round the merseyrail we go

Testing the Limits of Friendship

2012-02-13T19:55:00.001Z

Why are we here?

The question that has dogged humanity since the dawn of time. The question that the greatest minds mankind has produced have wrestled with. The question that has occupied Plato, Kant, Locke, Deep Thought.

I was grappling with the question myself, but at a much less lofty level. I was stood in an abandoned car park in Staffordshire on a frosty Saturday morning. Ahead of me, Ian and Robert were taking photos of empty railway tracks.

Why are we here?

The actual, simple reason was that Robert was doing another of his Station Master blogs, and Ian and I were along for the ride. Yes, we were here in Norton Bridge voluntarily. Probably the first people in a long time.

Norton Bridge is - and I'm going to use a technical term here - a shithole. It's a barely-there hamlet of undistinguished local authority houses and miserable small holdings outside Stafford. It has a red-brick church and a square of grass with some benches on it. It has a pub, the Railway Inn, which serves food weekday evenings but not at all on a Sunday. It wasn't open, anyway. There is no shop, no cafe, no village hall with roses curling round the door.

And, of course, there was the station. It closed in 2004 when the upgrade of the West Coast main line meant providing a service here would get in the way of proper trains. The closure was then underlined by the removal of a rotting footbridge, which left the platforms isolated in the middle of the tracks with no means of access.

Personally I think that they removed the station in a bid to make Norton Bridge disappear off the face of the earth. Give it a few years and they'll blow up the road into the village as well and that'll be it.

We had an hour to kill until the bus out of there. An hour. A wander round the local streets revealed, yep, everywhere else was as drab as the village. Some sheep showed a mild interest in us as we passed. A man walked his dog. There was a closed petrol station. I contemplated suicide.

We headed back to the rusting, graffiti'd, fag burned bus shelter to wait for the bus. Robert had planned the trip, working out the times for our visit, so naturally Ian and I turned on him. Things then took a creepy air when he revealed he had condoms in his ~~handbag~~ manbag; suddenly it all seemed a bit rapey. Ian and I pressed ourselves up against the far end of the shelter while Robert ate his sandwich.

The bus arrived, taking us away from the Straw Dogs remake we seemed to have wandered into, and carried us back to Stafford railway station. It was built in the Sixties, with the electrification of the line, and it's quite hideous.

I'm not against the use of concrete for buildings, but it needs to be maintained. It's not a building material that can be abandoned to the elements, especially not in a country as wet and cold as Britain. Municipal buildings constructed out of the stuff end up looking horrible because the authority responsible has other things to spend its money on, rather than cleaning and scrubbing the walls. The concrete structure ends up looking grim, while cracks are just patched up rather than being addressed.

Mind you, Stafford station wasn't exactly an architectural masterpiece to begin with: this was no brutalist landmark like the National Theatre or the Barbican. It's a series of long concrete structures threaded along the lines with draughty exposed platforms. Wood had been used as an accent, but again, it hadn't been maintained and it had been varnished black. Stafford is the only station I've ever been to that has a poster for the Samaritans in its cafe.

Thank goodness for Stone. The morning had thrown up - almost literally - some grim architecture, but Stone station was a triumph. Built by the North Staffordshire Railway and opened in 1849, it's astonishingly pretty.

It's wonderfully symmetrical (always nice for my OCD) and has ornate windows and rooftops. It's Tudor done by the Victorians, Hampton Court on the iron way, and a real triumph. It's also only here by the grace of God or rather, Network Rail; the station was actually closed at the same time as Norton Bridge, but was reopened in 2008. Too late for the building though, which is no longer in use for railway purposes; you have to buy your ticket on the train.

It was closed and shuttered - the "community use" didn't seem to be happening - which is of course a tragedy. I suspect that behind the locked doors was a waiting room with an enormous stone fireplace, haunted by Victorian ghosts.

Despite its uninspiring name, Stone itself was another delight, a pleasant middle England town. This was real Daily Mail territory; I nervously awaited the pitchfork wielding locals to drive us out of town for lowering the tone. The Conservative constituency office was on the High Street, for pete's sake. I was tempted to assume a Croation accent and ask the way to the Benefits Office, just to see what happened. We paused for coffee and a panini in the local Costa (well, Ian and I did; we didn't have our Dads make us a packed lunch unlike some other people). There was a boy in there strumming on a small guitar - it may even have been a ukelele. I should have stabbed him to death with a wooden coffee stirrer. There is absolutely no excuse for playing a musical instrument in a coffee shop, unless your name is Phoebe Buffay.

There must have been some vodka in the coffee, or something, because between Costa and the bus stop I managed to fall over completely. My foot just stumbled on the kerb, pitching me sideways and onto the pavement, grazing my arm. Fortunately there was hardly anyone around to witness my humiliation, just Ian and Robert, which was bad enough. And now, I suppose, you readers. In fact just ignore this whole paragraph.

We were heading for another rail replacement bus, and we were the only boarders. It swung through Staffordshire's country lanes, occasionally scraping a kerb with an audible grinding sound, before we were dropped off in the village of Barlaston. This was a vast improvement on Norton Bridge - it didn't just have a shop, it had a row of shops, plus a Londis and a garage.

The station here was closed in 2003, though of course, in the world of British railways, it's not that simple. The station is technically open. If you want to close a station you have to go through a palaver of getting Government permission; it's a lot easier for the rail company to just lay on a bus and pretend the station's still there.

In the meantime, they've blocked off the platforms and the station buildings. Spiked planks have been laid down at the ramps from the level crossing, while the gates have been nailed shut. Even the waiting shelters have been boarded over, just to stop the local scallies from hanging out there and causing a ruckus.

From there we headed down to the frozen canal. It was a simple matter on the map - a wander along to the next closed station on the line, Wedgwood. The problem was we'd forgotten how cold it would be. Robert and I had come from a Liverpool that was, while chilly, completely snow free, while Ian was here from a London that was sitting under several inches of white. Staffordshire had combined the two into a lethal combination: ice. What little snow there had been was now shiny, glassy ice, right across the path.

We tramped onto the verge, where the ice hadn't taken hold, and found a new hazard - dog shit. The residents of Barlaston should be ashamed of themselves. No-one seemed to believe in picking up after their animals, leaving wet piles of abandoned faeces to be skipped over. Our ankles moaned under the effort of the trudge, and our trainers skidded on the occasional hidden patch of ice.

"If I fall in, please save my iPhone," said Robert.

"Did I mention I can't swim?" I replied.

Wedgwood is actually inside the factory estate, and was built mainly to carry employees to work. The acres of car parks around us showed why its "closure" hadn't been missed.

The station's got the same treatment as Barlaston - locked gates, scuppered platforms. There's no platform structures to be closed, as the old station building was turned into a residential home a long time ago. The house had a level crossing gate at its entrance, which was a nice touch, and an NSR crest embedded in a gable.

There's no station sign at Wedgwood so I pressed myself up against a poster with the name on it. It was the best I could manage, and I posed for Ian to take the photo. I'd forgotten that this pose would make my gut glaringly obvious. Please only pay attention to me from the neck up.

You can see why they removed the stations from the services; it's an incredibly busy route. The level crossing closed three times while we were there, letting Pendolinos, Voyagers and Desiros burn through at top speed. Think of those trapped behind a quiet stopping train. It makes a nice resting place for trainspotters though.

It was time for another bus out of town. I missed the trains. It's not the same, visiting stations without a train inbetween. I know technically it was a rail-replacement bus, so technically it was as close to a train I was going to get. It just wasn't as fun. I don't like buses, never will, and having their drivers treat country lanes like the Nemesis ride at Alton Towers will never endear them to me (or my stomach).

Heading home meant our fifth station of the day, this one being Stoke on Trent, and very much open. It's another beauty. The North Staffordshire Railway company constructed their station around a brand new civic square, with a hotel on the other side and a statue of Josiah Wedgwood in the centre. It's a grand, dark red building with imposing stone details.

Virgin have also spent a nice sum modernising it. The heritage features have been cleaned and enhanced. Glass doors provide a classy way into the bright ticket hall, with automated ticket machines and a cafe.

And the roof... I love the roof. The zig-zag glass that crosses the track makes the station feel open and elegant. It's bright and attractive, and it's different from the glass arch the Victorians usually go with. The only arch inside is one constructed as a memorial to those lost in the First World War, from the station building onto the platform.

The only thing the station's missing is a sign. There isn't a single one outside. How ridiculous. How obscene. I'm tempted to write a snotty letter to Virgin demanding they install one. I had to settle for a picture with a platform sign.

Ian boarded his train to London, and Robert and I headed for platform 2 so we could go North. I was tired, exhausted from the long day, but happy. I'd had fun. I'd enjoyed the talks and the laughs. I thought back to that question earlier. Why are we here? The answer was, to have good times like these. To laugh and chat and smile and enjoy your day with your friends. That's a good enough reason.

Beyond The Ice

2012-02-10T15:15:00.002Z

Blurry eyed, unshaven, disoriented. The injection of coffee was having no effect; I was still half-asleep. My cold hands gripped the cup for warmth. I did not miss early trains.

For the first time in years, I was on a morning London Midland service from Lime Street. And I didn't like it. In a fair and just world I would have been curled up in a warm bed, perhaps with a cup of tea, a book propped up on my lap.

In the real world however, I had to get to Acton Bridge. It's a station that's only grudgingly served, with half a dozen trains stopping there a day. If I didn't get the early train it would be another two hours before I could get another one, which would have thrown out my plans for the day even further. So a barely conscious outing it was.

I was the only person to get off at Acton Bridge. I wasn't the only person on the platform though; right down the end, a man lingered by the passenger shelter, not bothering to board the train. I suspect he was a trainspotter, but had hidden his notebook in case I poured scorn on him. I felt like wrestling it out of his pocket and shouting "Gricer pride!".

The station building's a block on top of the bridge and is unstaffed. It's got all the facilities in place - they're just not used. The ticket hall smelt of disinfectant. I suppose I should be glad it was being cleaned, but all it made me think was that it had recently been used as a toilet. Was the undercurrent of urine in my imagination or was it in the air?

I stopped outside for the obligatory sign pic. It amused me that I got it bang on first time. I've been doing this blog for so long I know exactly where to position myself.

Now all I had to do was walk to the next station which wasn't, as you may have imagined from the Merseyrail map, Hartford. I did Hartford last summer, completely by accident, which created a problem - I still had to do the stations either side, Acton Bridge and Winsford. So my choice was to walk between them - a distance of about 10 miles - or go to Hartford, get the train to Winsford, then get the next train back again.

Since it was such an unbearably cold day, I was leaning towards the latter plan. I had good intentions to walk all the way to Winsford, but it was the coldest day of the year - colder than Siberia, the newspapers said - and I wasn't sure I could last that long. I was only five minutes out of Acton Bridge and my testicles had already retreated so far I could feel them under my armpits.

It was a good clear road though, and the pavement wasn't icy, so it wasn't a problem to walk. A garden centre was prominently advertising bags of rock salt in a hastily written sign. I passed a rural industrial estate, which seemed to have only two occupiers:

I'd love to know if there's an overlap between their clients. "Well, we've got that frozen embryo - shall we get a nice teak box for it to go in?"

I was soon in Weaverham, whose village sign declared it was the Best Kept Village 1987. No word on its entries over the last twenty-five years though. In fact, the sign just made me wonder if it had gone downhill since then - if they'd won the prize in '87 and thought "mission accomplished" and started chucking their rubbish out on their front lawn.

I'd have hesitated to refer to Weaverham as a traditional village anyway. At first it seemed to fit the bill, with lots of pretty historic timber buildings with blue plaques on them. Keep going though and you come across a shopping precinct with a Co-Op, and a high school, and a sports centre. The road was soon passing overspill housing and paved over front yards, making it feel more like a regular suburban estate than a scene from pastoral England. And it seemed to go on forever, a long tedious road through boring buildings.

A brief bit of countryside - barely a shoelace - and then I was entering Hartford. I crossed the town's other railway, the Mid-Cheshire Line, and paused at a crossroads. There was a pretty silver hart commemorating the town, along with a dry water fountain - "The Gift of Agnes Bertha Platt - 1890". It was decision time. If I turned right, I'd soon be at Hartford station, for a nice comfy train. If I carried on, I had a trek across countryside to Winsford, with no chance of turning back.

Of course I carried on. I'm nothing if not stupid. Besides, the walk had warmed me up: I was afraid that if I stopped now something would freeze and fall off. So I plunged on.

It was a very attractive small town. With its busy high street and good rail links, I imagined it would be a great place to live. It seemed the Government thought the same, and had marked out Hartford for another 650 homes - which had not gone down well with the residents. Now they were in the town, they were pulling up the ladder, and sticking up posters to that effect in their driveways and hedges.

Again I thought of all that empty space in Birkenhead - all those potential new homes that could be built cheaply, easily, in a place with good transport links and opportunities. If the people of Hartford don't want them, well, zip up the M6 and build them somewhere else. I bet no-one in the North End would complain.

I zipped across the Hartford by-pass, up some steps, and into a field. The ground was rutted with the imprint of horse hooves, but the cold weather had frozen the soil, fossilizing them. I cut across the grass, through a kissing gate, and down a slope. I walked gingerly, staggering my footsteps so that I didn't plummet down and into the stream at the foot of the slope, and not caring that I looked a complete idiot. Safety first, etc.

These were Vale Royal woods, a green reminder of the old Council, but it wasn't quite rural enough for me. There were people walking their dogs, and cycling; I never felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. Especially when a beautiful vista of the railway viaduct soaring overhead was ruined by braying Cheshire wives, changing out of running gear behind their cars and loudly boasting of their athletic endeavours. They regarded me with ill-disguised suspicion, as though I'd come to this spot with the specific intention of catching a glimpse of their sports bras. I hurried on, down to the canal.

It's funny how, in pursuing the pointless aims of this railway-based blog, I've spent a fair amount of time hanging around canal towpaths. The two means of transport often parallel one another, taking advantage of geographical gaps for easy passage. Sometimes the railways followed the canal in an "in for a penny, in for a pound" sort of way - the landowners figured their estate was already ruined by the waterways, so another line through wouldn't make it any worse. Whatever the reason, the River Weaver is navigable here, taking a more twisting route south to Winsford than the railway line that accompanies it.

A pretty footbridge took me over the frozen side channel to an island, and then to the Dutton Locks. I was surprised to see that the main body of the canal route was still flowing, having assumed the whole thing would be iced up, but of course this is a Navigation route, a natural fast flowing river that has been adapted for canal use. Only the man-made pools and moorings were impassable.

I crossed to the other bank and trudged along the towpath behind two men and a dog. They were walking a lot faster than me, which was humiliating since they were old enough to be at least my Dad. Neither spoke, but they stamped their feet furiously as they walked, exorcising the frost from their toes.

I was busting for a pee; that latte at Lime Street seemed like an increasingly bad idea. I was going to have to break it out in the countryside, as there wasn't a convenient pub, so I paused in some bushes and dropped my flies. I let go onto the icy pool beside me. If I'm honest, I'd hoped that my stream of hot urine would slice through the ice like the laser in Goldfinger; but either I was too cold or the ice was too thick, and instead it just puddled on the top.

Feeling refreshed I continued on my way. The sky was astonishingly lovely, like a wet grey canvas with a single glowing bulb at its centre. You only get skies like this in the darkest excesses of winter, like an apology from nature. "It may be cold," it seemed to say, "but it's beautiful".

I couldn't quite work out if the path was frosted, or snowy. It crunched underfoot but with a resisting crack, not the comforting noise of deep snow. It was reassuringly solid though - I had no worries about pitching into the canal.

Harsh signs warned me that I was in the territory of the Winsford Angling Society, and that only they could fish here. I didn't think there would be any anglers out anyway but then two passed me, wheeling a trolley of equipment so large it wouldn't have looked out of place at Terminal 5. I decided that only about 2% of it was a rod and line; the rest was their thermoses of soup, comfy seats and portable storage heaters.

The anglers weren't the most insane people I saw that day - that prize goes to the canoeists, paddling furiously on the canal. Why on earth would you practice a sport that could see you dunk in below zero waters? Don't you people have things to do at home? Wouldn't you be happier in front of Homes Under the Hammer with a mug of Ovaltine? Still, people on pointless railway excursions can't really throw stones.

