Wheels within Wheels
Aug. 4th, 2015 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidgillonI've been meaning to write-up my trip North, though I'd anticipated being slightly quicker about it.
I booked the train tickets at Chatham Station the Sunday before I travelled, made it clear I'd be travelling in my wheelchair, and was assured that wheelchair spaces and assistance had been booked for every leg of the journey - three there, three back. I'll be slightly more skeptical next time.
Heading up-country was mostly straightforward, starting with the usual scary roll down the hill to the station - it's a both hands flat on your pushrims and one foot on the ground and still picking up speed in places sort of hill. Once you reach the bottom, wheelchair access to Chatham station is via a locked gate with a buzzer off the car park as the station is in a cutting with the main foot entrance on a bridge above. I pressed the buzzer just as the platform guard was coming out of his little office as a train pulled in, meaning he jumped and swore when it went off behind him, though he relaxed when I shouted it wasn't my train. Everything worked fine for getting on my train when it did arrive, I've used a chair on the Javelins (basically a Japanese bullet train) before and there's plenty of space set aside for wheelchairs, even if it was the first time it was actually for my chair. Another wheelchair user boarded a couple of stops later and I was amused when she was all "You'll have to excuse me, I'm new at this, you'll think my steering's awful" - she clearly didn't imagine I'm nearly as new at it as she is.
Rolling across from St Pancras to King's Cross was fine, though I've no idea if I was meant to be checking-in with anyone at KX, I simply pushed over to the right platform when my train was announced and reached my carriage just as the guard was coming out of it, so he grabbed the ramp and pushed me straight aboard (the ramp was at a significantly steeper angle on the 225 than on the Javelin, so I really needed that push). Access to the carriage wasn't ideal, the rotating door toilet juts out into the passageway, and means you to come at the doorway into the carriage proper at an angle, and the luggage rack, right in the doorway, is only about 6 inches deep at the door side, meaning luggage is almost inevitably sticking out. I don't think I've ever actually seen the wheelchair space before as I've usually been much further down the train, but you've got a much smaller version of the normal table, half of which flips up, no seats on the entrance side, and two flip-up seats on the other. There's actually much less space than on the Javelin, but there is enough, provided luggage isn't in the way. I got into my space, but people immediately started stacking luggage in the second wheelchair space to the other side of the corridor.
Fortunately no-one turned up needing to use the other wheelchair space and the two seats there were eventually occupied by a young Jewish couple with three kids under 5, so I invited the husband to make use of the flip-up seats opposite me - they didn't quite touch me in the down position and there was space for him if he angled his legs slightly into the aisle and his daughter was small enough she didn't need any leg-space. I had quite an interesting chat with him, they were returning to the UK after living in Israel for several years (I got the impression they'd initially emigrated before they had the kids, but had now decided to move back), I was slightly annoyed by his "I guess from the wheelchair you don't work" (okay I don't, but the wheelchair's actually irrelevant to that), and he also wanted to know why I was using it, but given he'd opened up about himself first it was difficult to be too annoyed. I did think afterwards I should have warned him to be more cautious in discussing Israeli policy towards Gaza (he brought it up, not me), not everyone in the UK is likely to discuss it quite as levelly as I did. One disconcerting event, halfway through the journey we went around a bend and a large bag fell from the top of the luggage rack, landing right up against my chair. If there'd been an aisleside passenger seat there it would have been on someone's head.
Getting off at Darlington was trouble free, I just had to wait for the Bishop Auckland train to turn up, which was quite a come-down after the Javelin and the 225. The 2 hourly Bishop Auckland to Saltburn service (Darlington's roughly midway) is run by Class 142 Pacers - picture an 1980s bus body (with 1980s bus seating), now put it on a goods wagon chassis, fit fixed axles that screech as they're forced around bends because that's cheaper than the articulated bogies used on every other train, and sling a diesel engine underneath, then hitch two of them together in pushme-pullyou formation and that's a Pacer (it's very noticeable no one ever tried to run Pacers in the London commuter belt/Home Counties, passengers wouldn't have stood for it). They aren't quite as old as the line itself, which is the original Stockton and Darlington railway (as in the original public railway, anywhere) but they're still 30 years old and showing it, and they don't reach accessibility standards, though legally they don't have to be replaced until 2020. Because most of the stations they call at are unmanned, they use their own ramp, and there are two large steps down at either side, which mean when you get to the top of the ramp you're actually on a narrow aisle just wide enough to take a wheelchair crossways. There is a narrow wheelchair space on both sides just forward of that, but that was stuffed full of buggies as there were a bunch of families coming back from a day at the seaside at Saltburn; there was nowhere else for them to go, so no point complaining, and muggins was stuck in the aisle by the doors. That was a problem in all sorts of ways, probably most importantly the chance of going over backwards if there was any sort of crash or emergency stop, so I tried to back myself against the door to the unused driver's cab (there's a cab at each end), but the guard uses that when not doing her stuff, so I was constantly shifting forward to let her in or out, back for safety and to let passengers off, and I ended up scratching my right push-rim all to hell on the edge of the ramp, which hangs on the cab wall next to the door. Annoying, not at all ideal, and I was glad when we reached Bishop Auckland, where at least my sister was waiting.
