Mini adventure to Norwich

[caravanman]

To be honest, I should be on holiday in Turkey right now, but a heavy cold took away my energy last week, so I made the decision to cancel...
Not quite the same, but as I started to recover, I noticed there was a sale on for UK rail tickets, and decided to visit Norwich City.
One of the East to West train services that passes through my home town of Nottingham runs between Norwich in Norfolk, all the way through to Liverpool City on the other side of the country.


My train to Norwich...

The discounted rail fare, together with my senior rail card came to £13.80, return, and that was for a journey time of 2.5 hours each way.

Too early for my free old folks bus pass again, but managed to dig deep for the £2.40 bus fare into Nottingham.

I did mention recently that folk make too much fuss over the comfort of train seats for short and low price journeys, but I take that back now, I was a bit numb by the time I got off this train!



The countryside in East Anglia is rather flat, with a lot of the land in that part having been reclaimed by draining low lying marsh areas, known as fens. Although it was mainly field after field after field, the wide open sky and green crops growing promoted a feeling of calm wellbeing, to counterbalance the duff seat!

Norwich Station is a terminus, and I noticed the name "Norwich Thorpe" on some old station lampshades, not sure if there was another Norwich station also at one time?


Norwich platform view with my back to the station buildings.


From here, across the river, the station building looks a little bit French in style, to my mind.


An interesting mix of buildings, some with the upper story jutting out over the street.
This one, above, is very odd in that the bricks are laid vertically, on end, rather than the normal horizontal. It looks smart though! I believe in the old days, one only paid taxes on the size of the ground floor, so it made economic sense to build the upper stories wider and longer...




Many buildings were built from flint, including the rather snazzy Guildhall. (It is on a hill, not my camerawork... )



Being on the East coast, Norwich traded with Holland across the North Sea. I think the gable ends on these buildings would not look out of place in Amsterdam?

Norwich is slightly famous here in the UK as the home of Colemans Mustard. Sadly, although I am sure they still have a factory somewhere churning the stuff out, it seems the shop and museum closed down a while back, so my plan to grab a photo there did not work out.


Norwich Station entrance hall, with old style lampshades re-purposed for modern bulbs.

Both trains to and from Norwich were about 50% full, and few people wore masks, as it is optional in most areas of public life now.
Trains ran to time, and I even caught my bus home with just one minute to spare!

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

Thanks for the report and pictures.

I made a short trip to Norwich in 1997 when visiting my cousin in Ely, mostly to see the cathedral. I think it was a train of the ubiquitous Sprinters.

The return trip did not get off to a good start with the announcement "there will be a slight delay on account of the train requiring the services of a fitter". It took some 25 minutes to locate the needed fitter and fit whatever needed fitting. Things turned uglier when I made the mistake of politely asking a young lady in the adjacent seat not to smoke, we being in the no smoking section of the train, resulting in a torrent of abuse.

 

[mcropod]

Thanks for the report and pix - you sure you weren't taking the urine out of Norwich as a Forest fan passing them in opposite directions in the league?

And another advantage of putting the bricks on end is you'd get a taller building using the same number of bricks, eh? I think that's what Piaget says anyway

 

[caravanman]

Thanks for the report and pix - you sure you weren't taking the urine out of Norwich as a Forest fan passing them in opposite directions in the league?

And another advantage of putting the bricks on end is you'd get a taller building using the same number of bricks, eh? I think that's what Piaget says anyway

Not much of a sports fan, so I don't know which of those cricket teams are doing well?

I don't have any Lego bricks to hand to test that idea about a tall building, but I kinda assume that it would take the same number of bricks to fill an area either way. I guess if the building was just one brick wide that would work. (Ouch, my brain hurts!)

 

[cirdan]

I think that when you have a semi timbered building as in the photo that it’s the timber that takes all the strain and the brickwork just fills in the gaps . In fact you can knock out all the bricks and the building would still be standing just the same . So in other words you don’t need to make the brickwork very strong and can instead get creative with patterns . In the tudor and especially Elizabethan period builders got very good at this .

A great aunt of mine lived in such a building when I was a kid and she was had some renovation done . The old oak beams were indestructible but the bricks sometimes crumbled with age and had to be re done. They used reclaimed bricks from other houses that has presumably been knocked down as modern bricks are the wrong format

 

[JontyMort]

Norwich Station is a terminus, and I noticed the name "Norwich Thorpe" on some old station lampshades, not sure if there was another Norwich station also at one time?

There were two. Victoria closed in 1916, and was the Great Eastern’s original terminus from London. The Midland and Great Northern Joint had its own terminus called Norwich City, closed to passengers - with nearly all of the M&GNJ - in 1959.

 

[JontyMort]

I should have added that the Trowse swing bridge - just south of Norwich Thorpe station is unique in Britain in having overhead electrification. They use a fixed rail - rather than catenary - on the bridge itself and its approach spans. Is that the same on the NEC in the US?

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

I should have added that the Trowse swing bridge - just south of Norwich Thorpe station is unique in Britain in having overhead electrification. They use a fixed rail - rather than catenary - on the bridge itself and its approach spans. Is that the same on the NEC in the US?

Generally in the US they have catenary, one exception being the Mianus River drawbridge at Cos Cob CT which has no wire at all over the bridge, trains lower their pantographs and coast over it.

 

[jis]

Generally in the US they have catenary, one exception being the Mianus River drawbridge at Cos Cob CT which has no wire at all over the bridge, trains lower their pantographs and coast over it.

Actually trains don’t lower their pantograph. They just coast through with the pantos rising to the upmost position.