The landscape took a sudden swerve now. Country became town; rural became industrial. The beep of reversing trucks drowned out the birdsong, and the trees were gone in favour of iron and brick.

Northwich and Winsford owed their existence and their wealth to the vast salt deposits that lie underneath the ground. They've been mined for centuries, the ancient remains of inland seas, and they still provide the area with much of its industrial base. It's strange to think of gentrified, elegant Cheshire having this coarse backbone of working-class mining running through it. It's like finding out the Queen wears George at Asda underwear.

The plant was surrounded by a bend in the river, allowing me to take in the full extent of the workings. Trucks motored in and out with clockwork regularity. No doubt this is their busiest time of the year, the salt industry's version of Christmas, shipping out orders like an Amazon warehouse on December 24th. Of course, in one of those ironies of landscape, at this point my path on the opposite bank was completely iced over, forcing me to walk on the grass. Is it impossible for them to chuck some product across the river?

A swan drifted over to me, thick with its dirty grey winter plumage, hopeful that I had a loaf of Hovis tucked under my arm. I found myself apologising to him for getting his hopes up. Up ahead, a crane stopped rooting around in a pond and took flight. It was strange how my side of the river was still an episode of CountryFile, while on the opposite bank it was more like Blade Runner.

Not for long. The path was rising up now, pulling away from the bank, until I reached a junction. The path was signposted to continue over the hill, and my OS map agreed, but there was a side path downwards. It seemed that the industry and the countryside crossed over at this point, and I'd have to pass round a different salt mine. Upwards was the quicker route, but I wasn't keen to let go of the river, so I took the right-hand fork and followed it into the copse.

This was not a good idea.

The path went to sea-level a lot quicker than I'd anticipated via a series of flat wide steps. Obviously, I made it all the way down to the last step before I fell, my legs rising about twelve feet above my head, my hands smacking into the hard ice. I thudded downwards on my backside.

This wasn't just a fall; this was a humiliation. I'd been sniggering at the BF all week after he managed to fall down the steps to our flat, bouncing down at least three of them and ending up bruised and battered. He'd been whining all week, and I'd been less than sympathetic, laughing behind my hands and prodding the angry purple welt on his elbow to make him yelp whenever I got the chance. Karma is a bitch.

Fortunately it seemed my damages were a lot less significant; I came away with red palms and a slight "just got off his horse" swagger, but nothing more severe. Even better, no-one in the salt mine saw me.

Winsford is shaped like a bow tie. On the western side is Over, with the main civic buildings and the shopping centre. On the eastern side is Wharton, which is traditionally residential but is also home to the railway station. The Weaver passes between the two districts with bridges over the river forming a gyratory at the bow tie's "knot". I emerged right in the centre of the gyratory, and headed east.

The salt mines and their attendant industries had all formed along the Weaver, and the homes along Station Road reflected their Victorian origins. It was like walking along a history of the town - tiny narrow houses close to the centre, to house the workers, with slightly larger brick villas further along for the managers. Then the railway must have come, and the road became desirable for a different reason, for people working in the other direction, because the small terraces and corner pubs sprung up.

It was simple, inelegant, reliable working class stock. But it was in an undeniably attractive position, with the lakes known as the Flashes shining in the distance. It was probably less pleasant a hundred years ago when the salt mines and factories belched out filthy smoke but right now it seemed ok. A man at a bus stop said hello to me as I passed - I suspect he was probably at least eight parts mad, but it was nice anyway. One of the houses was a model shop, Loyns, with scale railways in the window; I would have nipped in if it hadn't been so decidedly closed.

Finally I saw the Winsford railway sign, across a roundabout. I took the required shot and headed down into the hollow where the station was.

I'd remembered the building being miserable, but not this bad. It was a long neglected Portakabin of a structure, with peeling paint and broken wood. There was no charm to it. Functional, impersonal, ugly. London Midland hadn't even bothered painting it in their corporate colours, as if they knew it was throwing good money after bad.

I decided not to bother with the cold, ugly waiting room and instead leaned up against a bridge support to eat my M&S chicken and sweetcorn sarnie. My legs were aching from the walk, and my nose felt like it was crafted out of solid ice. But I felt energised and happy to have done it. It was a good way to enjoy the February chill.

Beautiful Machine

2012-02-08T20:36:00.000Z

There was a time when men would invite me back to theirs for coffee. Now men invite me out to transport museums. I really am getting old.

Fortunately on this occasion I was quite happy to comply. The man in question was Ian, diarist, composer and professional nostalgic, and he was in Manchester for the afternoon. He sent me an e-mail asking if I wanted to meet up and visit the the city's Museum of Transport.

I had no idea there was such a place. I wondered if he meant the Museum of Science and Industry, which I visited last summer, but a little Googling and I discovered no, there was an actual Museum of Transport. I couldn't refuse.

The museum's one stop out of town on the Metrolink, so Ian and I got to experience the thrill of sitting in the bend of the tram. It really is the best place to sit, watching the hinge swivel underneath you while the seat rises and falls. I could have stayed on it all day, to be frank.

The museum's housed in an old bus garage, which gives you a clue to its contents. It's like Birkenhead's transport museum, but on a much larger scale: two separate halls of transportation goodness.

It's mostly buses. Lots of them, from 1950s coaches that look like they should be turning up in the titles to Hi-de-Hi! to a much more modern Magic Bus. There's a bus which went to Monaco as part of Manchester's 2000 Olympic bid. There's a Routemaster, which the city trialled on its roads once and then gave back to London Transport, but which is included as "what might have been". It also covered the onset of deregulation in great detail, with an intimate history of Buzzy Bee Buses, a minibus firm which took the bee theme and rammed it into the ground until it thankfully went bust. (A leaflet apologising for an error in the timetables contained so many bee puns I wanted to smash the case and burn it for the good of the English language).

As I've said before, a bus is just a bus to me. And captions explaining that the difference between Bus A and Bus B is down to its synchromesh gearbox don't really help. So this was all a bit meh.

There is a prototype tram, which is different to the ones that made it onto the streets in... some way. The ways were too subtle for mere mortals to see but according to the signs they were there.

So far, the £4 entrance fee seemed overpriced (even though Ian had kindly paid). Then, from across the hall, I saw something that made my heart go aflutter. No, not the disturbing tranny mannequin.

It was a giant light-up machine, like something off the original Enterprise. Clunky buttons and shiny colours and swooshy fonts. It was the Picc-Vic machine.

Futoroute is a rubbish portmanteau word.

Produced by SELNEC - the appalling acronym for South-East Lancashire North-East Cheshire which was replaced by the far more pleasant but still clunky GMPTE - it was intended to show people how the Picc-Vic scheme would help them.

Basically it was Merseyrail's Northern Line, only in Manchester: an underground tunnel which would connect local services into Piccadilly to local services into Victoria, with three stations under the city centre. It was a simple, clever, effective plan that would aid travel across the city as well as providing capacity relief at the mainline stations. There were stations at Princess Street, Albert Square (with a travelator to Oxford Road station) and Royal Exchange, and it looked marvellous.

Unfortunately it came too late. The plan was conceived in 1974, just as the oil crisis was biting and the Government were tightening their belts. Whitehall refused to provide funding and so the plan died. On the plus side, it meant that Manchester got trams as a solution to its traffic problems a few years later but still... UNDERGROUND STATIONS! Underground stations make everything better.

Ian and I had a play on the machine, which still works after nearly forty years, planning imaginary routes across the city. We agreed that the machine made the entire visit; it was worth the price of admission on its own. We wanted more, a far more detailed and creative and fascinating history of this might-have-been. Your tolerance may vary, of course.

We swerved past the tea room - we were the only people in the whole place and we didn't want to be interrogated by the volunteers about our visit - and re-emerged into the daylight. It was an interesting hour, mainly for the Picc-Vic machine I admit, but if you're a bus fan it'll be right up your alley. It's certainly a diverting way to spend some time, and I enjoyed it more than MOSI. A bit more about trains and trams would be appreciated, though. We don't all get excited by diesel.

Fuel Dump

2012-02-06T22:52:00.000Z

I'm quite impressed by Merseyrail's new advertising campaign. You've probably seen the posters all over the network, telling you how much you could save if you went by train instead of rail. Apparently you could save enough for a cruise, or something.

The problem with a poster in a train station is you're preaching to the converted. They've already bought a ticket. So Merseyrail have taken the war to where it'll hurt motorists the most: the petrol pumps.

This was at Sainsbury's in Upton earlier this evening. How effective it is would be another matter. The Bf was doing the filling up, and he didn't notice it at all. He was too busy staring at the price of the petrol.

Nice try though.

From a Rock to a Hard Place

2012-02-04T17:45:00.000Z

It's hard not to feel sorry for Rock Ferry station. There was a time when this was a major interchange. Six platforms. A large station building. Trains going as far as London.

As the network developed, however, it slipped further and further down in prominence. Now it's a couple of platforms in a lowly district, with a bay platform for trains to be stabled in. Electrification removed any need to change here. The expensive station building was demolished and now a brick shed cowers underneath the road bridge, almost embarrassed to be there.

Platforms five and six are still there though, on a railway line that exists, but is no longer used. This was the one that interested me.

This railway line branches off what's now the Wirral Line here at Rock Ferry and heads north, through Birkenhead, and out to Bidston. It's still there in many places - as you can see, there are tracks in place - but it hasn't been used as a working railway since the Eighties.

It's not possible to walk the line exactly so I wandered away from the station and the track and towards the New Chester Road. What used to be the main route from the Queensway Tunnel along the Wirral has been downgraded, firstly by the Kingsway and the M53 taking away most of the traffic, and secondly by the Rock Ferry Bypass whisking you away from the people. You're left with grey boxes forming industrial estates, the sort of places that have criss-crossing wire mesh over their windows and company names that give no clue to what they actually do. There are a few houses left, but the wind of regeneration has been whistling through Rock Ferry for years, and new semis are being built on the formerly vacant lots.

Why was I walking it? Why not? You can see the hints of the line throughout Birkenhead, teasing you, hiding in your peripheral vision. It was an alternate history of Merseyrail. It was a dead line.

The railway and the main road converged, and I was walking down a busy dual carriageway. It's been built with one purpose only: to get you to the tunnel as quickly as possible. There's very little room for humans here. The only other person I saw walking was an old man with a Dachshund, who disappeared somewhere between the KFC drive-in and the Carphone Warehouse.

The new roads here - once again leading to industrial units - have been named after the famous ships built at the yards here - Ark Royal, Valiant, Vanguard. The massive box of Cammell Lairds still dominates the river side, and is doing surprisingly well again after years of poverty. Somewhere inside that behemoth of a building, an aircraft carrier was being constructed - a bizarre thought, like finding out NASA have opened a shuttle launch site next to Sainsbury's.

The funny thing about Green Lane station is: you look at it and think "railway station, railway bridge, yes, that all makes sense". Then you go inside and find out that the platforms are underground. The freight line from Rock Ferry passes over the back of the station. It makes the Merseyrail platforms seem almost secretive.

I rounded the corner, past what used to be The Yard pub and is now The Yard Mini-Mart, and began the trek up the hill. The houses here are brick Victorian terraces which once overlooked the Mollington Street depot. The route of the main railway line's been preserved through there, but the sidings and buildings are long gone. It means there's a crescent shaped hole in the centre of Birkenhead, covered in scrub and trees.

View Larger Map

It's the kind of vacant property that should be snapped up for redevelopment, but nothing much has happened yet. A planning application just went in for a new "urban village" here, with shops and restaurants and houses - but with the recession, who knows? Until it's built, the residents of Hinderton Road get an impressive view across the Mersey.

The road turns and then you're heading down again, towards Birkenhead Central station. The old line bypassed this station, heading for its own station called Birkenhead Town about ten yards away. I decided to have a hunt around to see if I could find any sign of the old station.

On the Liverpool side, the Queensway tunnel is a neat grey hole in the ground. It's understated to the point of insignificance. That's because all the real work is on the Wirral side. All the toll booths, flyovers and facilities swerve from the Birkenhead exit across the town centre.

Walking round the area underlined how dominant the tunnel's access points are. I skipped across roads and car parks in their shadow, ducked beneath their concrete spans. The roads underneath it have become unimportant stubs. Dead ends and dead buildings. A single structure is between the roads; in the time I've lived here it's been a club and a gym, but most of the time, it's just been empty. No-one wants to make the trek here.

I didn't particularly want to make the trek myself. Still, needs must and all that. The roads look like they've been bombed, with all the empty space, but then I came across the wide open flats of the tunnel entrance itself. The whole area was flattened and built for a traffic calming scheme that never really worked; now it's just a concrete wasteground.

There was a fence separating me from the traffic flows while I poked around behind the billboards for any sign of the old station. The station closed in 1945, but the buildings stayed for another twenty years until the road upgrades finally put paid to it.

I found a bit of cornice, but that was about it; I can't even be sure if it was part of the old station building.

The railway line's a lot easier to see. It's in a culvert beneath the road level, so I peered over the walls to spot it. There's not much to see - just a load of vegetation. The tunnel underneath the toll plaza is still there, but it's been blocked up - fly tipping was becoming a problem.

I love that stubby bit of flyover.

I had to walk around the tunnel entrance - pedestrians are banned from making a dash across the lanes, understandably - so I picked up the railway cutting on the other side, at the top of Conway Street.

I was in Birkenhead proper now. The streets of the town are laid out in a grid, but the railway arrogantly bypasses all that, cutting through them at a diagonal. I passed the closed up Sherlocks, a notorious Wirral hangout, and Strummers Cafe (Today's special: Scouse with beetroot) and into Dacre Street. The car park of the Lawnmower Company is a triangle between the street and the railway line. I leaned up against the wall and looked down into the green trench - a strange part of nature fighting its way through the urban landscape. It looked almost civilised here, like a garden path.

Above it was a shop and flats, nineteenth century and now barely managing to hold itself together. The plants had risen out of the old line, like Triffids, and were slowly taking over the side of the building. It made it look even more like a ruin.

In this part of town, old and new are uncomfortably close. A square of Victorian civic pride backs onto 1970s garages; empty waste ground is next to 21st century offices. I followed the line round the back of the technical college, where catering students, still in their whites, were breaking for a cigarette. Down an alleyway and I was onto Europa Boulevard, a dual carriageway of brand new buildings with a tree filled central reservation. Shame about the name. I don't think there should be any "boulevards" in the UK; it's a word that doesn't sit well on English tongues. It promises foreign glamour that can't be fulfilled, certainly not in the middle of Birkenhead. Conway Park station is here though, still looking surprisingly new and modern. The developments around it haven't come though, so it still sits isolated on that side of the street, with just the back of the cinema and a car park for company.

The fact that they built this brand new station on the far side of the road, away from the old freight line, underlines how useless people see this branch. If there was even the slightest hint of the line coming back into use they would have built Conway Park in a place where you could interchange; as it is, it's miles away, and they'd need a lot of underground passages to make it so.

At the top of the boulevard there's a railway bridge, letting the old line pass through. The glass tower of the probation service overlooks the litter-strewn cutting. Everyone's chucked their old cans and bottles in here, their chip wrappers, their crisp bags; it's like a massive landfill site in the centre of town.

Two streets away the offices vanish and become terraces of Victorian houses with MOT garages and car washes. It makes you realise what an ostentatious waste Europa Boulevard was; a new district grafted onto the old one with little regard for its surroundings. I crossed by Farrah News - hopefully a tribute to the late Ms Fawcett - and walked to the unused tunnel entrance. While the main entrance to the Queensway is a massive spread of concrete, this old side exit is simply chained off. The dock exit used to enter the main tunnel with a set of traffic lights, holding up the main flow, so it was mothballed a few years ago. Now it's used to store maintenance equipment and to act as an emergency exit.

While I was looking at road tunnels, the railway line had sneakily risen upwards, and was now at street level. At Freeman Street there's a level crossing. It's a proper, old-school level crossing, an escapee from a Hornby train set, with gates that would cover the width of the street. The lights are still there too, a bit battered and switched off.

The footbridge has fallen to pieces; there are no slats to carry you across and the top of the steps are boarded up. But it's an incredibly evocative piece of railway architecture. Its degradation somehow makes it even more attractive.

I realise I might be alone in this.

Once there would have been dockers streaming over this bridge every morning, every evening; now it's battered and moss-covered and collapsing. It's a monument to a lost industry.