Travelling back a week later was the reverse of the process, in theory. At least I got into the wheelchair space on the Pacer this time as I was joining at the start of the journey, getting off wasn't quite as simple, someone had left his bike projecting into the doorway, and once I got round that to the ramp the guard wanted to take me down backwards, there wasn't any point in that as I had decent wheelchair gloves to brake myself, and I didn't fancy trying to do a 180 on that narrow bit of aisle (with bike), but halfway down the idiot, standing to the side of the ramp, decided to 'help' by grabbing one of my push handles, which of course slewed me around towards him. It didn't do any damage, this time, the edge of the ramp straightened me up, but I can see him potentially tipping someone out of a chair if he does it a lot. (This is one of the reasons why I normally have the back of the chair folded, keeping the temptation to 'help' out of people's way, but I have to have it up if I'm using my wheelchair bag).
So that left me on Darlington station with 8 minutes until the East Coast Main Line service to Kings Cross arrived. I thought I'd better let the station staff know I'd arrived given they hadn't had to bring out their ramp for me, so wheeled the length of the platform to find them. There were a bunch of wheelchair users waiting to catch northbound services on the other platform, where the staff kiosk is, but fortunately the supervisor called across to ask if she could help.
"Just letting you know I'm on the 12:01" says I.
"You're travelling in the wheelchair?"
"Er, yes."
She looks perplexed, pulls out a roster, asks my name.
"Not according to this you aren't."
So I show her my tickets, with mandatory seat reservation, point out I'd been told I had assistance booked all the way through, and that this is the return leg.
She looks at the tickets, "That's for the middle of a carriage, and it's for coach C, not Coach F with the wheelchair space," (I'd noticed that the previous evening when I checked my ticket and had thought it seemed strange that it wasn't the same coach as on the way up, but just presumed the train was arranged differently for some reason).
Fortunately she didn't quibble, she just set one of her people to dialling the on-train guard's mobile and finding out if anyone was using the wheelchair space, which fortunately there wasn't, and then she led me all the way back down the platform, fetched the ramp, and got me aboard.
All within 8 minutes. Thank god I went to check with staff.
So I get on board, and there's the same awkward access, but I get myself settled, reach across, flip up the seat opposite, and the bloody guard promptly drops a folded buggy into the space! Not impressed.
And again you had passengers piling luggage into the wheelchair space opposite, no matter there might be someone needing to use it at the next stop and I'm sitting across the aisle to demonstrate what it's there for. No one did get aboard, but they could so easily have. And in fact I got back home to find someone complaining on Twitter that precisely that had happened to them on their journey and they'd spent the journey in the aisle. I did have a problem when I needed to go to the loo, someone had folded another buggy and stood it just beyond the doorway, stopping me getting past the luggage rack - so I picked it up and tossed it down the aisle to the other side of the toilet doorway. Needs must!
Off without issue at Kings Cross, over to St Pancras and onto the platform to wait for the Javelin where I was joined by another manual wheelchair user and her husband. Once it pulled in one of the station staff led us to the wheelchair space, which of course was at the opposite end of the train. We found a powerchair user waiting, so that was three of us in the three spaces, then after a few minutes the staff member reappears to announce there's another powerchair coming, and could we please get the two manual chairs into one space. That meant the two of us facing into the aisle, which I'm not sure is strictly speaking legit, and I had to do all the manouvering to move in beside her once her husband got her turned around, which I eventually managed. With feet projecting into the aisle we were getting glares from everyone who tried to squeeze past, but apparently the idea of turning around and walking down to the next carriage rather than squeezing awkwardly past us didn't occur to any of them. The one plus point was that it meant I, the other manual chair user and her husband could have a really good chat about chairs and I've got recommendations that one of the local dealers can be trusted.
