Month: November 2025

Why do I like trains so much?

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A photo of a steam train, named Sir Nigel Gresley. It is an LNER blue A4 Pacific named after its designer. This was exhibited at Railfest in 2012, at the National Railway Museum

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, you may have noticed that I write about trains and public transport quite a bit. Recent posts have included the railway station in Wales with the excessively long name, decarbonising London’s rail termini, renaming London Underground lines and the issues with the Central Line in London. Trains, and especially trains in Britain have been an interest of mine for as long as I can remember, and this is an attempt to rationalise why that is.

My dad worked for British Rail

Compared with the average young person in 1980s Yorkshire, I probably got more exposure to trains than other kids my age. This was because my dad worked for British Rail, in their civil engineering department. As such, we got employee travel benefits, meaning 20 days free travel per year and a steep discount on all other rail travel beyond that. As such, we travelled by train a lot; despite living in York, we would have regular day trips to London which was only a couple of hours away.

My parents still have their staff travel privileges, even though my dad retired from the railway over a decade ago. I unfortunately don’t, as I’m no longer dependent on them, but I was able to keep it through my time at university, which was nice.

I could see trains from my bedroom window

The window in my childhood bedroom overlooked mainly fields, but in the distance, I could also see trains on the East Coast Main Line. Our house overlooked one of the busier four-tracked sections, and so as well as London-Scotland Intercity trains, I could also see Transpennine and Crosscountry services, and a few freight trains. We were close enough to be able to make out train liveries and types, but not individual train numbers.

I have vague memories of seeing the engineering trains that were involved in the electrification of the line, which took place in the late 1980s, and experiencing the then new electric Intercity 225 trains that are now in their twilight years.

A photo of two trains at the National Railway Museum in York - an Intercity 125 High Speed Train on the left, and a red steam engine on the right

I grew up in York

York is an important junction on Britain’s railways, largely thanks to George Hudson (although he has a rather complicated legacy thanks to some dodgy financing). It has a much bigger station than many places of a similar size, and is where the East Coast Main Line meets branches from Harrogate and Scarborough to the north, and Hull and Leeds from the south. There are lots of places that you can get to from York without changing trains. So, the combination of easy journeys and free/discounted travel meant that I was able to go on lots of trips by train whilst growing up.

York is also home to the National Railway Museum, which I used to visit regularly as a child. As an adult, I haven’t been in a few years but we’ve taken our nine-year-old there at least a couple of times.

I didn’t pass my driving test until I was 31

It was August 2015, at the age of 31, before I passed my driving test. We bought our first car the following month.

However, that meant that I spent the first 13 years of my adult life largely reliant on public transport. In 2010, I moved out of Bradford, where I was working, to Sowerby Bridge, and this meant that I spent subsequent years commuting to work by train. And even now, I tend to prefer commuting by train – it’s rare that I drive to work, even though I have the option.

Also, in 2009 and 2010, when Christine and I were dating but not living together, one of us would get the train across the Pennines to see each other almost every weekend.

I read magazines about trains

Ever since I could read confidently on my own, I’ve been reading Rail Magazine. Indeed, I’ve had a subscription and/or read it through Readly or Pressreader for many years now, not missing an issue. Which, as it’s published every fortnight, is a lot of content.

For a time, I also read Modern Railways every month, although I stopped when it was no longer included with Readly. I haven’t subscribed because, whilst I appreciated the analysis in it, I just don’t have the time to read that as well. Indeed, recently I was six issues behind with Rail Magazine and only really caught up due to being ill at the end of October.

Consequently, my knowledge of British rolling stock is pretty good. Give me a photo of a passenger unit or locomotive that has run within the past 20 years in Britain, and I’ll probably be able to tell you its class number, when it was introduced, which company built it and where. Granted, it’s not the most useful superpower, although it did come in useful when advising a friend with sensory issues about which trains would be nosiest on a long journey.

