The end of day one of my mini tour of the north-west saw me heading north, almost to the Scottish border, to stay the night in Carlisle. From Merseyside, and more specifically Headbolt Lane, the easiest way to do this was to head east on a Northern service to Wigan Wallgate and then cross the road (literally) to Wigan Northwestern to jump on a train north. With a 20 minute connection at Wigan, I was initially a bit nervous, but the one minute walk from station to station meant this wasn’t a problem and I was soon waiting on one of Wigan Northwestern’s platforms waiting for my Avanti West Coast service.

Entering service on the Merseyrail network in November 1978 and March 1983 respectively, the class 507 and class 508 units have served the commuters of Merseyside and the surrounding areas for over 40 years. Despite a refresh in the early noughties, the class 507s and 508s were showing their age and a replacement clearly needed. This replacement came on 23rd January 2023 when 777049, the first Class 777 entered service.

Having arrived in York onboard a Grand Central from Peterborough, leg 2 of my trip to the north-west of England would take me across the Pennines and into the north-west itself. This leg I would be taking the first of two journeys on this trip with TransPennie Express, or TPE, from the Yorkshire capital all the way to Liverpool. I’d be travelling in 1st Class for both my journeys with TPE to see the differences between their different offerings and to hopefully enjoy more relaxed journeys on my two day train marathon across England.

With my AvGeek posts such as ‘Heathrow – Spotting at Myrtle Avenue’ and ‘Luton – Spotting Around the Airport’ performing weirdly well on the blog, the end of June saw me heading out on a two-day trip planned around doing some spotting and writing some more of that type of post. But as well as some AvGeeking, I’d made the most out of this trip, fitting in plenty of rail journeys, starting with this one from Peterborough to York with Grand Central.

Arriving into Helsinki on the Tuesday afternoon, I’d spent the evening settling into my accommodation and exploring some of the local area, and you’ll be able to read about that when my Helsinki post is published in a few weeks’ time. However, before I explored Helsinki proper, I’d decided to also see another part of Finland and so headed to Helsinki Central Station to catch a train to Tampere.