And off at Chatham, where the ramp off the train deposited my front castors into the gutter down the middle of the platform, which hung me up and I couldn't get out of the way of the other manual chair following rather too closely on my heels.
"That was my foot!" protests she.
"You can't feel it," says he!
And the last hurdle was the ramp out of the station car park, built of scaffolding, I kid you not, and impossibly steep. I've done it before, but I wasn't about to risk it with the back-bag on my chair (especially not with the new laptop in there), so I finished the journey waddling up using my chair as a walker until I could find a taxi to take me up the hill and home.
Definitely a mixed experience, with Southeastern maintaining their record of somehow screwing up every other journey where I've asked for assistance. I can't help wondering if assistance had been booked on the way up, or if it just fell into place by chance, but they definitely screwed it up on the way back, the seat reservation made it clear the mistake was made when I bought the tickets. Virgin East Coast managed to sort it, in 8 minutes, but if the wheelchair seats had been full I'd have been left on the platform at Darlington. And even Virgin have a problem with the on-train luggage situation.
(OMG, you can download the Bishop branch line for Train Simulator -- worth a glance to see just how basic Bishop Auckland Station is - the Class 166 Sprinter in the video is actually a generation more advanced than the Class 142 Pacer!).
I booked the train tickets at Chatham Station the Sunday before I travelled, made it clear I'd be travelling in my wheelchair, and was assured that wheelchair spaces and assistance had been booked for every leg of the journey - three there, three back. I'll be slightly more skeptical next time.
Heading up-country was mostly straightforward, starting with the usual scary roll down the hill to the station - it's a both hands flat on your pushrims and one foot on the ground and still picking up speed in places sort of hill. Once you reach the bottom, wheelchair access to Chatham station is via a locked gate with a buzzer off the car park as the station is in a cutting with the main foot entrance on a bridge above. I pressed the buzzer just as the platform guard was coming out of his little office as a train pulled in, meaning he jumped and swore when it went off behind him, though he relaxed when I shouted it wasn't my train. Everything worked fine for getting on my train when it did arrive, I've used a chair on the Javelins (basically a Japanese bullet train) before and there's plenty of space set aside for wheelchairs, even if it was the first time it was actually for my chair. Another wheelchair user boarded a couple of stops later and I was amused when she was all "You'll have to excuse me, I'm new at this, you'll think my steering's awful" - she clearly didn't imagine I'm nearly as new at it as she is.
Rolling across from St Pancras to King's Cross was fine, though I've no idea if I was meant to be checking-in with anyone at KX, I simply pushed over to the right platform when my train was announced and reached my carriage just as the guard was coming out of it, so he grabbed the ramp and pushed me straight aboard (the ramp was at a significantly steeper angle on the 225 than on the Javelin, so I really needed that push). Access to the carriage wasn't ideal, the rotating door toilet juts out into the passageway, and means you to come at the doorway into the carriage proper at an angle, and the luggage rack, right in the doorway, is only about 6 inches deep at the door side, meaning luggage is almost inevitably sticking out. I don't think I've ever actually seen the wheelchair space before as I've usually been much further down the train, but you've got a much smaller version of the normal table, half of which flips up, no seats on the entrance side, and two flip-up seats on the other. There's actually much less space than on the Javelin, but there is enough, provided luggage isn't in the way. I got into my space, but people immediately started stacking luggage in the second wheelchair space to the other side of the corridor.
Fortunately no-one turned up needing to use the other wheelchair space and the two seats there were eventually occupied by a young Jewish couple with three kids under 5, so I invited the husband to make use of the flip-up seats opposite me - they didn't quite touch me in the down position and there was space for him if he angled his legs slightly into the aisle and his daughter was small enough she didn't need any leg-space. I had quite an interesting chat with him, they were returning to the UK after living in Israel for several years (I got the impression they'd initially emigrated before they had the kids, but had now decided to move back), I was slightly annoyed by his "I guess from the wheelchair you don't work" (okay I don't, but the wheelchair's actually irrelevant to that), and he also wanted to know why I was using it, but given he'd opened up about himself first it was difficult to be too annoyed. I did think afterwards I should have warned him to be more cautious in discussing Israeli policy towards Gaza (he brought it up, not me), not everyone in the UK is likely to discuss it quite as levelly as I did. One disconcerting event, halfway through the journey we went around a bend and a large bag fell from the top of the luggage rack, landing right up against my chair. If there'd been an aisleside passenger seat there it would have been on someone's head.
