasts but in reality, apart from a lack of padding in the seats, it is a decent machine on which to make a five hour journey to the capital. I was in First Class again as it only cost £7 more than Standard and I really enjoyed the journey. I got to see what I’d missed when it went dark the previous evening and then had the chance to enjoy the Taunton-Reading branch of the Great Western Mainline. From Paddington I caught the Heathrow Express which is vastly overpriced but if you plan more than a month in advance and use a railcard you can pick up a ‘bargain’. From Heathrow it was a BA flight to Glasgow, the airport bus and train from Glasgow Central to Barassie completing the trip.

The Class 802 that would whisk me to London was called Shania Train. GWR have a sense of humour.

Train enthusiasts hate them but I think it looks rather smart. The seat could be a bit softer but otherwise it was fine.

It was nice to get to see what I’d missed in the darkness of the previous evening. Here is the Royal Albert Bridge crossing the Tamar and taking us into Devon.

Speeding along the seawall at Dawlish and the Westbury White Horse. To be fair, the horse was on a different line to the one I came down on.

Would I do it again? No, but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. It’s a long old haul but that’s the point. You get to see a good bit of Britain on the way, warts and all, but the important thing is knowing that you’ve done it. I wasn’t the only one to think the same thing – there were at least five other folk making the journey for the same reason as me and that was just in the First Class carriage. A longer, newer, better catered and more comfortable train would not have gone amiss but I wasn’t expecting Pullman service. Here’s the thing though, it was just as well I did it when I did as this service is due to be curtailed in the middle of May. The train will likely depart Aberdeen and terminate at Plymouth. This will inconvenience hardly anyone other than folk like me that want to do the full journey ‘because it is there’. Its ending will, however, hand over the crown of Britain’s longest (single) rail journey to the Caledonian Sleeper’s service between Euston and Fort William. Will that be on my to do list come May? No, as I already did it five years ago. You can read about it here.

Costings:

Barassie-Aberdeen, Standard Class £22.70 (Split ticket, senior railcard)

Premier Inn Aberdeen £46

Aberdeen-Penzance, First Class £161.55 (Senior Railcard. Standard Class was £62.20)

Premier Inn Penzance £54

Penzance-Paddington, First Class £48.60 (Senior Railcard, Standard Class was £41.00)

Heathrow Express, Standard Class £6.65 (Senior Railcard, one month advanced purchase)

Heathrow-Glasgow with British Airways £58.00

Airport Bus Free (Scottish Entitlement Card)

Glasgow Central-Barassie £5 (Scottish Entitlement Card)