From here, the line disappears behind a thick brick wall, onto the Dock Estate. I'd planned on following the wall, but something was afoot. The police had closed off the bottom of the Corporation Road to traffic, due to an "incident". What the incident was, I didn't know, but they let me walk past with no problem.

Further up though, there were more police, blocking off every side street onto the Corpy Road. I didn't want to keep running their gauntlet. I've led a blameless life, which is why I inevitably panic and sweat when I come in close proximity to a police officer. I didn't want to hysterically confess to the Birmingham bombings or the Moors Murders or something, so I moved turned onto a side street.

It was good to get back towards civilisation anyway. The Corporation Road's a rat run now, just a long straight road away from speed cameras. A nifty shortcut, until after dark, when the local hookers turn out, shivering in lingerie under drab macs. They ply their trade on an increasingly hostile highway - the dockers' pubs are closed, the factories are barred and darkened, the street lamps are non-existent.

Cleveland Street will never be mistaken for the Champs Elysees, but at least there are people and traffic and bus stops here. The wrecking yards let out metallic groans. A heavy coated worker chucked wood onto a brazier, huddling close in the thin piss rain. A wide expanse of grass should have been a welcome change from the bleak industry, an infill of greenery, but it was rough scrub, just good enough for a guy in a hood to walk his dog across.

It wasn't parkland, anyway; it was a void created in the name of "regeneration", though the actual redevelopment hasn't happened yet. Is it still regeneration if all you do is knock stuff down? Is that an improvement?

There was the strong smell of frying onions and bacon from Oakesy's Diner [sic], a brick and concrete shed on the corner of the street. The menus on the open shutters advertised sausage and egg binlids, but the chalked up specials board boasted paninis and baguettes. Can you imagine a docker taking a panini in for his dinner fifty years ago? He'd have been beaten to death for his la-di-da pretentions.

The paninis were the only sign of gentrification here. I crossed Duke Street, waving at Birkenhead Park station in the distance, and carried on past the Merseyside Police Custody Suite on a roundabout. The railway line had re-emerged from behind the wall and for the first time I could actually get up close to it. The trees and grass from further down the line were still evident, but I crossed the street and put a foot on the metal track; a little moment of connection with the railway.

I'd expected to be alone all the way along the trackside, but further up was a surprise: a work party. Orange boiler suited workers with blue helmets were working on the track. There wasn't any vegetation, and it looked almost as if they were shovelling ballast between the irons. Was it community service, I wondered? Is this what they do - send them out on a truck to do pointless labour? I couldn't see the virtues in uncovering them again.

Because this really is a dead railway. This branch will never see service again. Before I set out I'd thought I might see the potential for regeneration and reopening, but as I'd walked it I'd seen there was no hope. I'd passed five stations en route, so there was no way they'd open it to passengers, and freight trains would have to intermingle with the intensive Merseyrail services below Rock Ferry. I can't see anyone being keen on opening up the railway - with its great punctuality rates - to other trains, and creating potential havoc. Perhaps, if Wirral Waters ever happens, there might be a call for a light rail network - but the line skirts the edge of Peel's dock estate, too far from where the main focus points are.

Right now, the track goes past... nothing. This area's been "regenerated" too, and now there are just acres of empty space where there used to be streets.

Apart from one house. One single resident remains in this echo-chamber.

I imagine an old man, buying his council house years ago and being horrified to learn it's scheduled for demolition. I picture him complaining, standing up and screaming at public meetings, pushing people away. His road becoming more and more desolate, until the diggers come in and knock down his neighbours. And then he's left in silence. The houses either side had to be left to keep his standing, but they're covered in metal sheets. He's still got his home though, while the Council rolls its eyes and cynically waits for him to die.

Strangely, his house got me angry. All that wasted space around him, all those homes condemned, while the country is bursting at its seams for new homes. Look at that house - it looks decent enough to me. Couldn't those homes have been refurbished? Couldn't they have been made better? Did they have to be demolished?

And now they're gone, why aren't we rebuilding them? Why hasn't a housing association swept into all that vacant land and started building good, cheap homes on this no-doubt bargain basement land? Why aren't there nice three bedroom houses with a garage and a bit of garden filling up these squares of emptiness? Why is it just being ignored?

I thought of the people being forced to live in squalid conditions while this all stood empty. I thought of the new block of flats round the corner from me, built on the site of a single Victorian detached home; tiny little boxes that people will pay a fortune for just because this is a "nice" area. Build a new "nice" area! Build a district of good homes for families! Build a place with trees and grass and residents who can love where they live.

Angry and depressed I found the end of the line. It's not the real terminus; the actual rails continue on a little further, towards Bidston Dock. At this point though, they vanished into the Merseyrail depot, so I couldn't carry on. I just stood behind the level crossing gates and snapped my last photo.

Obviously, I've never included the depots in my quest to visit all the Merseyrail stations; unless I can go in and have a poke around it doesn't count. But as I was here, at the "Birkenhead North Track Maintenance Depot", I decided to do a traditional shot anyway:

I'd walked about six miles. I can't say I was uplifted, or ecstatic, or even happy by the end of it; in fact, there was a part of me that wanted to rip up the old track and throw it away.

I didn't expect that.

It was just that everywhere I'd gone, the old branch railway had seemed like a barrier. It was a high embankment cutting off Rock Ferry from the main road to Liverpool; it was a vast empty space in the middle of Birkenhead; it was a slash across the grids, cutting the squares in half. It was filled with litter and weeds.

No-one wants to run trains on it, and no-one ever will. Put the people first and let them build good homes and offices and factories over the top. Right now it's just a fossil doing nothing for anyone.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. I'm sure there are loads of people who'd love to redevelop all of this space; there just isn't the money. It's just sad to see the despair and depression of abandonment across the town. I love it here, and I wish everyone else did too.

I Think That Living With Them Is Bringing Me Down, Yeah

2012-02-02T15:47:00.000Z

There's an MtoGo at Lime Street now. A dinky one tucked in the corner. Ready to fulfil all your ticket and Mars Bar requirements.

It means they've demolished the old 1970s ticket office, and replaced it with a tiled floor pattern showing the city's skyline:

But wait! What's that written underneath?

Ticket To Ride.

Sigh.

I don't know if you're aware, but the Beatles were from Liverpool. You know how I knew? Because there's a Beatles museum. And a Beatles hotel. And a Magical Mystery Tour. And a statue. And another statue. And the Cavern Quarter. And an airport. And a load of street names. And another statue. And some topiary. And, right outside Lime Street, in the subway, there's a mural.

In short, I think it's been done.

Can we just try something new now?

Here are ten equally suitable songs by other Merseyside bands that they could have used instead. Ones that haven't been done to death.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax
Atomic Kitten - It's OK!
Cilla Black - Step Inside Love
Echo & The Bunnymen - Bring on the Dancing Horses
The Zutons - It's The Little Things We Do
The Coral - Don't Think You're The First
The Farm - Groovy Train
Lightning Seeds - Marvellous
OMD - Locomotion
Gomez - Catch Me Up

Obviously some are more appropriate than others, but you get the gist.

You're welcome.

The Rakes: Progress

2012-01-21T14:44:00.000Z

It started with a kettle.

The BF's mum - who lives in the flat below ours and, in a hilarious twist, doesn't realise her son is gay - broke her kettle. He walked in one morning to find it billowing steam like Puffing Billy. Since she's elderly, we headed to our nearest retail behemoth to get her a replacement.

The Currys at Bromborough is roughly the size of Andorra, and features enough electronics options to get a gadget freak like me drooling. After fondling the DSLRs and coveting an iPhone, we bought a kettle and headed into the car park.

"Do you know what?" I said to the BF. "I'm not coming home."

"Ever?" he said, with what I hope wasn't glee.

"I'm going to do some stations."

It's been a while. Not for lack of desire. I nearly went out a couple of times last week, heading for Acton Bridge, but they were miserable mornings and so the prospect of getting an 8am train just didn't appeal. Here I was though, in Bromborough, with an uncollected station just a few minutes walk away. I couldn't resist.

It's more than a few minutes walk, actually. First you have to trek across the soulless plains of the retail park, then cross the A41, just to get to Bromborough village itself. It's a dinky little enclave, and surprisingly busy. In most places the presence of a massive retail park would devastate the local shops, but here they've carved out a niche for the kind of homely, small products you can't get in Bensons for Beds or Comet. There's Muffs, the award winning butcher with the snigger-worthy name, and real hardware stores, and coffee shops, and locally-owned clothes shops. The Co-op provided a more ethical alternative to the sprawling Asda across the way. There was even a 1960s precinct, with a Boots and an Italian restaurant, Roberto's.

It underlined the fact that, no matter how hard the Council tries, the Wirral will never be one entity. It's not a single body, like a normal city, but a series of tiny towns thrown together through geographical convenience. Birkenhead's the biggest centre, but if you lived in Bromborough or Wallasey or West Kirby or Heswall you'd have no need to ever visit it. It'd just be somewhere you passed under on your way to Liverpool. It makes you realise that the Council should just give up on its attempts to unify the peninsula - like its ridiculous bid for city status back in 2002 - and instead embrace the differences. Stop with homogenisation and instead show it for what it is - colliding city states, brushing up against one another but never merging.

Oddly, the nearest station to the village centre isn't Bromborough, but Bromborough Rake, at the end of the long straight road of the same name. It passes through one of those wonderful Council estates. The ones that were built with true optimism in mind. They took the lessons from the Garden City Movement and applied it to Corporation housing.

Long straight roads, with grass verges at the roadside, intermingle with symmetrically curved avenues. Big solid red brick houses with generous gardens overlook communal greens and playgrounds. Shopping precincts and pubs all provided. My nan lived on one of these estates her whole life, bringing up children and grandchildren there, and there was always something impressive about the estate's spaciousness. Plus, if I'm honest, all those symmetrical roads appealed to my OCD.

It's a shame the greens are now blighted by "No Ball Game" signs. It's incredibly mean-spirited. A bit like building a fairground then putting up a sign saying "No riding on the roller coaster". What else are you meant to do on those big expanses of flat turf? Barbecue? Go for a perambulation round the edge? At least teenagers playing football aren't sniffing glue or smashing up bus stops.

Pass a row of shops with half the store fronts shuttered - including the copyright baiting "Sunny D's" - and you reach Bromborough Rake station. This wasn't an original halt on the line. It opened when the line to Hooton was electrified in the mid-80s, and it shows. The building's minimalist to the point of barely existing, just a brown box with a ticket window in it. You could build it out of Lego and you wouldn't even have to reach for your specialist bricks.

Still, the ticket lady was friendly and jolly, and it served its purpose.

To reach the platforms you head down a long ramp which, on the southbound side, takes the place of what used to be the third and fourth tracks. These were cut back decades ago and instead you find yourself wandering through mature trees and bushes. Combined with the woodlands behind the northbound platform, and its position at the foot of a cutting, there's it a surprisingly rural feel. Not easy when you're metres from a massive housing estate.

One steamy train later (inside I mean - it was electric like all the other trains) and I was at Bromborough station. This is a vintage Victorian station, though why they built it quite so far from the village centre baffles me. It's even clearer here that there were once four tracks, as the footbridge looks unbalanced and a bit lost without the third stairway.

It's nice inside though, like Hooton's old footbridge. Only dry.

The building's a little Victorian gem as well. It's interesting to note how the attitude to passengers shifted between Bromborough and Bromborough Rake. Their footprint is more or less the same, the design - a square ticket office with a footbridge - is similar, but at the older station the travellers are sheltered from the rain and wind. You don't queue in the rain here, and your passage to the platform is warm and clean.

Lovely though it was, Bromborough's best feature was tucked away next to the Photo-Me booth.

A station cat! A bloody marvellous station cat! Ok, he wasn't there, but just knowing he exists cheered me immensely. A little internet research reveals he's a ginger tom called Owen. Wonderful stuff. I'm really disappointed I didn't see him, as he seems to be a little star.

I was so excited about the station cat, I completely forgot to take a picture of myself in front of the sign. I had to turn back ten minutes later and come back, even more soaked through, for the snap.

I was walking south, towards Eastham Rake station. I always knew I'd have to do these three stations as a set. Their names form a lovely Venn diagram.

This sort of thing pleases me.

Plymyard Avenue was a cut above the Council houses of Bromborough Rake. These were detached manses, four and five bedrooms of pre-war exclusivity. It was a stroll through Metro-land, with Tudorbethan houses surrounded by mature hedges and high walls with security gates.

The verges here didn't have signs banning the local kids from games of footie; they didn't need to. The disapproving stares of the local Marples were a far greater deterrence.

Behind some of the houses, by the railway line, the owners had sold portions of their back lawn to developers. Tiny closes of orange bricked semis were squeezed in, each with a beach towel sized garden and a square of parking. In some places the builders had just given in to the size constraints and built a block of flats who could peer down into the back windows of the posh houses on the avenue.

The road began to take a downward slide as I got further and further from the station. The detached houses became smaller and separated by alleys instead of gardens; they became Modernist seventies cubes instead of period throwbacks. And sometimes they just couldn't hide the fact they weren't in a very nice place to live.

It was lunchtime, and South Wirral High School was filling the neighbourhood with the smell of school dinners. I was amazed that it smelt exactly the same as my old school dinner hall. I never ate there - I went home at lunchtime for a sandwich and to feed the dog - but the whole building reeked of greasy chips and oil. I thought that in the modern, health-conscious 21st century I'd have been hit by the scent of tuna nicoise and Quorn burgers, but no, it still turned my stomach in exactly the same way it always did. In a further two fingers to Jamie Oliver, there was a queue of kids outside the chippy in the neighbouring precinct.

I was accompanied by the noise of the motorway now. The M53 curls round at Eastham, and the houses here nestled in the crook of its elbow. Combined with the sound of Merseyrail trains, it was like a reminder that people were off out, elsewhere, going places.

On Eastham Rake itself, a plaque memorialised a young girl who'd been run down - a sobering way to end the walk.

Eastham Rake opened in 1995. It's indirectly responsible for my Merseyrail fascination. I moved here the same year, and I was impressed to see the map in the trains with Under Construction under its name. It made me think that Merseyrail was a vibrant network, still developing, still modern.

The station building demonstrates the shift in attitude that had taken place since Bromborough Rake was built. Merseytravel was re-energised and they built a large, impressive building, with a car park. It was a real step up from the brick block that passed for a station building in 1985.

And, as you can see, it was a wet dream for the Colour Tsars.

It was a perfect spot for a station. The motorway was close, allowing for park and ride, and there was a residential population who were unserved by Merseyrail. The only question was where to site it: the north side of the road would mean the station was behind houses, but if they built it to the south, they'd have to build on a nature reserve, and extremely close to the motorway.

After much negotiation, the northern site won, but the residents insisted on high walls so that they retained their privacy. Spoilsports. I love staring in people's houses from the train.

With the grey walls and the strange shelters (only seen here and at Birkenhead Park, I think) Eastham Rake has a unique feel to it. It's perhaps the most exciting looking station on the Wirral Line; there's a vibrancy to its design, with clean minimalist lines and good facilities. It's a shame that Merseytravel have lost the momentum with adding new stations on the network; Headbolt Lane and Maghull North have been on the drawing board for years with still no sign of progress.

I plonked myself down in the shelter, glad to get out of the rain, and allowed myself a moment of sadness. This was the end of the Wirral. This was the end of everything west of the Mersey, in fact. Those three stations meant I was almost done with the Merseyrail map. I've got four stations left now - Leyland, Euxton Balshaw Lane, Acton Bridge and Winsford - plus the four city centre stations. And that's it. Not long to go. Not long until it's all over.

Edit

2012-01-20T18:09:00.000Z

"Damn. The free bus from Chester station to the city centre has finished, but it's printed on every map on the network. We'll have to reprint all of them with the new info. Unless you have a suggestion?"

"I've got this magic marker."

"Yeah. That'll work."

Bedding Down

2012-01-10T11:47:00.001Z

It was the end of my Christmas visit home. Presents packed, stomach stuffed, and I was heading for the station. Instead of turning south, for the train to London, I went to the northbound platform at Leagrave station. I was heading into Bedfordshire.