Getting off at Darlington was trouble free, I just had to wait for the Bishop Auckland train to turn up, which was quite a come-down after the Javelin and the 225. The 2 hourly Bishop Auckland to Saltburn service (Darlington's roughly midway) is run by Class 142 Pacers - picture an 1980s bus body (with 1980s bus seating), now put it on a goods wagon chassis, fit fixed axles that screech as they're forced around bends because that's cheaper than the articulated bogies used on every other train, and sling a diesel engine underneath, then hitch two of them together in pushme-pullyou formation and that's a Pacer (it's very noticeable no one ever tried to run Pacers in the London commuter belt/Home Counties, passengers wouldn't have stood for it). They aren't quite as old as the line itself, which is the original Stockton and Darlington railway (as in the original public railway, anywhere) but they're still 30 years old and showing it, and they don't reach accessibility standards, though legally they don't have to be replaced until 2020. Because most of the stations they call at are unmanned, they use their own ramp, and there are two large steps down at either side, which mean when you get to the top of the ramp you're actually on a narrow aisle just wide enough to take a wheelchair crossways. There is a narrow wheelchair space on both sides just forward of that, but that was stuffed full of buggies as there were a bunch of families coming back from a day at the seaside at Saltburn; there was nowhere else for them to go, so no point complaining, and muggins was stuck in the aisle by the doors. That was a problem in all sorts of ways, probably most importantly the chance of going over backwards if there was any sort of crash or emergency stop, so I tried to back myself against the door to the unused driver's cab (there's a cab at each end), but the guard uses that when not doing her stuff, so I was constantly shifting forward to let her in or out, back for safety and to let passengers off, and I ended up scratching my right push-rim all to hell on the edge of the ramp, which hangs on the cab wall next to the door. Annoying, not at all ideal, and I was glad when we reached Bishop Auckland, where at least my sister was waiting.
Travelling back a week later was the reverse of the process, in theory. At least I got into the wheelchair space on the Pacer this time as I was joining at the start of the journey, getting off wasn't quite as simple, someone had left his bike projecting into the doorway, and once I got round that to the ramp the guard wanted to take me down backwards, there wasn't any point in that as I had decent wheelchair gloves to brake myself, and I didn't fancy trying to do a 180 on that narrow bit of aisle (with bike), but halfway down the idiot, standing to the side of the ramp, decided to 'help' by grabbing one of my push handles, which of course slewed me around towards him. It didn't do any damage, this time, the edge of the ramp straightened me up, but I can see him potentially tipping someone out of a chair if he does it a lot. (This is one of the reasons why I normally have the back of the chair folded, keeping the temptation to 'help' out of people's way, but I have to have it up if I'm using my wheelchair bag).
So that left me on Darlington station with 8 minutes until the East Coast Main Line service to Kings Cross arrived. I thought I'd better let the station staff know I'd arrived given they hadn't had to bring out their ramp for me, so wheeled the length of the platform to find them. There were a bunch of wheelchair users waiting to catch northbound services on the other platform, where the staff kiosk is, but fortunately the supervisor called across to ask if she could help.
"Just letting you know I'm on the 12:01" says I.
"You're travelling in the wheelchair?"
"Er, yes."
She looks perplexed, pulls out a roster, asks my name.
"Not according to this you aren't."
So I show her my tickets, with mandatory seat reservation, point out I'd been told I had assistance booked all the way through, and that this is the return leg.
She looks at the tickets, "That's for the middle of a carriage, and it's for coach C, not Coach F with the wheelchair space," (I'd noticed that the previous evening when I checked my ticket and had thought it seemed strange that it wasn't the same coach as on the way up, but just presumed the train was arranged differently for some reason).