I’m also not a trainspotter – I don’t note down individual unit numbers and I don’t actively spend time hunting out particular types of trains. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a hobby like that, if that’s something you enjoy. It’s just not for me.

So, I think, in a nutshell, that’s why I’m interested in trains.

Buying things on AliExpress

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Screenshot of the AliExpress home page

I’ve been using AliExpress to buy occasional items since last summer. For those not already familiar, AliExpress is an online marketplace, where various businesses can sell products direct to consumers. The majority of the businesses on the platform are based in China, and it’s very similar to Shein and Temu in this regard. In my experience, AliExpress tends to focus more on technology, but its sellers offer a wide variety of things.

Before I continue, a disclosure. I’m a member of Amazon Associates, and so whenever you buy something from Amazon having followed a link from this blog, I get a small amount of commission. AliExpress is an Amazon competitor, and I do not get any commission from AliExpress. That being said, you can use this referral link if you want.

Shipping times

The big difference between buying from AliExpress (or Shein, or Temu) when compared with, say, Amazon, is the shipping times. The products you buy from AliExpress are usually shipped, on demand, directly from China. This means that orders to the UK typically take a week to arrive, if they’re in stock.

You do get regular shipping updates, both by email and in the AliExpress app, telling you when your items have been dispatched, arrived in your country, cleared customs and are finally out for delivery. It’s worth noting that, once in the UK, orders are generally delivered by Evri (aka Hermes). Whilst we seem to have a good local Evri courier at present, I’ve also had horror stories in the past, so bear this in mind.

Another thing to watch out for is extended delivery times. I’ve bought items where the expected delivery time has been measured in weeks rather than days, and this wasn’t obvious prior to payment.

Choice items

Many items for sale on AliExpress carry a ‘Choice’ flag. If you buy enough of these at once, then you get free delivery. What this means – I think – is that the individual sellers will send their products to a central dispatch point, where they’re collected together, put into a larger padded envelope, and sent internationally as one package.

Unlike Amazon, who mostly use cardboard for their packages, expect to receive lots of hard-to-recycle plastic packaging when your order arrives. And while we’re talking about the environment, bear in mind that your order will most likely be shipped by air, and so incurs significant carbon emissions. By contrast, products shipped by boat to a UK warehouse before sale will have incurred lower emissions on the whole.

Prices

Because you’re buying directly from sellers in China, the prices are usually lower than anywhere else. Typically, I’ve seen the same items costing 50% more on Amazon than on AliExpress. Note that some prices exclude VAT, so when you get to the checkout, don’t be surprised to see your total go up by around 20%.

Coins

Coins are the currency AliExpress uses for its loyalty scheme. Once you have an account, then performing various actions whilst using the AliExpress app (and specifically the app, not the web site) rewards you coins. This can be as simple as opening the Coins page of the app each day, or writing a review. There are also games within the app that you can play for coins.

When you buy products, you may be able to redeem some of your coins against the total cost. You probably won’t be able to pay for a whole order with coins, but it may knock a few pence off. I currently have 866 coins as I write this, which should amount to approximately £6.78.

I’m guessing the whole idea with coins is that you’re tempted into opening the app regularly, and so are tempted into buying more things.

Discount events

AliExpress has regular events where discounts are available. These are either coupons, e.g. save £5 if you spend £30, or discounts on products. Usually, there’s a discount on Choice items on the first day of the month, for example.

Helpfully, AliExpress sometimes indicates if a product will be cheaper in the near future. Usually, the difference is just a few pence, but it’s worth noting if you don’t need an item urgently. And, let’s face it, if you’re already expecting to wait a week for delivery, a few more days to save a little may be worth the wait.

The best things I’ve bought from AliExpress

I’ve reviewed a number of items that I’ve bought from AliExpress over the past year or so, but certainly not everything. Of those that I have reviewed, here’s a list:

I’ve also picked up a MagSafe power bank, that I use regularly, a colour changing Zigbee smart bulb, and a USB-C to 2.5mm audio jack adaptor. I’ve bought multiple sets of cheap Lenovo ThinkPlus wireless earbuds, so that I have a set in each bag that I use regularly and so am never without headphones. They won’t win any audiophile awards, but they’re good enough.

