Tuesday & Wednesday, May 11-12, The Trip Begins!

Arriving at Ottawa airport for 16:45, I managed to have two bags (suitcase and duffel bag) checked in with my baby laptop as carry-on luggage instead of the usual single suitcase.  The plane had just come in from Frankfurt, Germany and was late in arriving, having had to detour over the top of Iceland to avoid the volcano spewing ash into the sky.  By the time the plane was turned around and boarded, we left the gate in Ottawa at 19:30 - only 1 hour late.

I hardly managed to get any sleep on the trip.  What little I did get were small cat-naps which really didn’t do any good.  The trip went quite fast as I managed to watch a couple of movies and TV documentaries.  We had to make a long detour at 33,000’ over the top of Iceland and then down through the middle of Scotland to avoid the ash clouds from the volcano that were hovering off the coast of Ireland at 20,000’ into the middle of the Atlantic.  We arrived at London Heathrow at 7:30 GMT.  I didn’t realize that we had landed until the plane was doing its usual bump-and-grind as the wheels hit the runway.  I was off the plane by 7:40 and through Customs by 8:15.


It was the fastest I had ever gone through any customs -
“How long are you staying?”
42 days until June 22nd
“Purpose of your trip?”
Vounteer at the North Norfolk Railway and chase my family roots.
Stamp, stamp. Bang, bang.
“Have a good day.”

My luggage was off the baggage carousel waiting for me as I casually walked through customs inspection.  The guy in front of me was one of the usual “random sample” inspections.  I wheeled my luggage cart down to the lower train level and was on the Heathrow Connect by 8:30 and into Paddington Station by 9:00. Most people take the Heathrow Express at a cost of £15 one way.  The Connect is half that price at $7.90 and only takes 30 minutes instead of 15.  So far so good!  I could hardly believe my luck in getting out of Heathrow Airport, through customs, and down to Paddington Station.

My next challenge was to get from Paddington Station to Liverpool St Station to catch the train to Norwich and on to Sheringham.  I could have taken the Underground to Liverpool St station.  Never having done that route before, I no doubt would have become completely lost in the deepest depths of London.  So I decided to take a taxi instead.

The lineup for taxis was quite long!  Two gents in yellow safety vests were asking people where they were going and if they were willing to share a taxi.  Based on their response and which part of the city the passenger was travelling to, they were giving people coloured cards to help the taxi marshalls decide which people were loaded into which taxi.

“Liverpool Street Station”, I replied.  I was jumped right to the front of the line and put in a taxi with three other people in less than 10 minutes!  Because of the number of passengers coming in from Heathrow, they have had a taxi-share program at Paddington since April 2008.  This gets rid of the lineups real fast.  We travelled around the city (WC2 - Westminster) to London Liverpool St station (CS - City South), arriving at 9:40.  Cost was £8.50 compared to £25 and I wasn’t in any rush.  I’ll take that any day!

I rolled my luggage down the ramp and into the ticket office to renew my Seniors’ Railpass for £28.  This gives me 1/3rd off all rail fares.  I asked for cheapest fare to Sheringham.  Regular price one-way was £56.00 but for an extra £0.60, I could get an open return ticket from London Liverpool to Sheringham.  Not a bad deal, eh!?  The train left London at 10:30.  The tea car went through about 30 minutes after leaving and so I had my usual cup of tea.  Very civilized way to travel.  I arrived in Norwich at 12:35 and ten minutes later I was on the 3-car commuter to Sheringham, arriving at 13:40.

I checked into the North Norfolk Railway office to find out where Andy, my contact person, was.  He was up at Weybourne Station so I decided to first check into my B&B to get rid of my luggage and then return to the NNR station to take the train up to Weybourne.  By this time, I was quite fatigued so this would give me the option of having a zizz- if I wanted to.

I decided not to take a zizz, so taking the advice from that Supertramp song, I took the long way back to the NNR station, discovering a laundromat just around the corner from the B&B and the location of the local library for Internet access.  I was back at the NNR Sheringham station for 14:30.

It was a pleasant 15 minute train ride up to the train sheds at Weybourne - the smell of the steam and coal soaking through the coaches with a hearty salt air blowing about.  It was a bit chilly but the sun was out and the clouds were way high up in the sky.  The golf course along the seaside was crowded.  Sheringham is very much a retirement community all year round and a seaside tourist town in the summer.  Which is why the NNR has been so successful with over 120,000 visitors a year and revenues of £1.2 million.

I arrived at Weybourne station at 15:15 (I managed to lose my complimentary train ticket somewhere down at the Sheringham station) and crossed over the tracks to the carriage and wagon sheds to search out Andy Phillips.  He and and the crew were moving some steel wheels that had been turned down on the wheel lathe underneath a bogie for one of their passenger cars.  I was introduced all around as “Bob from Canada” and we started to chat a bit with the lads.  It was tea-break time which gave me the chance to swap stories with the guys and to get to know them a bit.

After tea, it was back to wheeling a 2-ton steel wheel under a bogie on one of the British Rail Mark I passenger cars using a pallet truck with a jig on the truck.  The steel jig was much like a sawhorse except that one side of the “sawhorse” had removable 3” steel rods that slid into the steel pipes.  They would wheel the pallet truck underneath the axle.  Once nestled underneath the axle, the rods were inserted and the handle pumped up so that steel wheel was lifted off the ground.  It was then a simple matter of wheeling the pallet truck around so that the wheels straddled the rails.

The bogie was elevated 5’ off the ground with electrically-operated screw jacks with laser-levelling lenses - much like the car hoists you see in a garage, except that each of the four jacks were mounted on a pallet truck so that they could be easily moved around the shop.

I made arrangements to go to work on Thursday morning (tomorrow).  At 16:30 it was time to quit and Bob (from Sheringham) drove me back to Sheringham for 16:45.  I made my way down Station Road to the Lobster Pub for a pint of ale and some blue fish with fresh potatoes and veggie stir fry.  Back up to Camberley house by 17:45.

The road from Station Road up to Camberley House, while not as bad as the hill to the B&B in Salisbury in 2008, is as steep but over a longer distance.  Having gone up this hill twice (once to drop off my bags and this second time coming back up from supper), plus climbing the narrow stairs up to my room on the 3rd floor, I was a bit tired so I thought about lying down for a bit of a nap.

However, I wanted to see if I could connect to the B&B’s wi-fi.  I went up and down the stairs a couple more times trying to make the connection.  No luck.  I’ll have to see about getting the router closer so that I can connect.

Having written up this blog in word processing, and having been up continuously for a little over 30 hours, I decided to call it a day and turned in at 19:00.  By 02:00 I was wide awake so I put on the kettle and had three cups of tea over the next 1 ½ hours as I updated this blog, drew a sketch of the wheel jig, and read some of the literature.