Today I woke up very early at 05:15 to catch the 06:15 Cross Country Service to Newport, as today was a day where I was going to tick off some more route on the railway network. Transport for Wales very kindly sent me over some complimentary tickets to Milford Haven.
We arrived in Gloucester Station and sat inside the ticket office and waited for our train to come in. We then went over and caught the 06:15 service to Newport. At this point it was still pitch black and the trip to Newport was mostly in darkness and then when we arrived into Newport the sun started to rise.
Next, we waited at Newport for 25 minutes so we could catch the 07:33 Newport to Milford Haven. The train was packed until Cardiff Central when the carriage basically completely emptied. We left Cardiff and passed Cardiff Canton Depot which had a very wide variety of stock. When I went to Carmarthen earlier in the year we didn’t stop at all the small stations between Cardiff and Swansea but we did today so we had quite a few stops until we got to Swansea. We passed a very empty Swansea Hitachi IET depot and then continued into Swansea where the train reverses.
We left Swansea and headed for Carmarthen, calling at most stations enroute. When we arrived into Carmarthen, we once again reversed direction and continued onto Clarbeston Road, where we turned off and went down towards the Milford Haven branch line. We then arrived into Milford Haven, got off the train and bought some tickets to be able to travel to Fishguard Harbour. We then reboarded the same train we had come in on and sat down.
After we left the conductor came and checked our tickets, we told him we needed to alight the train at Clarbeston Road which is a request stop. We were then approaching Clarbeston Road and the conductor opened his local door, checked the platform and then gave a full door release. We left the train and walked up to street level. There wasn’t much about, we walked down the road towards a pub and then we walked the other way towards a park. By the time we had finished our walk we were ready to go back to the station and wait for the train.
I signalled to the driver to stop and then the train came to a complete halt – the first time I had ever needed to request for a train to stop! We got onboard the train and sat down. We had some lunch onboard the train and then we were shortly arriving into Fishguard & Goodwick. Two minutes later, we were approaching Fishguard Harbour. It felt like we had just come from a ferry as the station was basically inside the ferry port! We walked to the end of the platform in the sun! We walked back to board the train and then it started hailing! Typical British weather, blue sky and sunshine to grey skies and hail! Our train was then ready to depart. The next stop was once again Fishguard & Goodwick and then Clarbeston Road. We were then calling at most stations to Carmarthen.
We reversed once again at Carmarthen and waited for our departure time to come. We left the station and then we ran fast and only stopped at a couple of stations after Carmarthen. We avoided Swansea (as in not going into the station). This was another new piece of line for me as I had gone via Swansea station on my previous journey to Carmarthen.
After that, we were shortly going to be arriving into Cardiff Central, where our train terminated. I was expecting to catch the TfW train to Gloucester from Cardiff. When we got off the train, we saw a Cross Country class 170 which was bound for Nottingham but called at Gloucester. This meant we didn’t have to stay as long in Cardiff which after waking up at 05:00am was something to be happy about.
We arrived back into Gloucester and drove home from the station.
Thank you very much TfW for the very kind gift of the tickets and enabling me to tick of some more route on my challenge to travel Britain’s railways.
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