Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Baffobear wrote:

What ever happened to the Ipswich to Basingstoke service. It wasn't
widely publicised, but if it was I'm sure it would have provided a good
cross London Link. I I remember seeing an Anglia DEMU at Camden Road a
couple of years back. Now 'one' has taken over Anglia, do you think they
will be reintroduced?


Heres a report I wrote about the journey in 2001

Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Smith ]
Sent: 08 October 2001 19:40
To: Simon Bradley; Sadlers; Ben Franks
Subject: Basingstoke proves too deep into East Anglia


Its going to be a long time before Crossrail is built - a big tunnel
between
East and West London that will provide a way of getting from Ipswich to
Basingstoke without changing. Until then there is Crosslink, the
service
from Anglia railways that does the same thing, using existing bits of
the
railway, and last Friday I checked it out.

The Anglia train leaves from platform 10a, a far flung, urine reaking
place
I hadnt visited before, which was quite exiting, full of semi derilct
station buildings. Our newish Turbostar unit was only ten minutes late,
and
we were soon curving round to join the North London line. To our right
a
vast field of rubble. This is the early stages of work on the Channel
Tunnel
Rail Link, and I guess once this has been built a flat in Stratford
might
make sense - 10 minutes to the city, 2 and a half hours to Paris. Still
thats years away.

Wed picked up about ten people at Stratford, the train virtually empty.
Most
of these it turned out were savvy North London Line passengers,
realising
this was an express to Highbury and Islington. It was a joy to fly
through
Hackney Wick and Dalston, instead of the usual stop start torpor of the
NLL.
We made use of the fast track, slow track that had previously been
purely
academic to me, and at Camden Road, a NLL train was held for us while
we
flew by. This superior treatment brought out the worst in me and I
regret I
found myself making "******" gestures at the passengers on the slow
train.

Somehow the view seems bigger from the Turbostar windows, and as we
passed
through Kentish Town you get a marvelous view of the city skyline. I
tried
to imagine myself in the position of an Ipswich resident, fearfull of
the
big city, knowing this train would take them to Basingstoke without
risk of
contamination by the great Wem. Perhaps I would look in bemused
curiosity at
St Pancras, the London Eye, the PO Tower, longing but not daring to
approach
"I can see the look in your eye Mabel - put such thoughts out of your
mind.
There is nothing but wickedness in this city, wickedness I tell you.
This
train keeps us safe". And thats the core market for this service -
those who
fear crossing London by underground. Its the yokel special. And people
with
heavy bags I suppose.

Either way not many people are using it. 4.30pm and after West
Hampstead
there were only six passengers on board, four who got on there. Come
into my
parlour said the spider to the fly. As the doors shut it turned out
that
three of them didnt want to be on the train anyway. One woman wanted
Willsden Junction and another Richmond. Thanks to the poor information
at WH
they were being whisked away to Feltham miles away. One guy wanted
Cricklewood not much sympathy for him as he was at the wrong station.
What
should have been a five minute journey was for him now going to be
nearly
two hours.

So of we went, six passengers, three who didnt want to be there and two
who
didnt care where the train went if there was a bar, which unfortunatly
there
wasnt due to staff shortages. This is where things started going awry.
The
train crawled through West London the only real points of intrest the
loop
between NLL and Brentford ( bizarely controlled by semaphore signaling
- v
rare in London) and long slow look at Feltham Young Offenders
Institute.
Beyond here the train stops at Staines - a station now known as Gateway
to
Thorpe Park Adventure World. Staines like Slough suffres from a
negative
image, whether being the entrance to a theme park will help I do not
know.
The train then breaks out of London through Virginia Water and along
the
Chertsey loop, a route I havent done before, quite pleasant, but lack
of
drink forced us to abandon our Anglian journey at Woking.

Its a nice idea, crossing London without changing but they need more
work at
promoting it. Its not that quick either Stratford Basingstoke 2 hours
15
mins. On a good day you could do it on tube and train from Waterloo in
an
hour forty. But perhaps its better than being sucked into drugs and
prostitution by changing in London.