Today I woke up very early to say my final farewell to Virgin Trains.
I woke up at 05:00 to catch the 06:00 service from Gloucester to Worcester Shrub Hill. It was very dark so we couldn’t see very much – but we did have the whole carriage to ourselves which was very nice.
We arrived at Worcester Shrub Hill and my dad was in desperate need of coffee so we went to the Loco Shed cafe at the station, which is a very nice cafe. We then waited on the station for our second train of the day to Birmingham New Street. This was a West Midlands Railway service formed of two class 170’s to soak up all the commuters which surprisingly wasn’t very busy.
We arrived into New Street on Platform 9. We then walked to the departure boards and found out our train was on Platform 6, so we walked up the stairs to the main concourse. When we arrived at the platform our London Northwestern service had been delayed by around 7 minutes. Our train then emerged from the darkness of New Street tunnels. It was formed of 8 carriages – two class 350/2’s
We boarded the train at the front and were expecting it to be very busy. The train was packed as it arrived into Birmingham New Street but then almost completely emptied and we boarded and found a seat. We were delayed by over 15 minutes arriving into Crewe so my dad was happy as he would get some compensation 🙂 . It arrived into Crewe station at 09:19.
We went straight to the first class lounge and relaxed by eating blueberry muffins and drinking lemonade. We next went down to the platform to ensure we were on the train in time. I was confused as the Holyhead train was scheduled to come into Platform 11, but at the last minute there was a platform alteration, now departing from platform 9. This was luckily just opposite, so we hopped on the train in coach E – First Class – and sat down. Almost before we even left the station we were being served teas, coffee’s and juices.
As the service started to get moving we ordered our breakfast – Full Breakfast – scrambled egg, tomato, two rashers of bacon, sausage, black pudding and mushrooms. As the caterers start at Chester we got served our food just after we left Chester Station.
The food was amazing – top notch Virgin Trains – we then went through the beautiful Welsh countryside and we were approaching Holyhead before we knew it.
When we arrived in Holyhead it looked like it had been deserted and it was raining – when I say raining I mean RAINING. We were drenched by the time we walked back to the station as it was too cold to stay outside. We were so cold sat in the Stena Line Ferry terminal. We had bought advance tickets so we couldn’t travel on the first available service so we had to wait two hours. So we went over to Lidl as there was nothing else to do, and caught a video of a super voyager leaving and then another one coming into the station.
When we got back from Lidl our train was almost ready for boarding so we walked the whole length of the 5 carriages and then waited for our train to depart and got my lemonade and we were off once again.
We then called at Bangor and it started raining once again 🙁 next it was Llandudno Junction. We continued on to all other stations en-route to Crewe the best bit was travelling though Conway Castle.
We then pulled into Crewe and went to the first class lounge and had a drink and a nibble or two! Our train was then approaching the station When we went down to the platform our LNR service to London Euston was there, but we were only travelling as far as Smethwick Galton Bridge. We arrived into Galton Bridge and our second to last train of the day was delayed which was very important as our GWR service, we needed to catch home was dependent on this train being on time.
When we were approaching Shrub Hill we were 9 minutes late so we were almost certainly going to miss our train – we did! So we had to wait until the 21:53, the next train to Gloucester. By this time it was 19:17 so we decided to catch a train Foregate Street and walk round the town of Worcester and then catch the GWR service bak to Gloucester from Foergate Street. We went back to the station early as it was getting late by this time. We witnessed a row on a GWR IET involving 6 drunk young lads and then a few more trains arrived and departed and then it was our train to Gloucester.
It was a lovely send off to Virgin Trains. #finalwhistle