Bedfordshire's sort of a pointless county, really. It's my home so I'm allowed to say this. It's tiny. It's geographically anonymous. It's not East Anglia, but it's not the Home Counties, but it's not the Midlands. It's a mix of villages and towns with none of them being especially notable. And its most famous son is John Bunyan, a man famous for writing a book that people may have heard of but probably haven't read.

It's also deeply divided internally. Luton occupies the bottom right corner of the county, thrusting at its borders and forever threatening to burst free and swallow more of the land around it. It's Luton vs Bedfordshire; town vs country, industry vs agriculture, working vs middle class. Luton sneers at the Bedfordshire countryside for its parochialism and its backwardness, while Bedfordshire patronises Luton for its ugliness and its poverty.

Luton also looks south for its destiny. Its eyes are very definitely trained on the capital, half an hour away, while Bedfordshire looks around it for solace. Dunstable would rather work with the tiny country towns of Ampthill and Leighton Buzzard than the grimy industrial Luton, even though the dividing line between the two is blurred beyond all recognition.

This preamble is to explain how this was the first time, ever, I'd stood on that northbound platform, even though I'd lived there for eighteen years. I'd never been north of Luton, not to visit; I'd always just passed through on a train or a motorway. This was going to be my first trip into the county of my birth.

The train was one of the new ones. all air conditioning and automated voices. I was surprised to find that the woman doing the Thameslink voices was the same one who does Merseyrail. I felt strangely betrayed, like I'd caught her cheating behind my back.

Another reminder of home was the "no feet on the seats" sign -

- or as it's also known, "Please keep feet off the seats - but feel free to rest your enormous penis on them."

My first stop was Harlington, a small commuter village. The station building was an exact replica of the one at Leagrave - it was as though the Victorians got them all out of a kit, like those McDonalds Drive-ins that come on the back of a lorry.

It still felt appreciably countrysidey, though. The direct trains to London make this a popular place for City workers but the air smelt of hearthsides and there were fields immediately in view.

Yes, my hair is a disaster.

The village proper was lovely too. Tiny cottages hunched against the roadside, lovingly restored and whitewashed. The day was dark and miserable - stuck in that void between Christmas and New Year and sulking - but the twist of a road to show a country church gave me a tiny lift. The war memorial still had its poppy wreaths, and an old lady carried a single bag of shopping from the village store. It was homely and pleasant.

A duck down a back alley took me to the newer part of the village, a post-war council estate. In Luton, the design of cul-de-sacs and tiny alleyways lead to what my mum always called "mugger's paradise". Here in pastoral Bedfordshire, it just felt homely and sweet. The houses were accompanied by generous greens and no-one had paved over their lawns for driveways.

I wonder how many of those are still council houses though, and how many are now private homes, owned by commuters. Good social housing that's now a bolthole for weekends away from the office.

By the surprisingly enormous Harlington Upper School I took a left turn, onto a pathway that ran alongside the sports pitches. From here on I was heading across country towards Flitwick, the next station on the Thameslink line. I could hear the Midland Main Line trains whizzing through on their way to Leeds or Sheffield every few minutes as I climbed the hill, but that was the only sound: most people were sensibly inside watching the telly and scoffing Quality Street.

I was following the John Bunyan Trail, a tribute to the County's most famous son and tracking places associated with him or The Pilgrim's Progress. The geography in the novel is roughly allied to the geography of Bedfordshire, so it's possible to follow the journey - if you want to. I have to be honest, I've never read it, and given that it sounds like the most obvious religious allegory ever written (the main character is called Christian, for goodness' sake) I doubt I ever will. (I have read The Land of Far-Beyond, Enid Blyton's version of the story though). Until they instigate the David Arnold Trail, it'll have to do.

The second warmest year on record meant the fields weren't too bad, but I was still getting mud splattered up against my jeans as I walked. In most places it was just a little squidgy, but now and then it turned into thick grey clay that sucked at my boots and made my footsteps into tiny pools. I staggered on through empty fallow countryside, or fields with green tops showing, before I came across a real surprise: straw.

A sudden golden horizon in a sepia day. Straw-plaiting has a long history in the county (note the bushel of straw on the Harlington sign above), particularly in Luton, where straw hats were a massive industry. Obviously, fashions changed, and now the only Hatters you find in the town are the football club. I was surprised to see that there was still straw being grown, but tiny signs round the edge of the field said this was for an agricultural feed company. I was pleased there was still a bit of farming tradition still ongoing.

I hadn't realised it but I'd wandered off the Bunyan Trail. I was using an OS map (the BF bought me a subscription to their Get-a-Map service for Christmas) but I couldn't quite get my bearings - there seemed to be too many copses in reality, like someone had snuck in and planted more trees while the Ordnance Survey weren't looking.

It only became clear that I'd taken a wrong turn when I found myself in front of an old empty barn.

The barn was clearly used as a "base" by some local kids, but it had a maudlin, abandoned air to it; there weren't the expected empty cans of cheap beer and cider. The walls were covered with graffiti but it wasn't the usual massive genitals and obscenities. Instead there were tributes to someone called SUV, who had died. I don't know who he was, or how he died, but it was clear from the walls that he was loved.

A scramble through a hedge, a death-defying leap over a ditch, and I was back on track (hoho) and following the railway line towards Westoning.

Westoning's about as ordinary a village as you can possibly get: its only features of interest were a road called The Pyghite (where did that come from?) and a clock tower built for Queen Victoria's Jubilee. The tower had become a one-stop shop for all the village's notices, with signs about Bedfordshire in Bloom, the restorers, the history of the village and a Christmas decoration all slapped on the side. It made it look a bit messy.

From Westoning I headed to Flitwick (pronounced Flit-ick, proving that Scousers don't have a monopoly on confusing place names). It has always been paired with Ampthill, its near neighbour; while Ampthill is larger and more important, Flitwick got the railway station, which I'm sure always annoys them. Similarly, only a last minute decision sent the main line from St Pancras through Luton, instead of its more historic neighbour Dunstable; now they're dwarfed by their neighbour and one of the largest towns in Britain without its own station.

Flitwick's lost what charm it had, buried under three-bedroom Tudorbethan semis and road improvements. The station's in the centre of town but what really draws your attention are the car parks and the Tesco superstore. There's no simple country life here.

I was lucky - there was a train to Bedford due in only a couple of minutes. The station's got four platforms, and another Victorian building from exactly the same multipack as Leagrave and Harlington. Everything's in purple and pink, which is all very "hey, we're modern!" but not exactly pleasing on the eye.

Bedford - the end of the Thameslink line, the County town (when there was a county council), and another town I'd never been to. The us vs them between Luton and Bedford was perhaps the most violent, Bedford sniffy of this upstart town that had claimed all the jobs and people, Luton resentful of the smaller town having such sway over its life (Luton only recently gained administrative independence from the rest of the county; before that there was a period of just nine years where it was responsible for its own services). I grew up thinking of the town as a sort of Cambridge on the Ouse, a historic town with ancient buildings, a perception coloured by visits to my mum's home town of Hertford. That was another county town which was overshadowed by its larger, more famous neighbours.

But you know what? Bedford's awful. I had a little wander round, and it was an uninspired, colourless town - it was so generic it was embarrassing. I could have been anywhere in the country.

And the railway station is horrible. Just plain horrible.

I'd expected a Victorian terminus, but what I got instead was a brown glass box with a car park in front. It dates from the 1970s and, oh boy, does it look it. I'd always had a chip on my shoulder about Luton station's awfulness, thinking Bedford must beat it into a cocked hat, but no: this was equally awful, just in a different way.

Inside it was like being in a beer bottle. The low roof was dark and uninviting, the steelwork made it feel unfinished, and the Pumpkin cafe and ticket barriers had been inserted inelegantly. It was just a horrible mess of a station.

I didn't stay long; I had to get home (properly home, to Merseyside). I have to admit that I felt a bit better about Bedfordshire now. Not that it had impressed me, or seduced me, or made me think it was a wonderful place. I felt better because now I knew it was just as rubbish as I thought it was. All those years of never venturing north and imagining a House Beautiful beyond Luton's boundaries - nonsense. The rest of the County was just as boring and drab as the my home town.

No wonder I left.

Mommie Dearest

2012-01-04T11:44:00.001Z

Christmas means families. Christmas means me hoisting my tired bones onto a Pendolino and heading south for a few days with my mum. Christmas means eating far too many of her prawn cocktail vol au vents and vegetating in front of Freeview (she doesn't have Sky, Virgin, or even the internet; it's like travelling back to 1996 every time I visit).

This year though, in an effort to be active and a bit more interesting, I suggested a day trip to London. Not for the sales, of course - I'm not insane - but just to have a wander round. My mum very rarely heads into the city, even though it's a thirty minute train journey away, so I thought it would be interesting for her.

Plus, because I am at heart a selfish bastard and a heartless son, I wanted to look at some train stations.

We got a Thameslink train into the city. It's called First Capital Connect (Thameslink route) now, but I'm a traditionalist, and I still call it Thameslink. The presence of West Hampstead Thameslink and City Thameslink stations hints that maybe everyone else still does as well. The train was a loud, rickety thing, redone in the FCC colours but clearly one of the original trains from when the route was opened in the Eighties. It was full of people, noisily excited in that post-Christmas, "we're still on holiday!" way. There was a woman on the train who my mum chatted to for ten minutes, before turning to me and saying, "You know who that was, don't you?" Of course I didn't. It turned out it was the daughter of her old next door neighbours, who moved away from home about twenty years ago. She was surprised I didn't recognise her.

I craned my neck to get a look at the new ticket office for West Hampstead Thameslink, but from this angle it looked like just another box. The new footbridge looked impressive though, and there were workers on the lifts, even in the holiday period. South, through St Pancras International, and then through the remains of King's Cross Thameslink. Its platforms were still there, with their none-more-80s fake marble treatments and their bright red seats, but now signs saying "DO NOT ALIGHT HERE" have been stuck all over the place.

Fat chance - the train barely pauses as it carries on into Farringdon. One day this will be a massive interchange, the point where Thameslink passes over Crossrail and interacts with the Underground, but for now it's just a building site. There was a little hint of the future in a new exit to a new ticket hall at one end of the platform, but that seemed to be it for the time being. Still, they've got another six years or so. No rush.

At the end of the platform was a polite notice in a serif font: Drivers! Do not forget to drop your pantograph!, which sounds like a line from a Carry On film. It's actually a reminder that Thameslink uses two different kinds of electrical power - overhead lines from Farringdon north, and third rail from Blackfriars south. The crossover point is City Thameslink between the two, where the pause is always a little bit longer so they can make sure they're properly keyed into the new power source. Pay attention, because this could be the future for Merseyrail - it's the cheapest way to bring the Borderlands Line into the network.

And then we're at Blackfriars, and it's time to get off. This was what I really wanted to see - London's latest expanded station. What was once a dowdy station is being demolished, rebuilt and extended beyond belief. Now the trains stop in the centre of Blackfriars Bridge itself, and exits are positioned at either end. The old northern entrance is being buried under a new office development, while to the south, a brand new ticket hall has been opened on the South Bank itself. Above us, metal struts were being installed across the length of the platform. These will eventually hold the glass roof to protect you from the elements, and also, enough photo-voltaic cells to provide half the station's electricity. For the time being, it felt enclosed and a bit tight, not helped by our view over the river being obscured by blue hoardings. It's still very much a work in progress (the Tube station is still closed).

We headed out onto the South Bank via an array of stairs (there are two lifts, but the one from the mezzanine down to the ground wasn't working). At the foot was a proper ticket office, which was a nice surprise. With TfL closing down ticket offices across London, it was nice to find that this one was built with space for ticket men and women. The barriers were open though, and a construction worker was loitering beyond.

I got my mum to take the picture outside the station. She had no idea why, struggled with operating the digital camera, and managed to take a photo of the pavement before she got this shot:

I hadn't realised how close the new station entrance was to the Tate Modern. A brief stroll down the river and there it is. Strangely, after twenty odd years, this could be the development that opens up Thameslink as a proper cross-city route, a valid alternative to the Northern Line. Until now it's been a bit of a secret for commuters, but I can see tourists using this station a lot more than Southwark to get to the Tate Modern. And once you've done that, and discovered you can get to London Bridge and King's Cross St Pancras from here as well...

We poked our head in at the Tate Modern, because my mum had never been, but she's not a fan of modern art - "I like pictures to look like what they're meant to be". Instead we crossed the Millennium Bridge, giving me another look at Blackfriars station under construction.

It's been deliberately designed to be as squat as possible, so you will still get a look along the river. Personally I can't wait to see it at night, the glass tube glowing from within as it flows across the water.

We paused for a coffee and a sandwich at Pret a Manger then carried on to Mansion House Tube station. On the platform, my mum turned to me and said, "Isn't the Underground horrible?"

"No," I replied in a surprisingly calm voice. "I love the Underground."

"No you don't." (My mum is prone to sweeping generalisations which are based on the premise that if she doesn't like something, no-one else, anywhere, does either). "How can you like this? Everyone hates it. It's dark and it's miserable and it's depressing. Everyone hates the Underground."

"Clearly you and I move in different social circles." I should also state, for the record, that Mansion House has been refurbished and is remarkably clean and pleasant.

She jabbed at me with a finger. "You can't tell me that if you was in one of those Tube trains and it broke down in the tunnel and all the lights went off, you wouldn't hate the Underground too."

"But... that's ridiculous!" I spluttered. "That's like saying you hate cars because there's a chance they might break down in the middle of the countryside in a snowstorm and you freeze to death."

"That's a completely different thing. Don't be stupid."

I felt that my mum's ideas needed to be preserved for history, so I tweeted it (the station's shallow enough that you can get a weak mobile signal).

"Put your phone away," she scolded. "Everyone here is fiddling with their mobiles. It's awful." Again, remember: if she's not doing it, no-one else should be either.

"What should we be doing instead?"

"Look around you. Look at the building. Look at the adverts."

"You just said the Underground was dark and miserable. Surely it's nicer for people to look at their mobiles?"

"No. They should look up at the adverts once in a while. It's rude."

I'm not sure if she meant it was rude to her fellow commuters, or if it was rude to the advertising execs who'd poured their creativity into a big poster for Ikea. Either way I fell silent, wondering if I was adopted. The Underground is horrible?!?!

We got on a train to Temple, just two stops (technically one, because Blackfriars in between was closed) and got off in the delightfully 19th Century station. My mum pulled me to one side on the platform and whispered, "That'll teach me to tell you to read the adverts. The one opposite me on the train was for the London Sperm Clinic."

We went from Temple into Covent Garden, because my mum wanted a wander round the market, and so I suggested a little trip to the London Transport Museum Shop: partly because I love it there, and partly because I wanted to wipe the memory of my mum saying "sperm" from my head. I terrified my mum by pointing out how many of the books in the Underground section I owned, while she wondered out loud what had happened to me to turn me into a nerd. I pointed at a copy of Mark Ovenden's Great Railway Maps of the World. "That book is brilliant."

"I doubt that very much."

I came away with a copy of Mark Mason's Walk the Lines. It's very good apart from his frankly bizarre preference for Leslie Green's ox-blood Tube stations to Charles Holden's elegant 1930s ones. He completely dismisses Arnos Grove which I found personally upsetting.

Another coffee, this time in Old Compton Street. My mum's fine with me being gay so long as I never mention it in any way. As a result I get perverse amusement out of taking her to very gay places without her understanding why. Whenever she's in Liverpool, I insist on a drink in the Lisbon, and I took her to Christopher Street in New York without her being any the wiser. Now we sat on the pavement opposite the Ku Bar, watching various tightly muscled men with cropped hair walk past, and she was too busy complaining about the price of her coffee to notice.

It was starting to get dark so we decided to head home via St Pancras. Any excuse for me to have a look at this truly magnificent station, one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in the country. I especially love the Olympic rings on the end of the train shed - somehow they just fit. It's also amusing to think that people from (second place) Paris will get off the train here and be reminded that they missed out on the 2012 games.

There was another feature at St Pancras worth checking out: the giant Lego Christmas tree.

The Thameslink station underneath the new Midland Main Line platforms is impressive in a different way. It's very 21st century, all concrete and glass and cool blue lights, but it's wonderfully efficient and pleasant. It's the kind of transit station you can imagine turning up in Star Trek.

The platforms, meanwhile, are absolutely huge, ready for the day when 12-car trains will come through here to take you to Cambridge, Hertford, and dozens of other destinations that currently only go into King's Cross. The old, shoddy trains look frankly embarrassing in this gleaming temple of the future. They're being replaced, but not fast enough for my tastes.

