Introduction
Pilning railway station serves some fields just east of the English entrance of the Severn Tunnel. The village of Pilning is a mile to the West, with a series of warehouses and the area known as Severn Beach 2-3 miles away. The station has had a limited service for a number of years, although it has declined from its already very sparse service in roughly 2004 from 1 or 2 trains per day (every day) to 1 train per week in each direction (both on a Saturday). Electrification works meant raising the footbridge, a cost which was deemed prohibitive. Thus, the second down platform was taken out of use, and only two trains per week run, both running on a Saturday from Cardiff to Bristol and beyond to Taunton. Therefore, despite being in England, it is impossible to get a train from England to Pilning as it is the first station on the English side of the Severn Tunnel. One has to go into Wales and double back in order to get there.

St Andrews Road currently serves an industrial estate by the Severn Estuary. I only visited it because I had time between visiting Pilning and returning back to London. Its annual patronage has been in the 5 figure level, but in the past few years it has seen a steady decline down to about 5,000 in the most recent period.

To Pilning
An uncharacteristically late alarm went off as I sat at home eating breakfast. Pilning has two trains on a Saturday, one at about 08:30, and the other at about 15:30. It is impossible to get from London to catch the earlier train, so I had to settle for the later one, giving me a lunchtime departure from Paddington station to Newport in South Wales. Having negotiated the tube, I arrived in Paddington with plenty of time to spare. I spent it wandering aimlessly around the concourse until I “bumped into” (they saw and approached me) a person who I knew. We established that we were going for the same train, and that's what happened. For half the journey we spoke about things (life, trains and other random things) and for the other we didn't because he'd got off the train.

The day was also my first journey on the new InterCity Express Trains (IETs) built by Hitachi to replace the ageing InterCity 125s (remember those?) on various routes. They are currently only in service on the InterCity network out of London Paddington (Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth etc.) although they will be rolling out across a number of long-distance services in the next few years. Hopefully. I find the trains much more open and spacious compared to the HSTs, although the seats and general ride is less comfortable. The amenities are better. I'm certainly not opposed to them, as some hard-line HST enthusiasts are.

Quick appraisal over, I was at Newport (South Wales) for 45 minutes in the wind. There were fewer passengers than expected remarked one station attendant, possibly due to the Scotland v Wales rugby match that was in full swing as I wandered around the rather ugly station. They seem to have managed to cover up the older, more architecturally attractive parts of the station, whilst leaving the fairly awful new-build parts in full view.

After about half an hour, my train to Pilning popped into view. Engineering works in Wales meant that instead of running from Cardiff, the service was starting from Newport instead. I took advantage of the declassified first class section while waiting to depart back to England and Pilning. Despite being served very infrequently, Pilning is not a request stop. However, it has been known to be accidentally missed out more often than most stations, probably due to its very sparse service. (I should point out that drivers forgetting to stop at stations happens very, very infrequently (think of the number of trains that stop at stations over a day and how rare it is to have a failure to stop).) Just to make sure, I let the guard know that I wished to alight at Pilning. We went through the tunnel back to England and broke soon after to stop at Pilning.

Pilning Station
I wasn't the only one to get off at Pilning. Another person joined me on the platform as four people got on. Despite only getting 2 trains per week, Pilning saw nearly 500 people in the last year, or between 4 and 5 people per train. This is quite a high rate, especially for such a small station. As I found out later, all six of us were railway enthusiasts to some degree.

The person who got off with me took a quick picture of the train departing before leaving. I then surveyed the station. It is located by a fairly derelict scrapyard-thing, and a large number of portakabins and maintenance equipment used by Network Rail when they are working. Coupled with a few nearby dual-carriageways and motorways gave the station quite a claustrophobic feeling despite its distance from any population settlements.

The facilities are very basic. There is a shelter with a salt bin inside, the normal information posters and a help point. There is no bin or indeed station specific lighting (although the industrial-looking lamps used by Network Rail would probably do the job very well). The former platform 2 is clearly visible, if overgrown.

