Monday 29 September 2014

44093 & 42208 – 18:05 Friday 25th September & 18:30 Monday 29th September




















44093 & 42208

Apologies to all those who have been waiting all weekend, with a great gnashing of the teeth at the lack of update for Friday. But let me go some ways to make amends by presenting no only another Carriage A photo, but a Carriage A photo that features none other than everyone’s favourite lightbulb changer and train nerd, Sam Sammington, or @slowpokesam to his friends.

Sam needed no encouragement to pose like a gone to seed page three girl in front of 44093 which was the Carriage A on the 18:05 Frome service. If anyone would like more photos of Sam, please contact me at the usual address.

Anyway, I can’t remember whose idea it was, but the two of us spent a very pleasurable Friday evening in the town of Hungerford getting the first scans on this year’s @caskmarque Cask Ale Week trail. There’s a free T-Shirt riding on this so it’s all systems go if we both want to avoid another arrest for indecent exposure.

Remember both Samuel and I encourage decidedly reckless drinking at every opportunity.

Alas Monday was much more mundane with the single capture of a Carriage F, 42208, on the 18:30 Weston-Super-Mare service.

Still a capture is a capture, and so is a Cask Marque scan which I bagged at the Bayswater Arms before legging it round to Paddington.

Cheers!

Thursday 25 September 2014

42280 – 18:05 Thursday 25th September

42280


Just the single carriage capture today and that was because the 18:05 to Frome was ready before either the Bristol or Penzance trains so a straight through journey to home seemed the simplest and easiest option. I took a seat in Carriage E, 42280, but before I tell you about the journey home let me fill you in on this morning’s excitement.

I took a seat in my customary Carriage A (sorry, no number) but quickly found that the bloke sat in the window seat was one of the types who believes he has a right to his own seat and half of yours as well. He’s legs were spread only just on the side of decency and the way he was hogging the arm rest made him look like a fat Tudor king on his throne.

By the time we’d reached Theale I was already cursing my luck on choosing this particular seat because Old King Cole wasn’t budging an inch and of course I couldn’t do anything as un-English as move seats of my own accord. The next moment there was a tap on my shoulder which turned out to be one of the Theale boardees who was claiming his reserved seat from me.

So whilst I was in embarrassed shock that I’d made that novice mistake of sitting in a ticketed seat it gave me the ideal excuse to move away from Henry VIII and have a much more comfortable journey into town.

The journey home turned out to be just as comfortable as my travelling partner this time was a delicate young blonde lady who not only asked me if the seat was free before sitting down but didn’t take up any of the arm rest, made no noise at all whilst reading her Kindle and didn’t feel the need to put her knees on either side of the seats in front.

Alas me old mate @cr_rail was having a much worse journey. Ooooo, he was cross!


Wednesday 24 September 2014

42347 & 42571 – 18:03 & 18:37 Wednesday 24th September























42347 & 42571


Want some carriage centred excitement?

Well you’ll never guess what? Tonight’s Carriage F, 42347, on the 18:03 to Penzance was in the wrong place! It was between Carriage D and Carriage E and consequently has made me uncomfortable ad itchy for the whole evening!

Just wrong!

Luckily Carriage C, 42571 on the 18:37 to Frome was in the right place, behaving itself.

Friday 19 September 2014

42272 & 42169 – 18:00 & 18:37 Friday 19th September




















42272 & 42169

Oh it was a veritable chuckle-fest on the way home tonight.

The 18:00 Bristol Temple Meads service was a regular seat in 42272 Carriage F but on the 18:37 Frome service whilst stood in the doorway of Carriage B, 42169, FGW’s very own Ollie set me up for what must be a contender for joke of the century.



Oh please yourselves.

Tuesday 16 September 2014

42075 & 44101 – 18:03 & 18:37 Tuesday 16th September





















42075 & 44101

So there I was thinking that this was going to be another boring old mundane train journey home because although I’d successfully captured two new carriages, namely 42075 (Carriage D on the 18:03 Penzance) and 44101 (Carriage A on the 18:37 Frome) nothing worthy of reporting happened on the actual journeys.