I can't wait to return to the capital to properly take in all the improvements; to see Thameslink at its full strength, to see Blackfriars snaking across the river, to see all Farringdon's improvements. I probably won't take my mum, though.

The Finish Line

2011-12-31T13:44:00.000Z

2011 was a bit rubbish all round, wasn't it? Lots of insurrections and rioting and people dying in a multitude of horrible ways. It's a relief to reach the 31st December and still be in one piece, frankly.

I shall be celebrating the change of a digit on my calendar in my usual way - sitting on my sofa at home with a glass of wine. Going out? Are you mad? I am not going to pay twenty quid so I can stand far too close to a woman in a tight frock drunkenly forcing herself on her best friend's husband while everyone sings the first verse of Auld Lang Syne then gives up because no-one knows any more lyrics. Then you manage to extricate yourself from holding the clammy hand of a man with personal freshness problems to get to the bar where you find out it's a fiver a pint and they're only serving Carling because everything else has run out, so you get a taxi home and pay eight hundred pounds for the trip because you have the temerity to live at the wrong end of the Mersey Tunnel. My only sadness is that New Year's telly is rubbish - the days when you got Clive James (CBE) being absolutely brilliant, like here, are long gone. (Miss! Yasmin! Arafat!)

However, it does seem an appropriate time to look back over the year. I've done more blog posts than ever before, with some of them even being on topic, so thank you for reading them and commenting and correcting my grammatical errors. I really LOVE it when that happens.

As a finale to 2011 I thought I'd do a quick list of my five favourite blog posts. Perhaps this will give you something to read tomorrow when you're lying in bed with a pounding skull and vomit encrusted fingernails.

5. 24 Hour Party Person (28th January)

In which I first experienced the high life of being an extremely low grade celebrity. My trip to the Merseyrail Christmas do was a lot of things - terrifying, drunken, unexpectedly good, embarrassing - but it was an experience to remember. And I finally got to meet Bart Schmeink!

4. Cross Country (28th September)

There is a part of me that gauges a blog post's success by how many comments it gets. It's very shallow, I know, but I can't help it. Sometimes though, a post doesn't get any comments at all and I still love it. This post, about my journey between Berlin and Prague, was a favourite for me just because it was writerly. It was more of a mood piece than anything else, and I liked just doing something a bit different.

3. Och Aye! (15th - 20th August)

I take the Sleeper train north of the border, have an unfortunate trouser experience, fall in love with the Glasgow Subway and wish that I was a Scot in more than just name. I'm already itching to get back up there to follow the circle again. Maybe doing that pub crawl this time.

Part One - http://www.merseytart.com/2011/08/sleep-your-way-to-top.html
Part Two - http://www.merseytart.com/2011/08/putting-scott-in-scotland.html
Part Three - http://www.merseytart.com/2011/08/round-glasgow-subway-we-go.html
Part Four - http://www.merseytart.com/2011/08/on-waterfront.html
Part Five - http://www.merseytart.com/2011/08/closing-circle.html

2. End of the Line (4th October)

It was nice to ride Merseyrail again. To do some proper, old-fashioned, Tarting. No Northern Rail or Pacers or Cheshire Day Rangers or TfGM signs: just me and Merseyrail. And it coincided with a lovely day out on the coast with a friend and her adorable baby.

Still wish Southport had an ALF, though.

1. Wales: A Train Odyssey (20th May - 1st June)

It couldn't be anything else. My four day trek across North Wales is one of the most fun experiences in my life, ever (which probably says a lot about my life but there you go). One minute I was crossing clifftops on Anglesey, next I was walking in the sun in Conwy. I fell, hard, for Llanfairfechan and its gossipy old ladies. I played with arcade machines in Rhyl and took in the beautiful Menai Straits from the centre of the bridge. I loved it, loved the places, the people, the walking. Taking in these beautiful bits of our country. I've been looking at other lines to see if I could replicate the experience next year, but I haven't found one yet that I think will match up. I don't want to be disappointed.

Day One - Wales: A Train Odyssey and Westernmost Point
Day Two - Coasting and Thirsty Work
Day Three - Problems... and Love Profusion and Underworld
Day Four - Down and Out

And that was 2011. Once again, thank you for reading. I promise 2012 will be the year I finish the Merseyrail map - in fact, it has to be: if I don't collect Liverpool Central before April I'll have to wait months for another go. It's a ticking clock...

The Walrus and the Tart

2011-12-06T13:30:00.001Z

I did something unusual on Sunday night: I got a bus. I'd been out for a couple of pints in town and instead of getting the train back I took the 437 to West Kirby home.

I don't normally take buses for a few reasons. I like trains, obviously, and Merseyrail provide a good regular service. I've never been really comfortable on buses, and they seem to attract a disproportionate amount of insane people. I like the certainty of railway stations and train lines. Finding out where a bus goes to and from is a hassle, especially if you're going somewhere unfamiliar, and it's not always easy to find out where to go (Merseytravel's bus timetable site is a nightmare in this regard).

However, it was a wet, miserable night, I didn't fancy the walk home, and I had access to wi-fi in the pub so I was able to do a few internet searches to find out where I was going and where my nearest stop was. I had a bit of a panic when I asked for a single to Claughton, and the driver said "where?"; it was on the route but it seemed he didn't understand me for some reason.

The 437 was comfortable and quiet. There were a smattering of people, and none of them seemed to be particularly mad. The last time I got the bus under the river was a Saturday night Tunnel Bus, fifteen years ago, with a (cough) gentleman friend; it was like being trapped inside a vomit soaked sex club for ten minutes, with all sorts of drunken, debauched behaviour surrounding me. This was much more civilised and pleasant.

I got off the bus and walked the five minutes or so home. I wondered why I didn't take the bus more often. I realised it was the little things - the uncertainties about fares and bus stops and routes, the timetables being a bit odd. Just niggly points that mean I'd rather walk to a Merseyrail station than head for the bus stop at the end of my street.

And that's why we need Walrus: for people like me. An all in one smart card that is the key to Merseyside's entire network. Because I'd be quite happy to swipe onto the first bus I saw and see where it went. I'd be more confident at risking an unknown bus that was going in vaguely the right direction if I knew my Walrus card had all the cost covered. It'd also mean I wouldn't have wasted the return portion of my train ticket - I wouldn't have been charged for it in the first place. It's something I've done before in London, with my Oyster card - nipped onto a double decker rather than walk to the South Bank, or take an Overground train for a change instead of the Underground.

The Walrus would open up the bus and train network for people who don't use public transport often. Stick one in your wallet with twenty quid stored on it, and then just hop aboard a bus when it's raining, or the ferry when you fancy a change from Merseyrail, or a train into town because you can't face the idea of parking. It takes away the worry of how much and where you go and what you do. Walk in - waft your Walrus - walk out. Simple.

I know this isn't brain surgery. The Oyster's done all the ground work for us. It just came home to me on Sunday what a great thing the Walrus card will be. I can't wait.

Up The Workers

2011-11-30T18:46:00.000Z

This isn't a political blog, so I shan't comment too much on the whys and wherefores of today's strike (other than saying UP THE WORKERS! SOLIDARITY BROTHERS! THE PEOPLE'S FLAG IS DEEPEST RED, etc). What is interesting is how it affected Merseyside. The strike by public sector workers meant that the tunnels were closed and the ferries were suspended; the only way across the river was by Merseyrail.

I happened to be going over to Liverpool anyway to see my friend Andrew, so I got to see how Merseyrail responded first hand. I came back through Central at five o'clock, expecting to be hit with a tornado of furious commuters and befuddled Birkonians. It actually turned out to be - well, much like a city centre underground station during rush hour. There were a few British Transport Policemen on hand to quell the masses, in case they went mad, but there didn't seem much call for them.

Heading below ground you got your first indication that this wasn't a regular day, because there were people on the escalator who didn't know you have to stand on the right. This is obviously some secret code only people who use public transport every day know about. How difficult is it? Do you need a diagram? A lesson? Some kind of electroshock therapy? People: officially very annoying.

I thought that by the time I hit the platform there would be throngs, but it still wasn't that busy. There were people about, lots of them, but was it any busier than a normal evening at Liverpool Central in the Christmas shopping season? I'd say not. I'm guessing that a lot of people took the day off, not to mention all those public sector workers who didn't have the need to commute into the city today.

Merseyrail had planned ahead though, and arranged for a dispatcher on the platform. I like to think that he had been specially trained in crowd control for today. At the drop of a hat, he'd break out the white gloves and go into full Tokyo subway mode, shoving housewives onto the train without any regard for their dignity.

As it was he just had to stand at the front of the train holding a torch. I don't understand the torch.

The train came in but again, it wasn't busy. I could have got a seat without any problem. Since I was getting off at Hamilton Square I stood up, right by two women who were giddy with excitement at using this new found "train" thing. They cooed as we hit James Street, and aahed as we passed under the river. Bless their simple souls.

The normal cross river bus services had been rerouted via Hamilton Square, so there were more disembarkations than normal, but there were still enough people to fit on one lift. To be honest the most out of the ordinary part was that I was riding the Beatles train, at last. They should have got Paul McCartney to do the automated announcements. Or at least one of the blokes from Yellow Submarine.

It did make me think about the strange relationship between Liverpool and the Wirral, and how easily it's broken. Let's be honest: the peninsular is mainly a suburb of Liverpool, and yet it has only four connections across the Mersey - two road, one rail and one ferry. There is no pedestrian route; no way to cross by bike. There's no way to cross the river without paying a fee. For that you'd have to go all the way down river to Runcorn - and that'll change when they build the second bridge, as both will be tolled when it opens.

The strike highlights how vulnerable the Wirral can be. Merseyrail performed adeptly in the circumstances; though it's clear they weren't over taxed, they'd obviously made preparations. What if they were on strike as well though? I don't know what the answer is - any kind of bridge at this point in the river would have to be ludicrously high to accommodate shipping, and would you use a mile long foot tunnel?

The public sector workers' strike has actually demonstrated that their role is more than just collecting your bins or processing your Business Rates or caring for the sick. Without them, the actual region becomes fractured, and movement becomes impossible. Something to bear in mind, I think.

Odd

2011-11-29T19:46:00.001Z

I don't cycle. I haven't ridden a bike in years. In fact the last time I rode a bike was on my BMX when I was about 14.

I will say, however, that if I did ride a bike I would follow certain fashion rules. No lycra, for one. No tight spandex. No shiny fabrics.

And unlike this gentleman I spotted at Hamilton Square station, I'd wear socks that matched.

Or am I just being picky?

Incidentally, while I'm very glad that Merseyrail is so cycle friendly, is there some way we can make them take the lift from the platforms? I'm getting a little tired of having wheels shoved in my face on the escalators. Thank you.

And The Hoscar Goes To...

2011-11-24T11:54:00.001Z

I was riding Gracie Fields.

I have to admit, this was a first for me. I'd been on Red Rum and John Peel, and I'd seen the Beatles, but never Gracie. Gracie Fields is a real generational thing, isn't it? Like Tommy Steele, or clackers. It's sort of impossible to comprehend her appeal from the 21st Century.

Anyway, Gracie the train took me off through Lancashire. Luckily they didn't play Sally the whole way. I was off to finish that last bit of the Wigan-Southport line, the overlooked station at Hoscar. To be frank, it's easily overlooked; I'm not sure National Rail is entirely aware it still exists. It's north of Lathom, in the middle of flat fields, and not far from a sewage works. No-one will mistake it for St Pancras International.

The station spreads across the level crossing, with a platform on either side, but this isn't the original layout: wander down the Southport platform and you'll see the remains of an older one on the opposite side. It's now grown over and sitting in a farmer's field.

I also saw the neatly decapitated corpse of a pigeon. You might not be so lucky.

The station building is still there. but it's a private house now. The Railway Inn was closed at that time, too, though it got a crisp delivery while I sat there. It was all very quiet and peaceful, even when the fast trains sped through and the level crossing beeped and whined its way into life.

This is normally the point where I trek off to a different station, or a place of outstanding local interest, or a canal or something. That didn't happen at Hoscar. A clue to why can be found in the Local Area Information map at the station:

Plenty of features to enjoy there.

Instead I wandered to Lathom, and my friend Jennie picked me up, and we went out for an afternoon of coffee drinking and bitching at Cedar Farm. It was a bit of an anti-climactic way to finish off an entire line on the Merseyrail map, but it's that kind of place.

Lancashire's got some beautiful areas - the sandy coast, the Pennines, the desolate beauty of the moors. The area of West Lancashire round Burscough is not in the same league. It's utterly flat and boring. The towns and villages are small and uninspired. It's a grey region; a place to live and commute from. My visit to Hoscar hadn't felt any different to New Lane or Bescar Lane or Appley Bridge.

But that's another significant part of the Merseyrail map gone. In fact, in that entire square above, I only have Leyland and Euxton Balshaw Lane still to collect. Remember when I hadn't even touched the red and grey lines? That was a long time ago....

Bittersweet Goodbye

2011-11-20T16:21:00.001Z

The Liverpool Empire on a Thursday night. I could only be there for one reason.

Of course not. Ray Quinn as Danny? Can you imagine?

No, I was here for a far more interesting reason. A party.

I wasn't looking forward to it. I never do. I am, at heart, deeply shy, deeply antisocial, and deeply awkward. I'd doped myself up with my special uppers (they're prescription pills, before you write in) but I could still feel my stomach twisting itself into a Möbius strip in my belly. If I'm honest, listening to Ian's Midwinter Moon on the way there probably didn't put me in the party mood. It's a lovely tune, but it's not exactly Do You Wanna Funk?, is it?

I couldn't say no, though. Sally from Merseyrail had contacted me and very kindly invited me to this special occasion: Bart Schmeink's leaving party. Refusing wasn't even an option.

I came into the party behind a load of people who'd made the trek from Rail House, so I wandered over to the bar and got myself a beer. They'd put on a great spread for Bart: sandwiches and quiches and chicken satay, and tiers of Merseyrail cupcakes.

I was seriously tempted to steal the marzipan train from the top. In addition there were Bart Schmeink dollar bills as party favours; you can bet I robbed one of those.

A projector beamed moments from Bart's tenure onto the ceiling of the Empire bar, which mainly seemed to be him dressed up for Children in Need and Comic Relief over the years. I started to feel sorry for him, actually. He's a serious businessman but once or twice a year he's required to put on a frock and arse around in Liverpool Central.

My fellow guests were lovely to me, even though I was, let's face it, an interloper. They involved me in their conversations, said nice things about the blog, asked me how many stations I had left to go. A lot of them asked me what I'm going to do next, to which the answer is, "erm, I dunno." I wasn't exactly a sparkling presence, put it that way.

After a while I retreated to a corner with my beer and watched the party. There was a Merseyrail employee tinkling on the theatre's piano, very ably in fact, and I listened to him play while people chatted around me. I felt very out of place. This was a works do, after all; I was an invited guest but I wasn't one of them.

I thought I should go and speak to Bart, say my goodbyes, say nice things, but he was the star of the show - there was always someone round him. I didn't feel confident enough to wander up and interrupt. Then the barman recognised what I was going to order before I even reached the bar, and I thought maybe it was time to go.

So I went to the party but I wasn't a hit. Sometimes my anxiety wins, and this was one of those occasions.

Good luck to you anyway, Mr Schmeink. Liverpool's loss is Amsterdam's gain. Maybe I'll nip into GVB headquarters next time I'm in the Netherlands.

Rolling With My Homie

2011-11-16T19:56:00.001Z

It's been a long morning. That meeting went well, but there's another one to come. You've got to cross the river on a train and then get going businesslike all over again. All you want to do is kick back and relax with a roll-up. You want to step out of that station and start sucking away on the nicotine as soon as you can.

The solution? Start rolling on the train. That empty seat gives you plenty of room to spread your papers around. Keep a good grip as the train bumps over the tracks though or you'll be chucking Golden Virginia all over the floor.

Well done. You'll be full of tobacco before the door of Hamilton Square slams behind you.

Still Waters Run Deep

2011-11-09T20:39:00.000Z

Sitting on a platform, waiting for a train, gives you a good deal of time to ponder life's eternal questions. Like, how can Lulu really pretend she's never had plastic surgery when she looks like that? Or, why do women make such a fuss about leaving the toilet seat up? And, how come no-one can agree how to pronounce "Meols"?