Whilst I was at the station watching the occasional train passing (and having varying degrees of success attempting to photograph them), the group who had boarded the train at Pilning returned in cars. One came onto the platform and asked if I needed a lift anywhere. I said I was fine and was going to stay for a bit. This I did. They departed in their cars, once again leaving me to try not to get blown off the platform.

To St Andrews Road
After a while on the windswept platform, and with no trains due for half an hour, I decided it was time to walk to Severn Beach (about an hour's walk) to get myself to my next destination. I walked through several small collections of houses, past a bus stop (which has an infrequent bus service at weekdays only), across a B road and into a field. Attempting to follow a path of my map which didn't exist (or that I couldn't find) I found myself the wrong side of quite a deep ditch. Without the courage to jump over to continue on an alternative path, I retraced half my route and went back onto the B road for 10 minutes before I found my next path.

The route from Pilning to Severn Beach is not very walkable. I had barely spent 10 minutes on actual paths (not including the 20 minutes wasted wandering around random fields) before I hit a Tesco distribution area and another industrial park. I followed it round into a residential area of Severn Beach, and approach the station. Severn Beach is the terminus of the Severn Beach branch. With 30 minutes before the next train, I walked slightly further to capture the grey muddiness of the Severn Estuary. In then returned to catch the train to St Andrews Road.

Severn Beach has no ticket machines, so I had to get my return tickets from the guard. This was done in the 30 seconds on the approach to St Andrews Road station. I was actually surprised that the transaction had been completed in such a short time. I alighted, thanked the guard and looked at the station.

St Andrews Road Station
The station is rather intimidated by everything around it. For a start, the single passenger line is flanked by a 5 track freight yard. Huge silos and other industrial buildings push the little 3 coach platform down whilst towering cranes straddle all the railway tracks, used in the past to lift freight off the wagons. The station is on the wrong side of all the railway lines. The passenger line is on the estuary side, but that is private land so the exit has to go onto the public road, located the other side of the multiple tracks. A footbridge links the two. The platform has a shelter, various signs and an electronic help point. One sign incorrectly states that St Andrews Road is a request stop, which it most certainly is not. The other side of the footbridge sees another load of information posters, plus a seemingly silly number of bike racks

I only spent just over half an hour between trains at St Andrews Road. As mentioned before, I hadn't planned to visit the station until a few days before travel. It had got dark in the time I had been at the station, so I jumped on the first train I could, which took me back to Severn Beach.

Back to London
A short turnaround time meant I could only grab a poor quality shot of the train at Severn Beach before I got back on to go the full length of the branch line to Bristol Temple Meads. Once at Temple Meads, I had almost an hour before my booked service back to London, giving me enough time to walk into the centre of town to grab some drinks that weren't stupidly overpriced like the ones in the train station are. Who charges 99p for a small bottle of water? WHSmiths apparently (other shops also sell overpriced water).

The round trip to the middle of Bristol took me most of my hour, so I only had quarter of an hour to wait on the platform. I still had a pork pie and some oranges to consume on the train home. Being fairly late departure (20:35) on a Saturday evening, there was a reasonable concentration of drunk people. I put down a 15 minute wait at Bath Spa to the conduct of these people. Further along, I was treated to the drunk man's train “song”, the lyrics consisting only of the phrase “we're on a train” with the vowels elongated to various different lengths to emphasise something.

The shortish delay at Bath was enough for me to just miss my train from London out to my house, giving me half an hour to sit on a very windy London Bridge platform, wishing for the warm hug of my bed.

Notes
I wasn't very impressed with Pilning. Similarly to Barry Links, there wasn't anything particularly special about it. I'm glad I visited, but I won't be returning. As for St Andrews Road, regular readers may know that I enjoy empty industrial areas. A part of me hopes St Andrews Road continues to decline, further emphasising that feeling of loneliness, whilst the rest of me does not think wishing economic decline on industrial areas is a good thing. I am not known for my support of Thatcher, after all.

