Well, the end of another week. Been quite an eventful week – little Ben got a tummy upset that kept him off nursery, so I had to stay at home for a day and look after him, and just this afternoon a couple of friends asked me to be an usher at their wedding next year, which was dead nice of them!
On a rather different note, almost exactly this time last year, Arriva trains started a loco service to Leeds in the morning (I wrote about it extensively) – I got it the first ever time it was run back then (with a brass band and everything), and today I got it for the last time it’s going to be run. Yup – after a year of running an extremely comfortable, successful, and popular service, they’ve decided the whole thing was only a trial after all, pulled it, and are replacing it with a two carriage set. I would estimate that the loco has between 4 and 6 times the capacity of a 2 carriage set, and the loco was always chocka by the time it left Horsforth, so exactly what’s going to happen I don’t know.
Oh yes, and I’m sure the fact that Arrive have lost the franchise for this area is nothing to do with them withdrawing the service. Come to that, I’m sure the fact they started it at all was nothing to do with bidding to keep the franchise – course not.
For completeness sake – I do still have the mock-leather card holder (which I use for my season ticket.. seems appropriate somehow), and I have usually seen the young lady I chatted to that first time on the rare occasion when I’ve got the loco, but we have never talked again.