All I Want Is Something New, Something I Can Hold On To

It was a Tuesday morning, and I was going somewhere new.  The journey wasn't new; the journey was one of the most familiar to me.  It was the destination that was new, the newest place to visit on Britain's rail map: Maghull North.

The station opened on the 18th June but, for reasons that were both heartwarming and frustrating, I couldn't make it.  I enviously watched Twitter as one rail fan after another visited, clutching complimentary cupcakes, posing under the station sign.  I invented that move, mate, and there you are rubbing it in my face.  In a way though, it was for the best.  Opening day is a show off.  It's overstaffed and it's over attentive.  I'd have attracted attention from enthusiastic PR people as I wandered around with my camera, and I never, ever want to attract attention to myself.  Second day, though: no-one cares about that.  It'd be quiet.

I got the train from Moorfields, because I always get the train from Moorfields; I like how huge it is underground, great concourses and passageways, usually empty during the day.  I'm not entirely on board with how it has been refurbished - it's lost those big glass-fronted display cases, and the mosaics in the Old Hall Street passageway - but it's still my station in a way that the other city centre stops aren't.  I headed for the Northern Line platform, and received my first disappointment.  The line diagram on the wall of the tunnel hadn't been updated.  This was disappointing, but perhaps to be expected: it's a big job, replacing that. 

I cast around the rest of the platform to see if anything else had been updated.  The map on the wall was still the old one; same for the line diagram at the entrance to the platform.  Maghull North's only presence was on the timetables, asterisked as opening 18th June, and scrolling by on the Next Train indicators.

On board the train, the map was also missing Maghull North; this was a surprise, as I'd been on a train a couple of weeks that showed it.  That's the kind of thing that should be out there on day one.  A new station is an exciting moment for everyone, and Merseytravel should've been really hammering it into your consciousness.  See how we're investing your Council Tax money?  See how we're spending your cash to make your life better?  Look upon Maghull North, ye mighties, and rejoice!

We rolled out on the Ormskirk line, the sights whizzing by: the depot at Kirkdale now with extra steelwork for the new trains, the cutting beyond with that thrillingly high footbridge I'd love to walk across if I wasn't terrified.  The weeds poking through the fence at Walton, the expanse of concrete at Aintree - handy for the National, empty the rest of the year - the sad hulk of the Old Roan pub.  Then it was across the motorways as the traffic piled into the never-ending disaster that is Switch Island and into Maghull station.

There was no-one on the platform.  Maghull is one of the busiest stations on Merseyrail, floating around the bottom of the top ten, and it was a surprise to see it completely deserted.  Maybe the new station had already stolen its thunder.  Before we left, I switched on the video:

I wondered if they'd called her back to do the voiceover.  Did she make her way to some Soho recording suite, whisper "Maghull North" into the microphone, then walked out again a few quid better off?  Maybe it's a Frankenstein recording - the existing "Maghull" spliced into the "North" from Birkenhead North.  Or maybe she recorded a load of potential stations when she originally got the job, and on a computer there are sound files marked Headbolt Lane and Town Meadow and St James.  

A few minutes later we slid into the new northbound platform at Maghull North, the first new Merseyrail station since Conway Park in 1998.  (It opened to the public on the 22nd June 1998, in fact, if you want to bake it a cake for its twentieth birthday on Friday).  Three people got off the train: me and two hi-vis jacketed Merseyrail employees, who chatted to the guard and then slowly climbed the steps. 

Everything gleamed.  The fence built on the platform to separate us from suburban gardens was some kind of graffiti-proof plastic, and the sun glinted off it.  The tarmac was marked with swirls, like a newly laid carpet showing the footsteps of every visitor.

It felt big.  It's only two platforms and an overbridge, but tucked down in the cutting, it somehow felt expansive.  I wandered up the steps.  The lifts aren't ready yet, and a group of workmen were gathered round the base of the tower, working busily.  Not great, of course, but understandable.

Pleasingly, there were people waiting on the southbound platform.  It was already getting use.  A woman was talking to her mate, and fortunately she had a mouth the size of a small black hole and I could hear everything she said.  I listened in case she was talking about the station, but no, it was only the most banal of chatter. 

It'll look a lot better once that embankment has greened over a bit.

The footbridge leads directly into the ticket hall, which pleased me; it's a tiny security measure, forcing you to pass a staffed window to get onto the station property.  It's slightly undercut by an under construction bridge straight into the car park, but still: the idea is there.  I'd have taken a picture of this, but there was a policeman waiting outside the station.  Not a real one, one of those community police volunteer types with the blue badges, but he eyed me suspiciously as I approached.  There's a small space between the lift tower and the station building, with a concrete slab and temporary fencing; I'm guessing this will eventually be a cage for bike storage.