Also, having not visited Wales for the first year and a bit of my blog, I have visited it thrice in as many months. There's still an awful lot in Wales I haven't done.

Introduction
The Heart of Wales Line is a 90 mile railway line which runs through rural Wales. It starts on the South West coast at Llanelli and re-joins the main line at Craven Arms in Shropshire, just south of Shrewsbury. It links a few larger villages and towns to the rest of the network (such as Llandovery and Llandrindod), but like so many of these rural railway lines, it passes through several tiny settlements which get their own halt. The majority of the stations are request stops in at least one direction. (Some stations are request in one direction only as trains in the other direction have to stop at the station anyway in order to use adjacent level crossings.) Hopton Heath and Pen-y-Bont are both on the Northern section of the line and are both request stops in both directions.

The Journey
Because the Heart of Wales Line only has 4 trains per day in each direction, there is a heavy constraint on what stations one can visit, especially taking into account the journey time from Edinburgh. The early morning services don't get into Crewe and Shrewsbury in time for the 2nd full run of the day, but taking the 3rd means that one can only visit one station. This is not very cost efficient. Thus, I decided to use a bus to get me from a station with a better service to one on the Heart of Wales line.

I boarded an early morning service at Haymarket ready to go south to Crewe, where I would change onto another service. Not much happened on this train, save for a person at Preston who boarded and ate McDonald's noisily opposite me. I moved seats later when another man boarded and sat at the table.

Slightly late, the train pulled into Crewe. Despite being one of the “homes of the UK railways” (phrases such as that being the bane of my life), I have never got out at Crewe before. I spent some time enjoying the architecture as I waited for my train to Ludlow. Trains were being delayed because of a bridge strike near Stafford, but my train from Manchester was unscathed. It arrived, and the whole platform attempted to squeeze onto the two coaches that had been provided. Despite booking an advance ticket, the system had reserved me a seat in Coach 0, Seat 000. Unable to find a coach 0 (they were numbered A and B), nor a seat 000, I plonked myself down in an unreserved seat for the half hour journey to Shrewsbury, where I moved again for the remaining half hour to Ludlow.

At Ludlow, I spent about half an hour walking around the centre of the rather sweet market town before I ventured outside to buy myself some chips. I returned to the railway station to eat them. In that period of time, a train had caught fire at Pontrilas (south of Hereford), meaning that all trains were suspended between Cardiff and Hereford, with significant disruption on the nearby bits of network. Ludlow is the second stop north of Hereford (after Leominster), so I had been about 20 minutes on the right side of the disruption. Research and instinct told me that this would be one of those things which messed the network up for the day.

I then walked up to the bus stop where I waited for one of three buses a day from Ludlow to Hoptonheath, where I would board a train at Hopton Heath station. (No, that isn't a typo. The station is called Hopton Heath, but the village itself is known as Hoptonheath, or at least that's what my maps tell me.) The little single-decker bus arrived, almost full. I bought my ticket and sat down next to a man who I couldn't understand due to the thickness of his accent. The pensioners around me were engaged in conversation with each other. Every time one of them got off, practically the entire bus said goodbye. There was quite a commotion at one point, where the bus went over an invisible pothole at speed and made a very unhealthy bus noise. The route of the 740, as with so many of these rural bus routes, is fairly mad. At one point, I got quite concerned that I hadn't read the timetable properly, because we appeared to make turning that took us in entirely the wrong direction. In fact, it was only a 2 mile detour to another village. By the time we had reached Hoptonheath, the bus was fairly empty. I pinged the bell and moved towards the front, watching as we bombed past the green and station entrance to the bus stop, which was inconveniently sited another few hundred metres down the road. I thanked the bus driver as I got off, walking back up the road to Hopton Heath station.