This last one was particularly pertinent as I was sat on the platform at Meols Cop, in Southport. It's pronounced like it's spelt - meels. While about twenty miles away, on the Wirral, is the station at Meols. Pronounced mells. How did two communities, so close together, come up with such an unusual place name, then disagree on the pronunciation? Couldn't they have got together at some point and worked out who was right? In fact, I'd have made it one of the first jobs of Merseyside County Council, as was. I have sat down the Wirral and Sefton councillors and told them they weren't getting any biscuits until they hammered out an agreement on pronunciation.

If I had to chose, I'd go with mells, mainly because I like places whose pronunciation confuses Americans (see also: Gloucester, Leicester). My walk to Meols Cop had also revealed that it was sited in a somewhat tedious suburb of Southport, unlike the coast and country location of Meols. Long straight streets of redbrick houses, with corners taken up by tiny one-off businesses. Chippies, hairdressers, taxi firms, general stores. A kitchen fitter that, improbably, featured a quote from the Bible on its sign. Becky's Blinds. A minicab driver dozed in his car on the forecourt of Ladbrokes, his bluetooth headseat still rammed defiantly in his ear.

The line from Wigan is ramrod straight, but at Southport it makes a sudden diversion, curving northwards to reach Meols Cop, before swinging back on line to reach Chapel Street.

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It's all down to a combination of Victorian railway competition and our old friend, Dr Beeching. In the 19th Century, two competing train lines entered Southport from the east. Meols Cop was built by the West Lancashire Railway on its line to Preston; another branch was later built to send it south. At the same time, the Manchester and Southport Railway company constructed the railway line via Wigan we still use today. At Blowick, it shot like an arrow straight into the town centre.

The problem was, the Manchester and Southport Railway were cheaper than the West Lancashire. They sent the line across at ground level, putting in crossing gates where it met roads, including on the busy Meols Cop Road. The West Lancashire Railway, on the other hand, built road bridges over their line. Come the Sixties, with the car now king and one of the branches due to be closed, the more direct route was chopped so they could get rid of the level crossings on the route. As a pure sideline it meant that Meols Cop survived closure, though its Preston services vanished completely. You can still follow the old M&SR route through the town, tracing where new semis and industrial buildings have been built over the line of the railway.

Now it's an orphan station: in Merseyside, covered by Merseytravel, but not on Merseyrail. After Meols Cop you get the red rose of Lancashire, but here there's still the M in a circle. It's a bit weird to see a Merseytravel shelter painted Northern Rail purple. The Colour Tsars must be furious as hell.

They managed to get a yellow information board on there, but it's filled with posters from the Friends of Meols Cop Station, rather than useful timetables and bus routes. They've done a nice job: lots of friendly pieces of A4 with details of a monthly clean up operation at the station, and black and white photocopies of the station in older times. Back when it had a booking hall and proper station buildings.

When my train finally turned up, it was green. Bit of a shock. It seems Northern Rail had adopted an old Central train and still hadn't got round to properly refurbishing it. Since Central Trains ceased to exist four years ago, it does make you wonder what they're waiting for. Is purple paint really so expensive? All they'd done was pull off the transfers with the old company's logo on. Inside, the only sign you were on a Northern train was the new safety notices, stuck up alongside the old ones; everything else was green or in an alien font or covered in swirly Cs:

I tried not to think about how if they couldn't be bothered changing the seat moquette, maybe they couldn't be bothered examining other parts of the train. Like, for example, the brakes. Luckily I was only going one stop.

Three of us got off at Bescar Lane. An old couple climbed down further along the train, and stopped to stare at me for getting off as well. I couldn't decide if they were surprised to not be alone, or disapproved of me. They stumbled off while I took pictures of the station, its platforms splayed either side of a level crossing. Another local group had kept the floral displays going on the platform, though I can't help noticing that while the Friends of Meols Cop had embraced desktop publishing, the Friends of Bescar Lane still seemed to be working off an old Olivetti typewriter.

There was a nice old station sign as well, in a distinctive, pre-War font.

Getting a photo of the real station sign was a bit more difficult, though. It was positioned in a little alcove, under a tree. Combined with me having to use my rubbish camera phone, it took about a dozen tries before I could get a shot with me, the sign and the station name all in one.

You might have noticed the soft-focus backgrounds in some of these shots. That's not a camera effect; the whole county seemed to be blanketed in a thick, white mist. It was like being in a Kate Bush video. That part of Lancashire is incredibly flat, and so everywhere I looked the landscape pretty much vanished instantly: there were no trees or hills to break it up.

Bescar's actually some distance from the station; it means it's stayed a small, picturesque village, instead of growing into a commuter haven like Burscough or Parbold. There are still trees in the main street, and a church and village hall at the centre; a row of old almshouses are placed in the middle of the main street, with cottage gardens growing in front. In some places it looks like a 1950s time capsule.

The old exchange and the land was up for sale; no word on whether you got the bus with it. It'll probably be a "luxury architect designed executive home" soon, like the ones further down the street on Culshaw Way. I sincerely hope this road isn't named after Ormskirk's least funny son, "impressionist" Jon Culshaw. I can see it being the kind of thing media-whoring local councils and developers would do.

Beyond the village the road became entangled in woodland. The quickest route from Bescar Lane to New Lane is via footpaths across the land, darting between the fields of turf growing for garden centres, and down tiny lanes. I decided not to go that way, instead taking a long diversion south, through the Dam Wood. The trees closed in above me, and even though I was sticking to the road, it became strangely moody and dark. The signs warning me to stick to the road - Private Property! Guard dogs run free! - didn't engender a happy atmosphere. The chill of the morning slipped under my coat and cooled my flesh.

The road twisted round, occasionally throwing up a cottage or gatehouse, before the end of the wood came in sight. With the white mist it looked like a hole in the sky: a white void on my path. I felt like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, stumbling out into the snow-covered Narnia. I would totally have been Edmund if I'd been in that book, selling out my family for Turkish Delight. Let's face it, the White Witch was ace.

I was heading for Heaton's Bridge, over the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. In the flat farmlands the arc of the bridge was quite a landmark, with a pub obligingly placed beside it. I headed down shallow steps to the towpath.

Again, this wasn't the quickest or easiest way to my next station. But I was bored of trudging alongside roads, and this way would be quiet and peaceful.

Too quiet. There's a melancholy stillness to canals. It's utterly unmoving, except for the occasional ripple of wind across its surface. It's a thread of cold, unfeeling water, indifferent to its surrounding, inviting the unwary to slip underneath and never be seen again.

The path was narrow and badly formed - more a track than anything else. Occasionally I'd slip on the wet surface, and I thought about how close I was to the water. I could plunge into that canal quite easily. I'm not a good swimmer at the best of times, never mind wrapped in jeans and an anorak and carrying a backpack. No-one knew where I was, exactly; I could fall into the grey and vanish forever.

Carrying this cheery thought with me, I struck along the way. It was incredibly quiet. The mist deadened any noise until finally, the alien beep-beep of construction traffic entered my consciousness. There was a crane in the distance, and through the mist I could see the silhouettes of hangars. This was the former HMS Ringtail, a wartime Naval air base which was now being redeveloped for industry. It ceased to be MoD property years ago, but the runways proved useful for crop dusting, until finally the aerodrome was mothballed permanently. The hangars, however, are in the possession of the Merseyside Transport Trust.

I finally turned off the canal by a neat row of cottages. For the first time, I saw some boats, moored up against the bank. I wonder why all canal boats look like they were built in the nineteenth century? Surely there must be a market for modern canal boats, ones made out of fibreglass, with all mod cons? Not everything has to look like it comes with a Toby jug and a beard. There was a swing bridge across the canal, with complex instructions attached to tell you how to work it. I love the "stop" sign on the span; you know, just in case you decided to risk squeezing through that two foot gap.

From there it was a short wander up to New Lane station. It was another one with its platforms either side of a level crossing, but at least it still had its old station building - albeit now a private home, with the access to the platform bricked up.

The level crossing's automated as well now, so I was the only human presence on the station. (Well, I say "human").

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. With New Lane, I'd completed the stretch of line between Southport and Wigan. Every station was under my belt, and another vertice could be struck from the Merseyrail map. Funny how it ended in such an obscure place, I thought. I settled into the shelter to wait for my train. My friend Jennie was joining it at Parbold, and we were going to head into Wigan together for a coffee. I thought of the gingerbread latte I would buy from Starbucks, with extra whipped cream, as a celebratory treat for achieving this milestone.

We passed through Burscough, as I floated on a cloud of unbearable smugness. There was a slight pause as we stopped at the next station on the line, Hoscar.

Wait - where?

Hoscar?

Hoscar?

HOSCAR?!?!

Bollocks. Still one to go, then...

Room at the Top

2011-11-02T14:21:00.000Z

Merseyrail have announced their new boss, and I for one welcome our new railway overlord. His name is Maarten Spaargaren, and he looks like this:

I have to be honest - there was a part of me that was worried that the departure of Bart Schmeink would mean the orange influence on Merseyside would disappear. I nervously anticipated the appointment of a "Bert Carr" or a "Sean Druckett" or a "Philomena Mellencamp" and we'd go all boringly English. But no: with the arrival of Maarten we have a man whose name is so Dutch it should come with a free bunch of tulips and some pornography. I couldn't be more pleased.

Sad though I am to see the great Mr Schmeink leave, I look forward to the arrival of the Spaargaren Regime at the end of the month. I'm available for a pint of Grolsch any time, Maarten.

Country Sad Ballad Man

2011-10-27T19:50:00.000+01:00

Oh, Lytham. Such a tease.

Get off the train and it looks like there's a fine, impressive station building to greet you. Head round the front though, and you realise it's all gone.

A formerly grand booking hall is now a pub; not even an open pub - it was "closed until further notice". It's still very attractive, though, especially as almost all the other stations on the line have lost any semblance of platform buildings. I hope the closure is just temporary. I'm guessing that if the pub fails that old station will be replaced by apartment blocks before you know it.

In the meantime, Lytham is represented by a rather ignominious sign tucked down the side.

If I'm honest, there's no reason for such a big station anyway. Lytham's a small, pretty town, that's it. It's a bit like St Anne's, but more down to earth - there were a few more chain stores. A bit less opulence. A Spar. Still very pretty though.

It was lunchtime, and since the Station Tavern was out, I randomly picked Upstairs Downstairs. A chubby homosexual with irritating facial hair got me a baguette, while two waitresses stood behind the counter gossiping and pulling a face every time a customer wanted to be served. It was alright, I suppose, but I couldn't help noticing that my tea cost twice as much as the one in Blackpool.

The rain finally gave up so I headed out of town. My next station was out in the countryside, so for the first time that day I turned away from the coast. I passed through quiet streets, past a playground with a rocket shaped climbing frame and rope swings (remember when just a slide was the most exciting thing ever?) and a very posh looking Booths supermarket. I've never been in one of these stores, but since it was advertising an "Artisan Cafe" on site and had an attached garden centre, I'm not sure I'd be welcome. Not without a credit check first.

Of COURSE I'm going to reference the Village People now. How could I not? I'm sure it's not like this in Lytham though. (That clip is from Can't Stop the Music, the Village People musical, which is jaw-droppingly awful. It's a must-see).

Passing up the opportunity to find many ways to have a good time, I carried on. Soon I'd left Lytham behind and I was out in the countryside.

I have a real fear of walking beside the road in the country. I don't like places where there aren't pavements. Walking in the road always makes me anxious, even if I know I'm following the country code and I'm perfectly within my rights. Luckily Lancashire County Council had the decency to build a path on one side, but it still felt a bit hairy beside a national speed limit road.

Drivers tend to take one of three manoeuvres when they see you walking at the side of a country lane. In the best case, they slow down a little and move away to give you space. Next are the ones who swing right over to the other side of the road, thereby implying that you're really fat and they don't want to accidentally clip your chunky thighs.

The third type are the wankers. They're the ones who put their foot down, or stay right up against the side of the road, or just ignore you. They're the ones with attitude, the ones who are listening to a Clarkson audiobook, the ones who are saying Quake with fear at my mighty four-wheeled progress, pathetic biped! Feel my superiority at manhandling this machine with skill and speeding past your limited progress!

On the plus side, I was getting exercise and fresh air, so they'll probably die before me.

I couldn't really sense where I was in relation to the railway line - it was somewhere over there, as far as I could work out, but I couldn't see any sign of it. I passed over a canal, and past the local tip, which the council had thoughtfully put right next to a caravan park. Apparently plots for holiday lets were available; can't say I'm surprised.

As any schoolboy knows, a group of crows is called a murder. This is one of those facts I learnt when I was little because (a) I had a fondness for the macabre and (b) I liked knowing more than everyone else. I watched a murder now, rising and falling over a cropped field; they rested on the ground then, at some unseen signal, all the crows rose up into the air, swirled around one another, then landed a few metres away. It was like watching a very anxious sandstorm.

Fortunately, the crows decided not to attack me. My gory death at their pecking beaks will have to wait for another day. The only wildlife to surprise me that day was a particularly nosy cow, who thrust her face through a gap in the hedge as I approached. I like cows. They are dumb as a box of hair, but they have a simple charm and unthreatening personality that I'm fond of. Like Rav Wilding. My great uncles farmed cows, and I used to like to pat and stroke them. Then eat a steak.

I ran my hand of the muzzle of the cow and, predictably, it let me without much protest. As I said, stupid.

Actually that all sounded like I have some weird bovine fetish. I don't, honest. We're just friends.

Crashing on. My next station was Moss Side; not the dodgy area of Manchester, thankfully. This was a tiny country station by a level crossing, just a platform in the middle of nowhere. I took a seat on the platform and listened to the peace.

Sort of. What actually happened was that Northern Rail decided to interrupt my rural idyll with regular announcements over the loudspeaker. All our stations are covered by CCTV... please keep all luggage safe... vandalism will not be tolerated... Yes, one of these announcements told me my train was on the way, but apart from that, it was a stream of noise pollution. In the near dead-silence of an Autumn afternoon, it was all you could hear. The locals must find it incredibly annoying, hour after hour of the same repetitive, booming voices.

Unsurprisingly I was the only person to board. I settled in on the Pacer for the trip, choosing a seat right at the back - I was getting off at the next station, anyway. Across from me was a woman who was staring intently out the window. She was sat on one of the "sideways" seats, where you can store your bike, and she seemed to be incapable of closing her legs. Thankfully her skirt was past her knees or it would have been like a very low budget remake of Basic Instinct.

As the train started up she started to sing, quietly, under her breath. At first I just thought she was mouthing, but then I realised I could just about hear her voice under the train noise - it was something about Jesus. Over and over. "Mmmmffffmmmm JESUS mmmmfff." The Jesus part was getting louder, so that she could be heard over the grinding of diesel engines.

I have no objection to people having a faith, and wanting to praise Jesus in their own way. But when a spreadlegged woman with a tight Croydon facelift is murmuring the Lord's name, you start to get unnerved. Especially when the train stopped for one of those random reasons in the middle of nowhere and she fixed her eyes on me. "The next station is Kirkham and Wesham," she intoned, and my testicles turned tail and made their way back inside my body.

The next station was Kirkham and Wesham, and I was very glad to disembark (I was even more glad that she didn't).

It's a lovely little station. Again, some care and attention's been devoted to it (and some money), so there's a nice covered set of steps, and a clean and tidy ticket hall. This was the sort of station building that I'd have thought Lytham could get away with, instead of that epic piece of architecture.

I got a bit confused on the bridge, trying to work out which way to go. Kirkham was in one direction, and Wesham was in the other; I needed to go into the former, but I ended up on my way to the latter. I wondered if the railway bridge acted as a sort of frontier post, knowing how easily people start hating their neighbours. I could imagine the local schoolkids stood on either side, baiting one another, daring them to cross over the bridge to their half.

If you've watched much of the new series of Doctor Who, you'll know the concept of "fixed points in time". The Doctor can run round the universe changing history wherever he likes normally, but sometimes there are events which absolutely must occur. Pompeii, for example.

I had my own equivalent of a fixed point, though admittedly it wasn't in quite the same league as "make sure Shane from Neighbours dies on Mars". My version was called Salwick.