What did happen though is that several hundred First Great Western passengers were inconvenienced by a mad marauding pidgeon tonight. @recklessrik ‘s tweets confirm this.



My suspicions have fallen on @PigeonJon who is well worthy of a follow if you want funny tweets from a pigeon.



And what also happened was then when filling out my Carriage Capture filing system I noted that, unless I’m very much mistaken and hopefully Grant or Ollie will put me right if I am, that Carriage 44101 has the highest number of all HST Carriages, making him the envy of all the other carriages no doubt.

Well I thought it was interesting…….


……you don’t have to read this you know!

Monday 15 September 2014

42562 & 42085 – 18:03 & 18:37 Monday 15th September

 


42562 & 42085

Not a great deal to report on a very mundane 18:03 Penzance Service other than another refurbished Carriage E, 42562, which took me to Reading.

The 18:37 to Frome was slightly more exciting, especially in Carriage D, 42085, where the elderly couple opposite me had a falling out because the chap had left their copy of the Evening Standard in the luggage rack.

“Oh Tom, you’ve not gone and forgot it have you?”

“Doesn’t matter, you have this.”

“I don’t want the Financial Times Tom, oh I can’t believe you’ve left it behind.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll go and get it in a mo.”

“Oh Tom, you only had to remember one thing.”

To be quite frank, if Tom had returned with the paper (which he dutifully did) and rolled it into a tube and lamped her round the bonce with it I wouldn’t have blamed him.

Thursday 11 September 2014

42573 18:00 Thursday 11th September

42573


The only exciting thing to happen today was spotting a besuited gentleman carrying a surfboard through Paddington. It made sense to see him heading for the Penzance train so it also made sense to see me head for the Bristol 18:00 service and so avoid the possibility of having a surfboard as a neighbour.

Carriage E on the service was one of the new refurbished ones and was identified by the numerals 42573 and the fact that the air conditioning seemed to be broken already.

But the main thing was that I was on time and to all those doubting Thomases who think I’ve made the surfboard story up……he was spotted later on at Slough by @DomUtton



Where on earth is the beach at Slough?

Wednesday 10 September 2014

42042 & 42365 – 18:03 & 18:37 Wednesday 10th September




42042 & 42365

It was a very FGW day today.

First of all it was that red ringed and highlighted day of the year that means I get to spend over £4,000 pounds on a tiny slip of paper that allows me to travel between home and dirty old London town everyday for the next year. Remember kids, the ticket is for the journey, not for the seat.
This mucky deal was carried out by the best thing to happen to Thatcham Station since they repainted the platform shelters, Nice Peter, who made it the fastest 4 grand I’d ever spent but at least I was safely ensconced on the 06:57 and started the new travelling year with an on time arrival at Paddington.

What wasn’t on time is the 15 working days it took FGW to reply to an enquiry I’d sent in after the 2 hours I had to spend in a field just outside Theale. (Remember this fun episode fans?) What I was enquiring about was I’d heard that FGW produces letters for passengers to give to their employees when their time-keeping is called into question. As my three month review was due on that very same day I felt that being armed with such a letter might be prudent.



Alas what I got back from a certain Nigel D’souza wasn’t quite what I expected and leaving aside the fact he hadn’t bothered to sign it and the quite bizarre staple stamped in it in the middle of the page, there was no way I’d have presented this to any employee, even if I had been working for Fred Karno’s army, mostly because of the confusing sentence that read “…feel so let down especially you get late to work.”

I know it’s a cheap shot to take the micky out of one single missing word (God only knows how many mistakes are littered throughout this blog) but had this been included along with a signature and a properly presented letter I may have found it easier to believe Nigel’s ascertain that he was “genuinely sorry”, and hadn't just printed off a boiler-plate reply, shoved it in an envelope and was probably first in line for the canteen’s shepherd’s pie lunch as normal.

Still, he’s made the blog so that’ll be nice for him!

Tonight I got 42042, a Carriage D on the Penzance Service and 42365, a Carriage B on the Frome Service. I had a seat on both. Bargain!