Hopton Heath
The station entrance is located at the top of the road bridge over the railway, with a steep set of steps down to the platform. There is a technically step-free route which involves using a path from the opposite end of the platform along the railway to the caravan park, before coming up that lane back onto the main road. However, this is quite a detour to make (~10 minute walk) and involves a section along a B road that doesn't have a pavement.

Once one gets onto the platform, there are is a shelter, some station signs, a salt bin, some information displays and the mount for a BT payphone (but no actual phone) and a digital departure board. There is also no normal bin, which was annoying as I had just finished my chips. The former station building is now a private residence. Some of the information notices advised passengers to use the phone in order to make contact with the outside world. This was not possible as the phone no longer exists. There is also no help point.

The station was quite peaceful, with only the occasional car and lorry using the nearby roads breaking said peace. The sunshine was also welcome, although not from a photography point of view, as you can tell from the varying quality of the pictures above.

A Quick Hop to Pen-y-Bont
After about an hour, I prepared myself for the train south to Pen-y-Bont. It swung into view, I flagged it down and boarded, informing the conductor as I got on that I wanted to get off at Pen-y-Bont.

I enjoyed the scenery for the 45 minute journey, although the single coach train was quite crowded, possibly full of people who would have otherwise been travelling via Hereford and Cardiff but couldn't because of the fire. Most of the request stops were served en-route, even some of the very small ones which I will be visiting later on in the series. The couple opposite me were noting down each station that was served in a notebook.

On the approach to Pen-y-Bont, I collected my things and made my way to the rear doors. Two passengers had managed to get into an argument “she was looking at me!” exclaimed one, and were being mediated by a probably exasperated catering person. “No madam, I couldn't give less of an expletive about you, I just happened to be looking out of the window and you put your body in the way” I thought to myself as I asked to be let past. One minute later, the train arrived at Pen-y-Bont. I was one of four people to get off there. Another one was she-was-looking-at-me woman. I made sure not to look at her, instead focusing on taking a reasonable picture of the train, without the still bright sun making it look as if a bomb had gone off in the nearby village.

Pen-y-Bont Station
Despite the name, the station is actually located just west of Crossgates, with the village of Penybont (again, spelt one way by the railways and another by the locals) the 4th closest settlement to the station. Fron and Cefnllys are the other two villages that are closer to Pen-y-Bont station than Penybont is.

The station is slightly weird, because one has to cross a level crossing in order to get to the platform. The former 2nd platform is visible but overgrown and out of use. There is a basic shelter, noticeboards for the Friends of Penybont station, various station signs (both old and new), a bin (bonus), a digital departure board, but a lack of station information signs, phone and help point. There is a car park, which leads up to an A road. The bridge over the station at the eastern end is inaccessible to the public (as far as I could tell).

Although I had nearly 1 and ¾ hours at Pen-y-Bont, I didn't do much exploring of the local area, partly because I hadn't planned to, but also because the maps that I had didn't show any decent footpaths nearby. I attempted to gain access to the bridge over the station, but it was privately owned by a nearby farm, as were the other tracks marked (as far as I could tell). Thus, I stayed mostly on the station groups for the duration of the visit.

The Return Journey
A few minutes late, the train which would take me back to Craven Arms on the start of my journey back to Edinburgh appeared. I held my hand out for about 3 seconds when I judged that the train was close enough. I then took a couple of pictures of the train on the approach, both of which were awful. The driver slowed to about 5mph and waved at me, making gestures which I decoded (somehow) as, “do you want me to stop?” I nodded, and the train stopped instantly. I was unsure why he hadn't seen my original flag down (I'm usually very clear on the matter), but decided that I had probably done it when he was too far out. I boarded the train and settled down in a seat.

Do you remember the train fire? Well, just before I boarded my train at Pen-y-Bont I checked online, and discovered that my train onwards from Craven Arms to Crewe had been both cancelled and delayed by 5 minutes.

Unsure as to what that actually meant, I went with the safe option and asked the guard if I could remain on the train from Pen-y-Bont all the way to Crewe.