If you know anything about train services (or perhaps you've read the story of Robert's visit) you'll know Salwick only gets three trains towards Preston a day - one at 7:13, one at 8:13, and one at 16:15. I absolutely, positively had to get that 16:15 train, or I'd be stranded in the middle of Lancashire.

I'd been quite cocky about catching the train earlier that day. The walk from Kirkham to Salwick didn't seem too arduous. In fact, I even texted Robert and asked if he knew if there were any pubs that way, because it looked like I'd have time to kill (I'd forgotten that he hadn't even left the station on his visit, so as if he'd know).

I sauntered through Kirkham. It wasn't just that I had plenty of time; I was also encountering hills for the first time on my trip. Steep hills, that went down one side and up the other. After a day's walking, this wasn't a welcome development (I'd done something to my right knee too, and it was letting out a little yelp with every step). It did mean I got to see some of the town's unique features in great detail, like a weaver's loom in a bus shelter.

Kirkham was once a big textile centre, and when the last mill closed in 2003 they preserved the final loom in the town. A nice gesture, but I can't help wondering if the mill would have lasted longer if they hadn't been using equipment from the early 20th Century (the plaque claims it was manufactured after the First World War).

I passed Kirkham Baths, which were also run by the YMCA (is there a massive gay movement in the Fylde I didn't know about?) and headed into town. I'm going to apologise in advance to my friend Jennie, who grew up in this bit of the county, but I didn't find Kirkham that impressive. It had been described as a "market town" but to me it seemed like a housing estate with pretensions; the buildings were boring, the shops uninspired, the traffic relentless. I was in no hurry to linger, which was handy because I realised I would have to get a move on to get to Salwick now.

I'll give the town bonus points for this old fashioned hardware store, though.

I walked out onto the bypass, where I jumped on a regular basis as cars sped by, seeing 50 miles an hour as a suggestion rather than a limit. It was a boring road through boring countryside; the farms on either side weren't pretty, Darling Buds of May country estates, but agricultural factories with unattractive outbuildings and messy yards. I was the only person walking, of course.

On and on it went. I was tired and thirsty. In my head I could hear the relentless ticking of a clock, counting down to that 16:15 departure. I hadn't realised it was so far to walk - there had been a serious miscalculation somewhere along the line. Buses passed me, but I didn't know where they went and I didn't have any cash to buy a ticket anyway.

A check of Google Maps on my phone to make sure I was heading in the right direction (if I wasn't, I suspect I would have jumped under a juggernaut) and then I found my left hand turn, off the main road and towards Salwick. A road without a pavement.

I take back my previous kudos for Lancashire County Council.

I hauled my tired legs onto the tarmac, and stumbled along. There wasn't much traffic, thankfully, but it was still a tedious slog, pressing myself into the hedge every time I heard a car in the distance. I tried walking on the rough verge at the side of the road, but the uneven ground made my sore knee yelp even louder.

<insert reference to Emmerdale's past their sell-by date "comedy" family here>

I did at least get a view of a perfect pastoral scene as I reached the village proper. A church, green grass, sheep.

It was a shame about the relentless hum of the nuclear processing site in the background. Kind of ruins the pretty country scene.

I hadn't realised the business of the "Works" on the OS map. This is the Springfields site (yes, I immediately thought of Mr Burns too) and it's the reason Salwick station is still there. A high angled fence surrounded the whole facility, and there was a tense, unidentifiable atmosphere around it. Perhaps it was all the references to the Anti-Terrorism Act on the signs, and the policemen with guns at the main entrance. It doesn't make for a pleasant stroll.

On the plus side, I was nearly at the station.

Never have I been so glad to see a road sign.

A new tension began to grip me as I approached the station, though. What if I couldn't take my photo by the sign? What if I was leapt upon by trained soldiers, determined to stop me from taking pictures in such a sensitive area? What if even now I was being marked out as an insurgent, simply for walking round the site perimeter with a backpack?

I have to be honest - I wasn't concerned about myself. I was worried about the blog. I imagined writing this entry up, perhaps from my cell at Belmarsh, and having to put in those horrible words: I wasn't able to get a picture of me in front of the station sign because the police deleted that photo. I imagined the list of stations visited, with one gap where Salwick should be. A hole in the network. An incomplete itinerary.

That thought made me sweat and panic far more than anything else that day. Even more than the nutty woman on the train. I simply had to get that last station sign picture.

And I did.

As it turned out, I wasn't even questioned. Bit disappointing really.

Salwick's just a ramp and a platform, though at least there are two tracks at this point on the line. I thought I'd be the sole visitor again but there were half a dozen people waiting for the Preston train. I imagine there is a shift at the plant that relies on this service for its staff, though I'd hate to think what happens if there's a cancellation. Or what it's like on a wintry day, with the wind whistling round you and the snow coming down.

I slumped down into my seat on the train. I was tired and cold, but full of satisfaction. That was another line down. It was a line I didn't need to go near, it was a line I'd got no real interest in, and it was a line that hadn't really thrown up any magnificent stations or inspiring moments. It was just there. And now it was under my belt.

As a bonus for my day's efforts, Northern Rail kindly laid on an extremely fit bloke on the train for me to perve at. A man who then pulled down his case from the overhead rack, making his shirt ride up and revealing six inches of smooth white naked stomach.

The perfect way to end the day.

Round and Back Again

2011-10-22T14:01:00.000+01:00

The simple way out of Blackpool would have been to get the BF to drive me home. The slightly less simple way out would have been to take the train from Blackpool North.

Instead, I took a different route: to the south.

I know, I know. "It's not on the Merseyrail map! It's not a Merseyrail service! You are totally ignoring your blog's entire brief, and I for one will not stand for it! Consider your RSS feed deleted!"

You're right. There was no reason for me to do it apart from: it was there. The sheer enjoyment of knowing that I had visited every single station on that loop. That gives me a sense of achievement, a bit of pride, a smidgeon of pleasure. Sorry about that.

I started at Blackpool South, first thing in the morning. The BF dropped me off in the car (once again, his devotion to me doesn't extend to four mile hikes through the countryside) and I wandered down to the platform.

It was a hell of a shock. The mainline routes all go into Blackpool North now, so the only service that runs into South is the hourly train to Colne. Still, it's a major destination, so I expected something a bit better than... that.

One platform. One track. One bus shelter. That's your lot.

There used to be more services, of course, and more platforms: four in fact. Even without the benefit of Wikipedia, it's easy to see the remains. A car park next door takes up a strangely tapered piece of land, and the abandoned edge of the island platform can still be seen.

The train took only a couple of minutes to get us to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, which was a bit of an improvement. It had a roof at least. Surprisingly, the station's only been here since 1987; it's right in the shadow of the Big One.

Again, it was unstaffed, which seemed doubly unusual considering it must get a lot of traffic in summer.

I headed for the seafront. I'd thought about getting a tram from the Pleasure Beach down to Squires Gate, but the improvement works mean that part of the line is closed at the moment. It was a bit disappointing, but understandable. Instead, I went up onto the sea wall, and followed it south.

It was 10 am on an October Wednesday, so unsurprisingly, I had the front more or less to myself. A couple rollerbladed past me at one point, holding hands. Ahead, an elderly couple battled against the wind to get their morning constitutional.

Dotted along the parade were artworks which screamed "European Union regeneration fund"; huge hulks of angular metal and concrete, some of them with benches inside to hide from the rain. I wasn't impressed until I came across the giant glitterball, because, let's face it, that's just fabulous.

The weather Gods were watching me. I was at the point where the commercial activity on the Golden Mile had stopped and turned into flats, where the cafes and bars had disappeared. I was halfway between stations. And lo! the heavens opened, and a rainstorm that even Noah would have thought was over the top started.

It was like stepping into a hurricane. Icy points of water thrashed my face and body; the backs of my legs were soaked in seconds. Thankfully the wind was blowing in my direction, catching me from behind and pushing me on.

I stopped for a minute to take a picture of the newly built tram depot, and the camera was nearly whisked out of my hand.

That photo is actually in colour; I know it looks black and white.

All of this would have been a bit depressing, if my iPod hadn't taken pity on me. It randomly shuffled up Bad Romance. It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is impossible to be unhappy when you hear Bad Romance; in fact, it almost put a spring in my step. I used the tempest as a suitable cover so I could sing along, shouting "ra-ra-ra-ah-ah; roma, roma-ma, gaga-ooh-la-la" into the rainstorm.

There was one last piece of artwork before the promenade ended; as I rounded it, I found that the hand-holding rollerbladers were hidden inside, trying to hide from the squall. I trudged through the wet sand down to the roadside, and spotted salvation: the Dunes cafe, a little greasy spoon in a parade of shops opposite Squires Gate station. I practically ran inside to order a tea.

"Do you want that in a plastic cup so you can sit outside, love?" joked the mumsy woman behind the counter.

There were plastic seats bolted to the chipboard table. The walls were covered in Blackpool FC memorabilia, including a signed shirt. A board advertised the £2.50 fried breakfast, and the smell of eggs and fried bread filled the cafe. It was homely, simple, unpretentious. I hugged my mug of tea and let its warmth take me over.

The squall had finished by the time my mug was empty. I crossed the road to Squires Gate station, buried under a road bridge.

Remember how tiny little Garston used to be the station for Liverpool (not John Lennon) Airport? How international travellers were advised to disembark there and get a bus to the terminal? Squires Gate is Blackpool's equivalent though, sadly, it's even more pathetic.

In between the garages for a housing estate and some industrial units, it's one platform, no ticket office. None the less, "alight here for Blackpool International Airport".

There's been mutterings about changing the station's name to simply Blackpool Airport; I hope not. I like Squires Gate. I'd like it even more if there was an apostrophe.

The train took us south through some dunes and, though I didn't realise it, through about fourteen social classes. By the time I got off at St Anne's-By-The-Sea the cheap and cheerful world of Blackpool was firmly behind me. St Anne's had a station building, a taxi concourse, trees.

This town was truly middle-class; it was the Margo Leadbetter of conurbations. I walked down the high street and felt like I was lowering the tone with my still damp walking trousers and my backpack. There were planters and metal street furniture along the avenue, with local department stores and boutiques. I saw a Caffe Nero, a chain which for some reason hasn't bothered turning up in Blackpool, and there wasn't a hint of a fast food establishment; just small, local restaurants.

I decided not to risk the seafront, since I'd ended up half drowned last time I walked that way, and instead turned inland for the road south. It was a wide main road, elegantly spaced and lined with hefty Victorian villas. Most of them still seemed to be homes too, though there were the inevitable discreet bell pushes indicating a conversion to apartments, and a few nursing homes. The driveways were peppered with the upper middle class marques; Audi, BMW, Lexus. The odd Mini for a runaround. A sign pointed to the Royal Lytham St Annes Golf Course and I realised we were in British Open territory; of course there was going to be cash splashed around.

The street names were obsequious in the extreme. Obviously, there was a Victoria Road, because let's face it, there always is. As I worked my way towards Ansdell though, I realised that the planners seemed to have gone through every possible Royalist permutation. York. Queens. Sandringham. Balmoral. Even as the houses got a bit newer, King Edward Avenue and Queen Mary Drive turned up. Apartment blocks were called "Queens Court" or "Windsor House". God knows what it must have been like when William and Kate were married; you probably couldn't walk five yards without catching on bunting.

The road was dead straight, which meant my eye was caught by a distant feature. I had no idea what it was: just a tower, backlit against the sun. Its silhouette seemed completely out of place amongst the subtle grandeur of the houses. As I got closer I began to think: is it a mosque? The tower looked remarkably like a minaret, and there seemed to be the hint of a dome behind. Somehow I couldn't see the residents of St Anne's taking well to the idea of a large Islamic centre in their midst, and this looked really big.

Finally I got up close, and saw a beautiful white church. The rain had scrubbed it, making the tiles shine in the sun. It was a fantastic building, completely unexpected amongst its slightly predictable neighbours. The effect was only slightly spoiled by a large tarpaulin advertising Zumba classes on a Tuesday night hanging across the entrance.

I doubled back so that I could get to Ansdell & Fairhaven station. At the foot of Woodlands Road was an example of early transport integration: a specially restored shelter, allowing interchange between the trains and the trams. It had been restored by the local historical society, and inside was a little display on the history of trams in the area.

Hopefully one day Blackpool's new shiny tram network can be extended south, and the tram shelter can be useful again.

Ansdell & Fairhaven station was the same as the rest of the line. One platform and one track. The size of the bridge behind the platform showed how large it must have once been; three arches, two of which are now useless.

Still, I was halfway round the Blackpool loop. None of the stations were exactly inspiring so far, but the important thing was that I'd collected them. Four to go...

The End of the Pier Show

2011-10-21T00:17:00.000+01:00

Blackpool and I have a history. I went once when I was 20 and swore I'd never go again.

I was on the Executive Committee of my Student Union at Edge Hill, and four of us were sent up to Blackpool to attend the national conference. Accommodation, food, transport, all paid for by the Union. Delegate passes for the Winter Gardens. Plenty of social events organised to keep us amused while we were there.

I hated it. I found it tacky and ugly. I hated the food and the bars. I hated every single thing about it. I have never been so glad to see a motorway as I was the day I saw the M55 again. As I've subsequently said, if you can't enjoy it when you're 20 and it's free, you never will.

You can imagine how pleased I was when Merseytravel revamped the map and yup, suddenly Blackpool North was on it. Now I had to go back.

The branch is probably the most inaccurate part of the whole map. Firstly, it's impossible to get to Poulton-le-Fylde from Liverpool without changing trains. You used to be able to, but then they changed the services and didn't bother updating the map. Secondly, there are two stations on the branch between Preston and Poulton-le-Fylde, and between Poulton-le-Fylde and Blackpool North is another station, Layton. None of them are to be seen.

Will that stand in my way? Of course not! I got the train from Liverpool Lime Street to Preston, and changed to a Pacer (grrr) for Poulton-le-Fylde. The stations inbetween could wait.

Here's a bit of advice: don't listen to comedy audiobooks on a train. I was listening to Alan Partridge's "autobiography" and it was very difficult not to laugh out loud. I'm sure I must have terrified a fair few passengers, hissing and shaking with suppressed giggles, until I could finally get off at Poulton-le-Fylde.

It was a very pleasant surprise. I've become used to country stations being a platform and not much else by now. Instead, I got herringbone bricks, an old-fashioned canopy, and plenty of flowers and plants (supplied by the Plant Place Garden Centre, apparently). Unused advertising boards were used to exhibit work by the Poulton-le-Fylde Photographic Society, or to show off old LMS posters of the line. It was pretty and well-maintained.

The ticket office had been nicely buffed up too, with the wood varnished and clean. And a member of staff to sell you passes to places. It's not hard to make stations nice. It should happen more often.

I'd like to apologise for my hair in all my appearances, by the way. The strong winds, occasional rain showers and the hood of my coat made it assume all sorts of unusual shapes.

The town is also delightful. It was a proper market town. The buildings were quietly grand, the streets pedestrianised here and there, and you couldn't move for ambling pensioners. Do pensioners actually go places, or do they just walk the streets? Like zombies?

Poulton-le-Fylde is also home to a certain supervillain, who's decided to become even more evil and has retrained as an estate agent:

I was taking the Blackpool Old Road which, despite its name, didn't seem that old at all. It was home to a lot of detached houses, set back from the street behind gates and long drives. Not in a security compound type-way, more like a nice place to retire too. Poulton-le-Fylde would seem to be a good place to retire to. It's compact and pretty and flat. The people seem pretty nice, too:

There weren't any apples to pick up, though. Maybe someone took advantage of the honour system and turned up with a truck.

It was a great morning, the weak sun just warm enough on my face. The rain that had striped across the train windows had stopped and so every surface had a gentle sheen to it. Here and there it caught in droplets and fragmented. This is the pleasure of Autumn; this is how I want mid-October to be. Nature winding down and resting.

The houses thinned, but imperceptibly; from the road it still looked like town. Sometimes you glimpsed fields in the gap between houses, but the only real sign that I had left suburbia behind came from the jarring presence of a farm beside the road, stinking of manure and scattering mud across the pavement. They carried on the generosity of the area though:

My eye was soon grabbed by a vast, modern complex of buildings, complete with a crane and steelwork extension under construction. It was Blackpool Sixth Form College. I found it a fascinating building, but of course I didn't take a photo. I've stood in oil refineries and by nuclear processing facilities and broken out the camera, but there's no way I'm going to take a picture that might, entirely accidentally, have a picture of a 16 year old in it. Our society has become depressingly obsessed with the idea of paedophiles loitering on street corners snapping pics of school kids. I didn't want to be arrested for being in charge of a camera in the vicinity of an educational establishment.

