Romsey Rail Cyclists - Part 1 Intro & plusbike
Rich House - 15 November 2017
The Romsey Forum this Thursday at 7:30 in the Town Hall will include a talk on the Three Rivers Partnership, "a group of local authorities, local people and the rail industry, working to promote our train and local bus services and doing what we can to improve our stations and services". This set me thinking about those in Romsey who use both cycle and rail to get about.
- What facilities are available at Romsey station and nearby stations for cyclists?
- Which trains allow cyclists to bring their cycles on board?
- How easy is it to get on board trains with cycles at Romsey and nearby stations?
I started digging around and found a lots of patchy information. This is the first of several mini articles on what I found. In the past I've used a mix of trains and cycling to commute to work from Romsey to Southampton Parkway and found it fairly easy, but I confess I'm not a current rail user, so it would be good to hear about your experiences and things I should include in the forthcoming articles.
Nation Rail's plusbike
First off, and in no particular order is National Rail's plusbike . "PlusBike is a one-stop shop for information about your combined cycle and rail journey". Their web site has a page explains what's on offer.
Once you've found your route using National Rail Enquiries, click on the details for a route and look for the plusbike logo and the cycle icon to it's right. Click on the cycle icon to view info for the route. Click on the plusbike logo to view info about the stations. The red annotations in the following screenshots are mine.
Click on the "more Information" link to view detail about the station (see below). "Getting to and from the station" has the key info. The local area maps also look useful.
The station map is useful, though it doesn't show the cycle rack on Platform 1.
More on what Romsey Station offers to cyclists in another article soon.