The best bargain was something that we bought for our nine-year-old, to help with one of their disabilities. It cost £20, versus £150 for an almost identical product from a specialist UK disability store that we also had to buy.

On one of the Home Assistant Facebook groups I’m in, another member said that he doesn’t buy anything from AliExpress that can be plugged into the mains, for safety reasons. Indeed, of the things I’ve bought, only the smart bulb, and a couple of Zigbee smart plugs, are things that can be plugged into the mains. I’ve not had any issues with any of them, but I think it’s a good rule to follow. It’s certainly possible to pick up items from AliExpress that shouldn’t be legally sold in the UK, because they’re not compliant with our safety laws. This is true of most marketplace platforms, including Amazon.

…and the things I’ve regretted

Not every purchase has been worthwhile. I reviewed this six port USB car charger in March; since then, some of the plastic has come off, and I don’t use it anymore. That’s mainly because our new car has ample built-in USB ports and so it’s no longer necessary, but I don’t know if I’d feel safe using it now either way.

There was a USB charger cable that looked like a three-tailed whip, featuring USB-C, Lightning and micro-USB ports on one end and a USB-A port on the other. It claimed to offer 100 W charging, although my understanding of how USB-A works means that’s arguably impossible. It’s certainly not met my expectations, although I still use it, and it cost barely more than £1.

I also bought a tyre pressure monitoring system, with smart dust caps – again, for our old car. The monitoring unit was solar powered, and was designed to stick to a window. The glue on the sticky pads quickly failed and so the monitoring unit regularly ran out of power.

Whilst I had regrets about all of these, collectively they add up to about £15 of wasted money.

Using an iPad as a desktop PC

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An iPad connected to a docking station for use with an external screen, keyboard and mouse

If you have one of the newer iPad Air or iPad Pro models, then you can plug in an external keyboard, mouse and screen, and use it like a desktop PC. All you need is USB-C docking station with USB and HDMI ports. Indeed, I’m writing this blog post on the WordPress iOS app, but using my USB keyboard, mouse and external display.

Docking station

The docking station I’m using is this Orico model (sponsored link), which has an HDMI port, three USB-A ports (two USB 2, one USB 3) and a USB-C port. This USB-C port supports Power Delivery, and so it can be used to charge your iPad whilst it’s plugged in.

Other docking stations add Ethernet and readers for SD and TF cards, but this one doesn’t. And yes, iPad OS does support Ethernet when connected to an adaptor – I’ve tried it myself with a USB-C Ethernet adaptor that I normally use for my laptop at home.

What it’s like to use

Apple’s information page about using an external display is a bit vague. In my experience, the external screen would only show output once I had also plugged in my keyboard and mouse – it wouldn’t work with just the screen plugged in. That may be a quirk of the Orico docking station.

Rather than mirroring the display, the external screen was an extension of the iPad desktop. Apps would open on the iPad screen, and to get them to open on the external screen, I had to flick down from the top to reveal the menu bar and use the Window menu to move them across. With Stage Manager enabled, you can have multiple apps open in different windows on both screens.

I didn’t see a noticeable reduction in performance – the iPad seemed pretty capable of outputting to two screens. But it did deplete the battery faster, as I hadn’t plugged in a USB-C cable into the docking station to charge.

But why?

So why would you want to do this? Compared to my Windows laptop, which takes a minute or two to boot up, my iPad is always on and launches immediately from standby. Therefore, if I need to do something on a big screen quickly, it’s quicker to plug my iPad into a docking station than booting the laptop up.

It’s also a way of experiencing how Apple has repositioned iPad OS as being somewhere between iOS and macOS, rather than just iOS on a bigger screen. Apple wants the iPad range to be useful for actual work, rather than merely larger screens to consume content.