Layton was less charming. It was a bit down at heel, a bit more grudging, but still pleasant enough. The station was a big let-down though. The ticket hall was boarded up and closed. Leaving it off the Merseyrail map may have been a kindness.

I had five minutes before the train arrived, which left me with a quandry. The proper station sign, with the BR logo on it, was on the Preston-bound side, up and over the bridge. If I hurried, I might make it over and back in time for my train. I might not though, and I could just take a picture with one of the platform signs behind me...

Of course I went over to the other side. I'd have been riddled with anxiety otherwise. OCD is a cruel mistress.

I had to jump down the steps two at a time to be there for the train, but it was totally worth it.

Soon we were in the acres of track that herald the entrance to Blackpool North. At one point the station had sixteen platforms, and the massive spread of rails acts as a testament to it. With the importance of Blackpool as a resort receding though, the station was cut back.

The original station was in two parts: a Victorian terminus, with long trainsheds, and the "excursion" ticket hall, opened in 1938 and only open during the summer. When the station became too large for its purpose, they took the unusual decision to demolish the older building.

I have to be honest: I'm glad they did. Blackpool North is stunning. It's open and airy, and the white walls and glass roof make a refreshing change from the bricks and tiles of the usual British railway station. It's been restored well, with new facilities like a travel centre and ticket gates inserted into the fabric without ruining it.

It's not so impressive from the outside though. Part of this is due to the location: it's in a depression, so there's a high wall in front of you as soon as you step outside. It doesn't help that it's been covered in a giant advert for Joe Longthorne and the Billy Pearce Comedy Show. An out of place brick extension holds the Pumpkin cafe, and the glass frontage is a bit Arndale Centre.

I love the look on that girl's face.

So: now I was in Blackpool proper. I headed straight for the front, because really, where else would you go? The wind coming across the Irish Sea was astonishingly strong. It almost blew me into the road at Talbot Square, so I fled to the North Pier for a drink and a sit down. They'd run out of hot chocolate, so I took a latte and watched the windswept holidaymakers trying not to get pushed over the side.

From that angle, it looked pretty. The wind-battered sea was impressive too, depositing foam on the newly-built flood defences.

I have to confess: when I visited previously, I didn't go up the tower. I didn't go to the Pleasure Beach. I didn't go on a tram. It was all so miserable, I didn't want to. So maybe I didn't judge the town on its finest assets. Perhaps it was like going to Liverpool and not seeing the Liver Building. There was certainly a massive queue for the Tower, and for something called the "Blackpool Dungeons", a queue so large it quite put me off. I also imagined that the wind would mean the top was roped off, so I didn't bother. Sorry.

Blackpool's town centre could be anywhere. It's got a Boots, an HMV, a Debenhams. The WH Smiths where I bought a CD of the Licence to Kill soundtrack was still there (I only had it on tape at the time). The only difference is that here and there are random rock shops or t-shirt stores.

By now I'd been joined by the BF, who decided to drive up rather than wander round the train stations. He's an old hand with Blackpool, back to his childhood (he is Northern, after all). He insisted we visit Coral Island, and I'm glad he did.

I'll be honest: the town wasn't winning me over. Blackpool should be England's Las Vegas. It should be elaborate and over the top and stupid. When I went to Vegas, we watched a volcano explode in the street, ate dinner underneath the Eiffel Tower then went home to a King Arthur themed-bedroom. It was utterly ridiculous. Blackpool flirts with that sort of insanity, but most of it's half-hearted and tawdry. No-one's got their heart in it. No-one wants to spend any money.

Coral Island was one of the few places where it did work. It was a big, throbbing, glistening temple of lights and machines and rides. There was a monorail carrying kids over our heads, and punters furiously shovelling two pences into the entertainments. There was a "family bar" and a "family restaurant" and all sorts of pirate themed animatronics. I've mentioned before that I love arcades, and this was the best one I'd ever been to. I had to be dragged away.

Mr T's arcade next door, meanwhile, was Blackpool's reality. Sparse and cold and ugly. Concrete and low-rent neon. It smacked of laziness; with a site like that, right opposite the Central Pier, they didn't have to make it nice to visit. People would chuck money at it regardless.

We walked down the front to the Pleasure Beach, past row after row of B&Bs. That's the other problem with Blackpool. Its hotels are firmly stuck in the post-war era; it's a town where en-suite bathrooms are rare enough to be advertised on the signs. It's hundreds of tiny one man-shows when it needs to be massive super hotels and entertainment centres.

Blackpool needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Why isn't there an arena, so they can attract pop stars while they're still in the charts? Why are there no complexes like you get in Las Vegas, the kind of place you don't want to leave, because there's so much going on? It's thinking small when it needs to be epic. I could have enjoyed epic.

The only place that seems to get it right is the Pleasure Beach, because that really does think big. Well, almost right: five pounds just to look round? Stuff that.

Then the sun went down, and we were treated to the Illuminations. We took a tram to Bispham, a real boneshaker that clattered and shuddered along the track. The trams are due to be replaced soon with a new, modern design; I'd like to pretend I'm sorry, but the tram we rode on was uncomfortable, so it's no good as far as I'm concerned. The only bit I liked were the reversible seats, so the train can change direction and the passengers can still face forward.

The tram ride meant I could add another station to my tarting expedition though:

It's weird that the Illuminations have managed to hang on into the 21st Century: electric lights aren't as impressive as they used to be. The designs went from surprisingly tasteful:

to the gaudy:

to the borderline racist:

Plus there were Doctor Who lights, because Daleks make everything better:

Alright. I didn't hate Blackpool as much as last time. It's got some charm to it. I liked the pier. And the lights were impressive. But I wouldn't complain if it was another fourteen years before I went back.

Closing Time

2011-10-12T23:01:00.001+01:00

Today's Echo has the details of closure for next year's station upgrades. The good news is, the stations are being upgraded at all. The bad news is that the promised station closures aren't going to be restricted to Liverpool Central, as had previously been indicated. That £40 million is going to be spread right round the Loop, and so is the misery.

I've done a few little diagrams to show how the situation's going to develop over the next few months.

This is the situation right now: a lovely SQUARE loop, interchange stations, trains everywhere. From the 23rd April next year, it'll change to this:

Liverpool Central will effectively be wiped off the map. Both the Northern and Wirral line platforms will be closed for refurbishment. Replacement bus services will run instead, but to be frank, you'd be better off walking. When the Loop was closed, back when I was commuting from Birkenhead Park to Crewe, I found it quicker to just walk across town than to wait for the James Street-Lime Street bus. Northern Line passengers can go onto Moorfields and change to the Wirral Line, if they really need to, to end up round by Central.

The Wirral Line platforms at Central will then reopen from the 24th August, but what's that at James Street? I'm afraid that asterisk means that platform 1 at James Street will be closed from the 2nd August onwards. Fortunately, that's not too stressful. It'll still be possible to alight at Moorfields or, if you're really lazy, you can stay on the train all the way round the Loop and get off at platform 3, before the train heads back under the Mersey. Of course, if you do that, I'll judge you a little bit.

Liverpool Central will then be fully reopened on October 21st, all being well, but the works on platform 1 at James Street will continue until January 6th, 2013. Work then immediately shifts to platform 3, so people getting on a Wirral-bound train at Central won't have much chance of getting a seat.

The James Street work is due to continue until April 23rd 2013, but on April 21st Lime Street will close for business, until August 21st. The map will probably show that it's perfectly possible to walk from Lime Street to Central, but I couldn't work out a way to do that without re-jigging the map in a major fashion. It'll probably be similar to when the Grand National is on and signs appear in the streets to guide tourists to Central for the Aintree trains.

Sixteen months later, and three of the city's underground stations will have been refurbished. Moorfields and Hamilton Square will also be getting done, but the timescales haven't been specified: it's somewhere "between 2014 and 2019".

What's interesting about this to me is that they're going to close any of the other stations at all. I understood that Central would need a lot of work, but I didn't realise that the other stations would be getting this level of attention. I'm actually a bit more excited now, thinking about the level of work that can be achieved in those kind of shutdowns. Put it a different way: I am REALLY hoping that the brown plastic seats will be gone when I turn up at the new look stations.

Incidentally, my earlier post about Central has thrown up a couple of issues of its own. As Marke pointed out, the time for expanding the station is rapidly shrinking, while a shopping centre is built over the top; any reconstruction gets 1000x times more expensive the minute you can't dig down from the surface. The Echo article also alleges that platform-edge doors (PEDs) will be implemented at Central to contain the crowds. I'm taking that with a pinch of salt. When the Jubilee Line extension was built PEDs were put on all the new stations, but not on the old ones, because of difficulties with signalling equipment and the software involved. Even now, the likes of Green Park are open at platform level. I think this is one of those cases where things are talked about but will never actually happen.

"Anonymous" (why so shy? We're all friends here) also said that my Kirkby-Hunts Cross plans will never happen because of the flat crossing of the Liverpool-Manchester line. Running two such intensive services against one another would cause all sorts of hassle. This doesn't surprise me, as I basically came up with my plan by pointing at the map and working out what I'd like to happen, rather than being practical, but I have since read rumours that Network Rail has a similar idea. They're considering putting in a turnback facility somewhere beyond Liverpool South Parkway, so trains can reverse without hitting the junction in the first place. Good for the Northern Line; bad for Hunts Cross, it seems.

I'm less keen on "Anonymous"'s suggestion that staff are employed to force people along the platforms. We're British; we don't respond well to that kind of forcible behaviour. That's all a bit Japanese, and we know where that will end, with disgustingly efficient bullet trains. Members of staff should be kept behind glass screens where they belong, not manhandling the public. Unless it's that fit bloke who used to work at Birkenhead Park, in which case he can manhan[remainder of this paragraph cut for reasons of taste].

Him & Her

2011-10-11T08:56:00.000+01:00

I don't understand this.

I think it's something to do with Merseytravel. They've put up posters advertising it, anyway, and it's on their YouTube channel.

So he gets a train, and he fancies the girl. And he gets the train again, and he still fancies her. And then gets up late so he runs over the bridge and misses the girl he fancies. And his train. The next day he's on time, but she's not there.

Then he decides to take a bus instead. Or something? And then gets up earlier, and sits next to her, even though the entire bus is empty, and next thing she's resting her head on his shoulder. While there's some French music playing.

I don't understand. It's like watching Mulholland Drive or something.

I get the "boy fancies girl and decides to stalk her" part. Are we meant to sympathise? Surely she changed to a bus because of that weird bloke on the platform who kept staring at her?

Are we meant to find it romantic? If someone came and sat next to me on an empty bus I'd assume he was a pervert and/or mental. She seems to love it though. It's not exactly Sleepless in Seattle*, is it? More like the first five minutes of Saw. I bet he ties her up in his shed and abuses her with garden implements.

I just don't understand.

Maybe the message is "if you have a season ticket, all sorts of exciting things can happen to you!". You can have toast! You can sit in the pissing rain with pensioners! Though there isn't a single shot of a season ticket in the whole thing, so I might be wrong about that.

I like its extremely accurate portrayal of bus drivers as people who will ignore a man running behind banging on the glass, trying to board. The woman is working some fierce scarves. Cressington is a very pretty station.

It's just... odd.

I don't understand.

*I love Sleepless in Seattle, by the way. It's one of the few films to make me cry (I am essentially dead inside). It's the bit where Tom Hanks says "we have to go," then turns to Meg Ryan and says, "Shall we?". She's become part of his "we". Sob.

The Central Question

2011-10-10T19:41:00.000+01:00

What can you do with Liverpool Central? It's the hub of the Merseyrail network, the centrepiece, but it's in desperate need of help. The 19th Century by way of the 1970s station is bursting at the seams. Last month's announcement of £20 million and a four month closure will go some way to alleviating the pain, but how far will it go?

I happened to be in town today so I headed there to have a look round before the refurb starts (being a Wirralite, I rarely stay on the train all the way to Central unless I'm heading for Bold Street). The MtoGo has made a massive difference to the ticket hall. It's a lot brighter and more welcoming, and the white tiled floor helps. This is where the majority of the money's going. A new glass roof is coming in, along with "improved toilet facilities" and "improved passenger flows". The Central Village scheme (currently being constructed behind the old Lewis') will see escalators inserted to the left of the MtoGo, leading up to an intermediate concourse on the roof and then more escalators up to the new shopping district (you can see it on the video here). There will reportedly be more Walrus-ready passenger gates put in as well.

All well and good. But I can't say I'm not disappointed. The problem isn't with the concourse; it's down below on the Northern Line.

The Northern Line platforms predate the Link & Loop; in fact, they predate an awful lot of railways, full stop. The island platform was opened in 1892 as the terminus of the Wirral Railway from Birkenhead via James Street. When redevelopment came in the mid-Seventies, the Wirral Line was sent deeper to a brand new platform on the loop, while the old Wirral platforms became the new Northern Line.

Head down the escalators and, despite the usual cigarette-smoke coloured cladding, you're aware you're in a completely different station to the Wirral Line one. Island platforms are a rarity in UK underground stations (the London Underground only has two, left over from the earliest days of Tube building) and it feels narrow and restricted.

And look at those crowds. I was there at the tail end of the rush hour, and the train on the left was just departing, but look at how full the platform on the right is.

The escalator banks occupy much of the centre of the platform, and so there's little space either side for waiting passengers. It results in a "bunching" effect at either end and then, when the train comes in, a squeeze to get aboard. The signs showing where the doors are help a little, but it's far from ideal.

Network Rail plans on removing some of the escalator machinery to give people more room to circulate. That would help but it's a bit of a sticking plaster, like their decision to remove some of the seating units a few years ago.

The basic problem is that the Northern Line platforms just aren't fit for purpose any more. Using the old island platform when the Link was built probably saved an awful lot of money, but it just created more problems years later.

That twenty million sounds like a lot but what's really needed is a more drastic plan. My trip to the Glasgow Subway showed one solution. The whole circle was built with tiny island platforms in all the stations. At busy locations like Hillhead (below), they've built a second platform, across from the first. The old island platform becomes one way only, and a glass wall is installed to stop people from plummeting onto the tracks.

Bash through the wall at the top of the Northern Line escalators, build a bridge over the track, and put in a new platform with escalator and lift access there. You've just doubled the station's capacity.

Yes, it'd cost a bomb, but it's got to happen eventually. The alternative - which Network Rail consider might be necessary in the future - is to build a whole new station, probably underneath the Church Street/Ranelagh Street junction. Which would cost even more of a bomb.

There's still some smaller schemes that I think could be implemented to improve life for Central's users. At some point in the rebuild forty years ago, some jobsworth realised they could save a few quid by only putting in three escalators, even though there was space for four.

Well done; you saved a little bit of money. Can we replace that staircase with an escalator now? Because I think that might help the passengers a bit by getting them to and from the platform a lot quicker.

Another way to lighten the passenger load would be to send more trains to Hunts Cross. At the moment, in a typical fifteen minute period, there are three northbound trains and one southbound. If, say, the Kirkby train continued on instead of terminating, you'd double the amount of trains to Hunts Cross - and halve the number of people waiting on the platform. (As a bonus, you'd get twice as many trains serving the busy Liverpool South Parkway).

Next year's refurb will put in another lift; can I suggest it's a large one, so you can fit more than one person with a bike or a pushchair in it at a time? Perhaps big enough for half a dozen people at once? And if you could build it in a place that means people won't get rained on when they reach ticket hall level, that would be a good idea as well.

These are just a couple of idea; I'm sure you've got some of your own, and please feel free to use the comments to tell me what they are. I think we can all agree that Central needs help. Any money coming its way is of course appreciated. I'm afraid that £20 million just isn't enough.

P.S. I also noticed that Central's acquired a new bit of artwork on the floor, which looks a lot like a Grant Searl piece for the Animate the Underground series.

Firstly: on the floor? Really? Secondly, has this all been announced and unveiled and I missed it, or is it still being laid (I couldn't find this painting's riddle, which makes me wonder if it's a work in progress)? Thirdly, how much of it's going to be left after the refurbishment works?