Sunday 7 September 2014

41109 11:15 Sunday 7th September

41109

Eh? What’s this? The BGC capturing a carriage on a Sunday? And capturing a 1st class carriage at that?

No friends, your eyes do not deceive you, I did indeed manage to enter a single, solitary and rare-to-capture Carriage K into the little black book today, that being 41109 which was part of the 11:15 to Swansea.

And why was our carriage-laden hero travelling today?
Well for no other good reason than that of pleasure, as me and the good Mrs BGC decided to use up two complimentary FGW tickets before they expired and what better way to use them up, but a nice day trip out to Cardiff.

I was hoping to maybe see @fgw_cdfcentral on duty and maybe get that long promised #selfie but instead I had to make do with a wave from @SnailbeeEmma as we sailed by, which was just as nice!


The sun shone, the castle looked splendid, Bute Park was gorgeous, afternoon tea at Pettigrew’s tea rooms was superb and just to top everything off, the trains were also on time.

The only damp squib of the day was finding ourselves in the same bloody carriage on the way home meaning that this opportunity to capture two 1st class carriages didn’t quite materialise.

Still there’s always the complimentary coffee and biscuits to take your mind off things.

Free!

Oh, and just before anyone gets too jealous and starts believing that absolutely everything is rosy is those ivory towers of 1st class……. On the train too Cardiff we sat in the two single seats opposite each other and noticed that the snooty couple across from us had not only spread every single page of every single supplement of their bumper Sunday paper across the whole table but had also decided they simply weren’t exercising their occupational rights enough and had stowed their bags not in the racks above their own heads, but above our heads instead. On the train back home, although we weren’t in a quiet carriage, some telephone dickprick decided that having a normal call wouldn’t be fair on us all to only have to listen to one half of the conversation so kindly put his phone on loudspeaker so we got to hear the person on the other end as well. Just goes to show that not even money can allow you to escape from the train-tosspots.

Hurrah! Tomorrow’s Monday!

Friday 5 September 2014

44068 06:57 Friday 5th September

44068


Friday’s trains are always that little bit more empty which means a better chance of a double-seat (check) and a better chance of getting a snap of Carriage A without looking too much of a dunderhead (check).

Today’s snap of 44068 (on the 06:57 to Paddington) also includes one of the cycling fraternity, who is quite happy to turn himself into an even dafter looking spectacle in lycra by becoming a walking (or cycling) advert for mineral water. What you can’t quite see are the shorts which were similarly adorned.

I mean, wearing a replica football shirt is one thing, but become Mr Gerolsteiner is something quite else.

Wednesday 3 September 2014

42035, 42197 & 40113 – 18:15, 18:03 & 18:37 Tuesday 2nd September & Wednesday 3rd September


 42035, 42197 & 40113


Yesterday was boring, even by the sleepy levels of this blog, with a single carriage captured on a slightly later than normal train, the 18:15 to Swansea. But 42035, a Carriage B, still got me to Reading in time for a sneaky Snickers in the waiting room.

Tonight was much, much more exciting when the 18:03, Penzance service saw me inside a re-badged Carriage F, otherwise known as 42197.

We were just about to leave on a very pleasant late summer’s evening when a portly chap in a zipped up puffa jacket asked if he could take the seat next to me. He then spent the next ½ hour in a constant round of wheezing, mopping his brow with his baseball cap and playing World of Warcraft on his laptop and never once did it occur to him to take off his jacket.

Ah well, each unto their own.

The 18:37 to Frome saw me aboard another Carriage F, 40113, and the weather was still so pleasant I stood by the open window in the vestibule and even managed to take a selfie complete with carriage number. 


Orderly queue ladies, orderly queue............



Monday 1 September 2014

42173 18:37 Monday 1st September

42173


3 days working from home curtailed any chances of any further Carriage Captures at the end of last week, but it was back on the wagon today.

Alas, a single carriage made it to the book being 42173, a Carriage C going home to Frome. I sat on one of the flippy-up seats by the disabled toilets and generally made all the people getting off at Theale tut as they had to squeeze past. Perhaps I was out of order as much as the toilet was?

HA, joke!