My train from Pen-y-Bont went all the way through to Crewe, but I had chosen to change at Craven Arms in order to get cheaper advance tickets. Having spoken to the guard, he gave me verbal permission to continue all the way as my original train from Craven Arms to Crewe had been cancelled. When the guards changed over at Swansea, I explained the situation to the second guard, who was fine with the situation.

I had got rather hungry by this point, so I ordered a takeaway from a Chinese restaurant in Crewe online. That meant, when I got to Crewe, I simply had to walk the short distance to the shop, pick up my food, and return to the station. I was immensely pleased with myself.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. Both my remaining trains were late, and I arrived home 20 minutes later than I had wanted to. I popped the takeaway into the microwave and consumed it whilst trying not to fall asleep. It had been a long day.

Notes
So, why was the 18:25 train from Craven Arms to Manchester both cancelled and 5 minutes late? I did some research and worked out why this was the case. Because of the fire, the trains couldn't run between Newport and Hereford, so they were cancelled at Cardiff or Hereford, depending on which way they were coming from. My train from Craven Arms originated from Carmarthen (South West Wales), so it was cancelled at Cardiff. But, because trains in both directions were being cancelled, trains could be turned back at Cardiff and Hereford. Thus, the system put in VSTP (very short term plan) workings to cover the trains that were starting at Hereford or Cardiff. My train from Carmarthen to Manchester existed twice, once from Carmarthen to Cardiff (where it was cancelled) and once from Hereford to Manchester (where it was 5 minutes late). The system can't have the same train existing twice, so a new VTSP train had to be created from where it re-started. This wasn't recognised as being the same train by the system (because it wasn't), so the train appeared in duplicate for the rest of the journey. Complicated? Yes. But it sort of makes sense.

The 4th time a train came into view, it was the 16:25 service to Nottingham, one of only 4 services which stop at Thorpe Culvert in a day. The station is not a request stop, so it had to stop anyway. However, I like to make sure for these very small, rural stations that the driver is indeed stopping. I gave a small wave as the train slowed to a halt.

Back at the station, I sat and waited for a short time before the return train rolled into view. The line hugs the coast at this point, so the train pops in and out of view a couple of times before arriving at the station.

Introduction
I haven't visited Wales for this blog yet. However, Wales has some long, rural railways which are perfect for discovering little stations with low annual patronages. Visiting most of Wales from my base in southern Scotland is quite a tough ask, and most of it is out of reach. But, there are parts which are possible to visit in the day, and the Conwy Valley Line is one of them.

The Conwy Valley Line runs from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog, mostly following the route of the river Conwy (surprise, surprise), especially in the northern half of the railway. It links a few towns in North Wales: Llanrwst, Betws-y-Coed and Blaenau Ffestiniog to the rest of the railway network, but is a very rural railway line, with the remaining 7 stations being request stops serving much smaller populations. Half the stations (5) are small enough to justify a visit for the blog. Being able to visit a maximum of 3 at a time (with careful planning), I selected my trio for the day, booked the tickets, and turned up at Edinburgh on the correct day.

The Journey
Because the Conwy Valley line has roughly a train every 3 hours, there are few opportunities to connect without long waits. The first train worth getting from Edinburgh is just after 8am. I took it as far as Preston, where I had an 11 minute wait for my next service. That train was slightly late, so I risked the brisk walk out of the station to Fishersgate where I could buy something hot to eat. I returned with 1 minute to spare before the timetabled departure time, and 5 minutes before it actually turned up. As it departed, I realised that my 6 minute change at Warrington Bank Quay was looking very tight. A nervy 20 minutes passed, as I checked various open information sources in an attempt to work out if my connection was also going to be delayed. On the approach to Winwick Junction (north of Warrington Bank Quay), my connection was held to allow my train to run in-front. I whispered to myself, earning a look from a nearby tracksuit containing a person.

