On Sunday 2nd June 2024 the newest part of Scotland’s railway opened to scheduled passenger services, with the eight-mile Levenmouth branch line from the ‘Fife Circle’ to Leven re-opening to passengers after a 55-year hiatus. Just over three months later, on Tuesday 3rd September, I made my way to Edinburgh’s Haymarket station to start my own journey to visit the line and tick off Scotland’s two newest stations.
And so its here, the final part of Exploring the East Coast, my series where I’ve visited every station on the East Coast Mainline (ECML). From the major stations of London Kings Cross, York and Newcastle, to the small rarely used stations of Acklington, Chathill, Pegswood and Widdrington, there were just two stations left to tick off and in this post we’ll visit both. Unlike the majority of the other posts where I’ve visited the stations on the same day, or at least with only a short gap, life meant that I visited the first of these two stations in February 2024 and the final station of the series in September 2024.
Back in August, we headed south to Tonbridge one Friday after finishing work to stay a couple of nights in the Kentish market town. Despite the town having plenty to see and do in the vicinity, we weren’t staying in Kent to do any of that, we were staying to enable us to get an early start and leave the Garden of England by way of doing something a bit different. Saturday 17th August was the day in 2024 when old London buses took over the town of Warminster and the nearby Salisbury plain and so we were heading to Imber, by Hastings!
Having arrived in Chester on a delayed Transport for Wales service from Manchester Airport, I had a reasonable length connection before the last leg of my tour of the north-west, the train taking me south. To finish this mini rail tour I would be travelling on what was, at the time, Britain’s newest class of train, Avanti West Coast’s (AWC) class 805s. This journey from Chester to London Euston during the first month of the type’s operation in standard class would be a good test to see how the units compare to other members of the AWC fleet.
My time travelling around the north-west was drawing to a close and with a day of spotting at Manchester Airport under my belt, it was time to start the journey home. The obvious routing for me to get to Peterborough from the airport would be to take a train to Manchester Piccadilly and then change for the direct East Midlands Railway service to Peterborough, but where would be the fun in that? As such, the first leg of my journey home would actually be taking me further away, as I headed to a city on the western edge of England, Chester.
AvGeekery was the main aim of my tour of the north-west and after a disappointing spotting trip to Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport the previous day, day two’s itinerary featured a location that promised to be more successful. Manchester Airport is the third busiest airport in the UK and the busiest outside of London, with more than 28 million passengers passing through in 2023. The airport sees more than 180,000 annual movements and with destinations ranging from Amsterdam to Addis Ababa and Zurich to Zakynthos, there’s plenty of variety.
Flights & Times 