Finally, apologies for the photo above not actually showing the iPad with my screen, keyboard and mouse. My workspace is a mess at the moment, and I didn’t fancy tidying it up just for this blog post.

The World of Glass

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A photo of the entrance to The World of Glass in St Helens

Until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t aware that there was a museum dedicated to glass in St Helens. But Diamond Geezer recently visited on one of his non-London gadabouts, and so I took our nine-year-old along to The World of Glass last month.

The World of Glass opened in 2000, and fulfils several roles as a museum. Obviously, the focus is on glass, and so there’s a history of glassmaking starting with the ancient Egyptians through to the present day. In particular, it focusses on glassmaking in St Helens – the location of the museum is no accident. If your house has windows made by Pilkington Glass, then St Helens is where the company was founded. And, as the town’s main museum, it also covers the history of the town, especially during the Industrial Revolution. It’s also home to the St Helens central library.

Entry to the museum is through an original brick cone, used for glass making and designed to draw cool air in from the bottom. This features an art installation by Johnny Vegas – yes, that Johnny Vegas – who is local to the area.

Inside the museum

Though this is its 25th year, it’s clearly had some updates to its exhibits since then. I think it manages to strike a good balance between things in glass cabinets, and interactive exhibits to keep kids entertained. Certainly, our nine-year-old enjoyed learning about fibre-optic communications, and the various light and colour mixing activities. Its star attraction is a chandelier that was salvaged from Manchester Airport during a refurbishment, made of hundreds of hand-blown Venetian glass tubes.

As well as the main exhibition, there’s an art gallery in the main building. Then, there’s a bridge over the Sankey Canal to the Tank House, which is the proper old bit. This is the remains of an original glassmaking furnace, used by Pilkingtons. Much of it had been filled in with rubble, and had to be dug out by archaeologists. You get to go down into the tunnels (hard hats available) to see inside the furnace. Incidentally, the bit of the canal next to the Tank House was known as ‘The Hotties’ because the water used to cool the furnace would be pumped out here, warming the canal water. There are photos of it being used for bathing.

We visited on a Sunday, which meant that we didn’t get to see a glass-blowing demonstration. These take place on other days of the week, usually at 12pm and 2pm. Whereas the museum itself has free entry, this is a paid-for addon.

In all, we spent a couple of hours at The World of Glass. If you stop to look at everything, you could probably eke out another half an hour, plus the time for the glass-blowing. There is also a café, although the menu was very limited when we visited.

Accessibility

As mentioned, entrance is free, though donations are welcome. As befits a museum of its age, accessibility is pretty good, although the Tank House tunnels are a confined space. It’s on two floors with a lift available.

There’s a small pay and display car park on site, which is free on Sundays and Bank Holidays. It’s also a very short walk from St Helens Central station, which has direct trains from Liverpool, Wigan, Preston and Blackpool. St Helens bus station is a little further, but still within walking distance.

Now it’s November

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Good grief, are we really almost at the end of 2025 already? I can’t believe it’s November now.

We had a quiet end to October, as both Christine and I had bad colds. Indeed, we had several days booked off work together, and the best that we could manage was a trip to Costco in Leeds.

For us, November promises to be a busy month. We have a couple of weekends already accounted for, including a trip to Thought Bubble in Harrogate. We went last year, for the first time since 2016, although I didn’t blog about it at the time. You can read about our first visit in 2014, if you like.

We’re also off to York, to visit my parents, on another weekend. As I hinted last week, we’re planning to see Matilda when it comes to Bradford, provided we can pick up some affordable tickets for the three of us.

At work, we’re starting to interview people hoping to enrol on courses for next September, and so I’ll be busy with those.

This November is also another anniversary of sorts, as it marks 15 years since Christine and I moved in together, and therefore 15 years of us living in Sowerby Bridge. That means that, in early 2029, I will have lived in Sowerby Bridge longer than I’d lived in York.