Now on my third train and fourth ticket of the day, I slept for part of the journey across to Llandudno Junction, making sure that I didn't miss the scenery of the North Wales Coast once I got beyond Chester. At Llundudno Junction, I had the option to take a quick detour to Llandudno during the 40 minute wait I had for the Conwy Valley service. In fact, it was the same train that would operate the Conwy Valley service. On the return, it had a 15 minute dwell at Llandudno Junction, where I got out and observed a seagull using the train as a perch. I hope it got a good fright when the engines started firing on departure.

Almost immediately the line skirts the River Conwy, passing through various small settlements. We stopped at every request stop, although I wasn't able to observe if anyone actually got on or off at all of them. I had already requested Roman Bridge from the conductor all the way back at Llandudno, so I didn't have to worry. We skipped Dolwyddelan, (the only request stop that the service skipped all journey) and continued to hug the hills round until the driver braked for Roman Bridge. I got off, gave a wave, and watched the train as it departed.

Roman Bridge
Roman Bridge doesn't serve a settlement as such, instead there are a number of farm buildings and a couple of houses dotted around the valley that are within eyesight of the station. Roman Bridge has some quite modern facilities for such a remote stop, including quite a large station shelter and an electronic departure board. There are also various pieces of history, such as an old bench (which every Conwy Valley Line station seems to have) and a wooden shelter by the former station house (which is now a private property).

I then walked to the station's namesake, which is an ancient stone bridge over River Lledr. Over the years it has clearly been added to; I am unsure that the Romans built metal railings in the same way that councils in central Manchester do now. The closest proper settlement is Blaenau Dolwyddelan, a tiny village of no more than a few houses.

I had just under an hour at the station. Roman Bridge is the penultimate stop on the Conwy Valley line, meaning that the southbound and northbound services run quite close together, with a long gap before the next two trains. The nearly 1 hour gap from 14:13 to 15:07 is the longest of the day. I spent the remaining time wandering around on the platform, and experimenting with different photography positions from the platform. 4 minutes before the train was due, I jumped. There was an automatic announcement system which had just triggered, surprising me. It was possibly one of the most comically awful announcements ever. If Welsh people think English people trying to pronounce Welsh places properly is hilarious, just imagine an electronic American voice that has been poorly edited attempting to pronounce “Dolwyddelan”. It couldn't even pronounce Llandudno properly, instead opting for “Lendidnow”. It was one of the worst examples of electronic pronunciation, only being beaten by another electronic American announcement in France, which proudly announced the next bus service to Val-d'Isère (pronounced Val diz-air) as “Val dee eyes-are”. The best part about that is that the French voice pronounced Val-d'Isère properly, so the French clearly thought that English-speaking people were too stupid to understand the proper pronunciation, and had deliberately edited it to be wrong.

The other thing about Welsh stations is that everything is meant to be bi-lingual. However, the salt bin was not. This made me sad.

A Short Hop to Tal-y-Cafn
The hilarity of electronic voices aside, my train arrived and I flagged it down. My next station was Tal-y-Cafn, which is not a request stop southbound, but is one northbound. This is because there is a manned level crossing which requires trains to be manually waved across. Going southbound, trains have to stop at the station anyway, so it becomes a normal stop. Northbound, trains are accelerating away from their stop just before the crossing when going past the platform, so only stop on request. I requested the stop from the conductor and got off when the train stopped.

Tal-y-Cafn
Tal-y-Cafn used to be a passing loop. The former platform 2 still exists and is maintained by volunteers. The former station house is mostly a holiday home, although there is still a single room that looks out onto the platform for the Network Rail crossing attendant to use. The person on-duty was a very pleasant chap who, after seeing me hanging around on the platform for a while, asked if I was OK and offered me a cup of tea in the office. Slightly taken aback and not quite being able to process things, I declined the offer. I took a quick walk to the bridge to see the river, but otherwise I stayed in the station taking photos from various different angles.