Fortunately she didn't quibble, she just set one of her people to dialling the on-train guard's mobile and finding out if anyone was using the wheelchair space, which fortunately there wasn't, and then she led me all the way back down the platform, fetched the ramp, and got me aboard.
All within 8 minutes. Thank god I went to check with staff.
So I get on board, and there's the same awkward access, but I get myself settled, reach across, flip up the seat opposite, and the bloody guard promptly drops a folded buggy into the space! Not impressed.
And again you had passengers piling luggage into the wheelchair space opposite, no matter there might be someone needing to use it at the next stop and I'm sitting across the aisle to demonstrate what it's there for. No one did get aboard, but they could so easily have. And in fact I got back home to find someone complaining on Twitter that precisely that had happened to them on their journey and they'd spent the journey in the aisle. I did have a problem when I needed to go to the loo, someone had folded another buggy and stood it just beyond the doorway, stopping me getting past the luggage rack - so I picked it up and tossed it down the aisle to the other side of the toilet doorway. Needs must!
Off without issue at Kings Cross, over to St Pancras and onto the platform to wait for the Javelin where I was joined by another manual wheelchair user and her husband. Once it pulled in one of the station staff led us to the wheelchair space, which of course was at the opposite end of the train. We found a powerchair user waiting, so that was three of us in the three spaces, then after a few minutes the staff member reappears to announce there's another powerchair coming, and could we please get the two manual chairs into one space. That meant the two of us facing into the aisle, which I'm not sure is strictly speaking legit, and I had to do all the manouvering to move in beside her once her husband got her turned around, which I eventually managed. With feet projecting into the aisle we were getting glares from everyone who tried to squeeze past, but apparently the idea of turning around and walking down to the next carriage rather than squeezing awkwardly past us didn't occur to any of them. The one plus point was that it meant I, the other manual chair user and her husband could have a really good chat about chairs and I've got recommendations that one of the local dealers can be trusted.
And off at Chatham, where the ramp off the train deposited my front castors into the gutter down the middle of the platform, which hung me up and I couldn't get out of the way of the other manual chair following rather too closely on my heels.
"That was my foot!" protests she.
"You can't feel it," says he!
And the last hurdle was the ramp out of the station car park, built of scaffolding, I kid you not, and impossibly steep. I've done it before, but I wasn't about to risk it with the back-bag on my chair (especially not with the new laptop in there), so I finished the journey waddling up using my chair as a walker until I could find a taxi to take me up the hill and home.
Definitely a mixed experience, with Southeastern maintaining their record of somehow screwing up every other journey where I've asked for assistance. I can't help wondering if assistance had been booked on the way up, or if it just fell into place by chance, but they definitely screwed it up on the way back, the seat reservation made it clear the mistake was made when I bought the tickets. Virgin East Coast managed to sort it, in 8 minutes, but if the wheelchair seats had been full I'd have been left on the platform at Darlington. And even Virgin have a problem with the on-train luggage situation.
(OMG, you can download the Bishop branch line for Train Simulator -- worth a glance to see just how basic Bishop Auckland Station is - the Class 166 Sprinter in the video is actually a generation more advanced than the Class 142 Pacer!).
no subject
Date: 2015-08-04 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-04 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 01:53 am (UTC)When you're all set in one wheelie space and the General Public are using the mirror space as a handy dumping ground—that's an infuriating feeling of invisibility.
Also, riding sideways is a terrible idea; I could dig up the EU report explaining just how many ergs of damage one's vulnerable to, but let's just take it as read.
Hooray for good chair advice, and hope the family are all well.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 11:51 am (UTC)Bit of both, I think.
Good question. There's a lot of preserved stock that gets rolled out for special occasions, and some solely heritage lines with regular schedules, but for scheduled mainline services? The Intercity 125s, the high speed link before the East Coast line was electrified are still about, they were introduced in 1976 and a quick glance at Wiki doesn't show anything obviously older. ETA: Everything has to be accessible by 2020, so the days of the Pacer at least are numbered (though apparently the Civil Service tried to claim earlier this year that replacing them in the North East wasn't 'cost effective' and had to be slapped down by the relevant government minister)
It is, isn't it. I suspect they may have breached their own safety regs in doing that.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 05:40 pm (UTC)I wish you very uneventful and boring journeys in the future!
no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 11:35 pm (UTC)I'm just praying the flight to Athens in a couple of weeks doesn't turn into a wheelchair disaster!