OSINT Exercise #029
Gralhix’s OSINT Excercise #029, provided the following information:
I took the photo below whilst riding a train in the UK. I always prefer quiet areas where no one can sit behind me because, in a public space, no information is truly private.
And the following task:
a) Uncover what the person in front of me was reading.
b) Identify the train model.
c) Identify my seat number.
Now here’s how I went about figuring it out.
- The Fair Botanists by Sarah Sheridan
As the text of the book is seen in the window, to make things easier I first of all googled “mirror an image” and used the first tool that came up. Here’s the mirror image that I got:
I then cropped it and uploaded it into ChatGPT to see if it would be able to parse the text. It wasn’t. Google Translate fared only slightly better:
to leather gloves the hova 2007 incter days pots her portmanteau long, and whistio sou or det. She has the le tex den Wipam's cous
As Google Translate wasn’t able to identify enough words to go off of either, I decided to do it manually. Here’s what I managed to make out, half-guessing some of the words:
… her long…
… leather (?) gloves…
… had seen better days…
… her portmanteau…
… whistle sou…
…she has the letters from William's cousin James in her…
The mentions of “gloves”, “portmanteau” and “letters” suggested that it might be a period piece - my first guess was one of the Bridgerton books. However, other than that, the writing seemed quite generic and not immediately identifiable. The only phrase that caught my eye was “she has the letters from William's cousin James." A quick Google search though showed that there were no characters named William or James and definitely no William’s cousin James in the Bridgerton series. Once again, ChatGPT was of no help, so I looked up the phrase in Google Books. The first search returned 315,000 results, none of which was a direct match.
However, adding parentheses to the phrase solved the issue:
To confirm that The Fair Botanist was really the book I was looking for, I clicked on the book preview, and there it was indeed:
- Azuma 801/2
The biggest clue was the colours of the seats, including the sign on the seat in front. Off the top of my head I could think of several rail operators in the UK that use red in their logos or branding - LNER, South Western Railway and Transport for Wales.
Keeping that in mind, I used Google Lens to see if it could find any matches for the sign with the QR code as it was too blurry to scan.
One of the results that came up was this video, which I used to get a better view of the sign…
…and a clearer screenshot of the QR code which already has a tiny LNER logo visible in the middle:
Scanning the QR code, led me to this page, confirming that the train was indeed an LNER train:
According to Wikipedia, LNER uses several types of trains:
As the majority of LNER trains are Azuma trains, it is likely that the train in question was one of them. However, just in case, I quickly googled the interior of LNER InterCity 225 trains:
On the other hand, here is what comes up when you search for the interior of LNER Azuma trains:
It is safe to say that the shape of the seats of Intercity 225 look quite different from the ones in the exercise photo. The seats of the Azuma trains, on the other hand, look quite similar. Several YouTube “train review” videos such as this one confirm that.
Now, figuring out exactly what kind of Azuma train it is proved to be a little trickier. According to the Wikipedia article, LNER uses both the Class 800 and 801 units. The difference between them is in the power source. While one is fully electric, the other is bi-mode. If the answer to question c) is correct though, then the train in question is electric, which would mean that it is the Azuma 801. As the quiet coaches are only available on the 9-coach trains, it has to be one of those. The 801/2 is the 9-coach version of the 801.
- Coach B, Seat 77
The task briefing provides a couple hints about this. First, “I always prefer quiet areas” might be a hint pointing to a quiet coach. The “where no one can sit behind me” part suggests that there are no other seats behind the seat in question. Additionally, we know that the seat is by the window, with the window to the right of the seat. From the photo, we also know that there is a table about two rows in front of the seat evidenced by the piece of red upholstery facing the photographer. There are also at least three (maybe four?) rows facing the other way. Located behind the suspected table, they are reflected in the window.
The seating plan on the LNER website mentions that Coach H is the designated quiet coach on every 9-coach train:
The plan of coach H, however, does not match what we know about that layout of the coach in the photo. Most notably, the seats in the back have limited window view. There are also more than 2 rows of seats in front of the seat furthest back.
This page, however, mentions that Coach B is also an option:
So I kept looking until I came across another seating plan, where coach B was the designated quiet one:
And another one of the MK4 9 coach trains with the same layout.
Right away, I dismissed the MK4 train seating map as that is the type of carriage used by InterCity225 trains which we already established that it was not. However, perhaps the “electric train” is the Azuma 801?
Update: It turns out I was really overthinking things! The seat in question was indeed seat H83, which I originally dismissed due to it being labelled as having "limited window view."