Shortly before the next service was due (the one I was to take to Llanrwst), he emerged from the office to close the gates. The gates are still the manual type found in many-a Thomas the Tank Engine book. Very few of these still exist in the UK. I can only think of 2 (Tal-y-Cafn and Brundall in Norfolk). After he had closed the gates, we had a quick discussion, part of which involved me talking about why I was in Tal-y-Cafn in the first place, and part was being invited back to the station to have a proper look around. I hope to take this offer up at some point.

Another Short Hop: To Llanrwst
The train arrived and I boarded. I showed my ticket to the guard, which was a return from Tal-y-Cafn to North Llanrwst. I asked if I could be excessed up to Llanrwst, but he was happy to let be go the additional 1 minute without buying an extra ticket. There is no different in price. I was one of a number of people to get off at Llanrwst. I didn't take any pictures, because it is one of the few mandatory stops on the Conwy Valley line and is used by over 30,000 people a year. I took a walk through the small town, debating if I should buy some fish and chips. I eventually decided against. The walk from Llanrwst to North Llanrwst is only 10 minutes, so I arrived with plenty of time before the train returned to get me to Llandudno Junction and eventually Edinburgh.

North Llanrwst
This is the only remaining station on the line with 2 platforms. In theory it can be used as a passing place between two trains, although this doesn't happen in practice (certainly not in normal service). Despite it being the only passing loops, it is still a request stop. This is because trains actually have to stop to exchange tokens a few metres north of the station by the signal box.
Unfortunately, by the time I got to the station it was dark and the station lights were not working. This meant taking pictures of the station was very difficult, as the picture below demonstrates. That means a description will have to suffice.

The station itself is situated in a bus depot, specifically Llew Jones' base in Llanrwst. There is an old stone church hall type building which used to be the station house. I am unsure what it is now. The entrance is a gate at the Llanrwst end of the station on the Llandudno/northbound platform. On this platform there is a normal departure board and bicycle racks. Along the walls of the former station building there are a few pictures which show the beautiful scenery on the Conwy Valley line, as well as a wooden canopy at the other end of the building towards the signal box.
The only means of gaining access to the southbound/Blaenau Ffestiniog is by foot crossing at the Llanrwst end of the platform. On the southbound platform, there is a more substantial shelter, with various notices, including a plaque on the 150th anniversary of the line and some artwork from local schoolchildren. There are plant pots scattered around, including one that is shaped like a boat.

After I had walked around the entire station area, I sat down on the correct platform for my train and ate the remainder of my pasta whilst listening to some podcasts. At this point, a group of local teenagers arrived and sprawled themselves across the shelter on the opposite platform. They proceeded to shine their phone torches around whilst they busied themselves with doing something on the station benches. This turned out to be drug-related, because soon they were smoking and the lovely smell of weed filled the night air. They then left the station, leaving me to wait for my train towards home.

The Journey Home
I flagged the train down and boarded. I showed my tickets to the conductor and explained where I was getting off (I had a couple of tickets which got me through to Llandudno Junction). Changing trains, I spotted a loco-hauled train and took a quick snap.

I then boarded my own train back to Warrington Bank Quay. It was the same unit which had taken me from Warrington to Llandudno Junction earlier in the day. On board was a friend who lived in the area (not a coincidence, I had made him aware that I was going to exist in North Wales previously). We had a pleasant conversation from there to Chester, where he got off. I continued to Warrington where I changed onto another train, before a final change at Preston got me onto my last train of the day back to Edinburgh. I slept for most of the way, finally getting home shortly before midnight.

Notes
The Conwy Valley line is similar to a lot of rural branch lines in that it links a few reasonably-sized settlements but also serves some very small ones that would not usually justify a railway service. I was surprised at the number of people who used the request stops, especially on my first service where all but one were used. This is a good sign, especially as it is winter, a time where the usual tourist boost does not exist.

I would like to thank heartily the man at Tal-y-Cafn for his kindness. I'm sorry I didn't engage properly the first time, but I am grateful and would love (at some point) to return properly.