Inside the ticket hall, a disappointment.

Position closed?  On the second day?   It's also interesting to note that there's no room for an M to Go shop, even though there's one at Maghull: this is rail tickets only.

I passed on through to the car park.  It was surprisingly full already.  Junction 1 of the M58 is two minutes from the station, and I guessed a lot of Maghull's passengers had already transferred their loyalties.  There was space being taken up at the end by the builders' compound, but I wondered if it would need extending sooner rather than later.

Which brings us to the bit that really interests me: the station building.

It's... okay, I guess?  There's a lot of glass, which is good.  The high ceiling is a pleasing feature.  As usual, I wish they'd have illuminated M and double arrow logos.  It does the job.  But when I think of what Merseytravel have only just opened over in Ainsdale, it's a real let down.  This was an entirely new site - you could build anything you want.  There wasn't the restriction of an existing station.  And this is what they came up with?  A cynic might look at the difference in average house prices between Ainsdale and Maghull, or the relative noise made by the local community, but I'm just sad that there wasn't something a bit more exciting on show.  It's a perfunctory building, totally acceptable, but unlikely to win any prizes.

From the side it's even more shed-like, and I hate that Maghull North on the side.  It's just plain ugly.  It's notable that the station is entirely angled towards the car park.  If you're arriving on foot from School Lane, you pass down some steps that give you a great view of the fire door and the bins.  This is also where the station sign is, and it's just a bit too low. 

Perhaps those fences are due to be disassembled, but until they go, that's all you can see from the road.  Not a great advert.  Still, a station sign is a station sign, so I had to do the usual.

As Robert pointed out on Twitter, it's apparently just a "P+R", not the full "Park and Ride" these days. 

I could've just got back on the train and gone back into town, but let's be honest, that wouldn't have been very on-brand for me.  I decided I'd walk to the old Maghull station and get the train from there.

I got something of a surprise once I left the station.  I'd visited this site back in 2015, when it was just a scabby bit of land that used to belong to Ashworth Hospital.  It had been marked down as a suitable site for a prison initially, until the Government changed its mind and decided to build houses on there.  I'd always, in my head, assumed that they'd wait for the station to open before they built the homes.  Apparently not. 

There was an avenue of houses, with cars outside, neat gardens, a DPD van delivering an online purchase.  It wasn't finished yet - the road ended abruptly - but this was the community that the station had been built to serve, already living.

I turned back, snapping a shot of the station over the bridge as I passed, because I can't stop myself:

Maghull is an odd little town.  There's been a settlement here for centuries, but it never really achieved much: even when the railway came, there were barely a thousand people living here.  It was the construction of a fast road from Liverpool to Ormskirk in the thirties that spurred the growth.  The motor car meant it became a commuter spot, and that's what it still feels like.

It's a town entirely made of suburbia.  Endless semis stretch away down curved avenues; there are neat precincts of shops (hairdresser/sandwich shop/mini-market) and patches of plain green recreation ground.

It's nice but it's not interesting.  It's formless.  The central precinct, and the library, are far from the station on the Liverpool Road; in between is a lot of the same houses.  It's probably a decent place to bring up a lot of very bored children, who'll move out as soon as they possibly can.  It's safe and dull.

I overshot the railway station, so I doubled back along the canal, where the houses opened out onto the water.  Decks and landing spots had been built at the rear of very ordinary looking houses; a strange combination of waterside idyll and banal living.

The old station crosses a level crossing, backed by a pub and another precinct where bored boys lined up to buy sausage rolls from the bakery (only one schoolchild at a time).  I went to the Liverpool platform, busy with pensioners and a distracted looking man and a student with earbuds rammed tightly in her ears.

South again, and I had a bug.  I didn't want to go straight into town, I wanted to do a bit more walking, so I jumped off the train at Sandhills.  I thought that since I'd seen Merseytravel's newest station, I could have a look at what might be the next one after that.  At Sandhills, there was a hopeful sign that someone in the publicity department planned for Maghull North:

That gap between Maghull and Town Green is just begging for a sticker with the new station on it, isn't it?

I left the station, heading for the main road, when I suddenly realised there was something in my shoe.  I stopped and shook it free, and a fifty pence piece fell out.  I'll remind you that I'd been out walking for about two hours at that point and I hadn't noticed anything untoward at all.  There are two explanations: either I have insensitive feet, or I've started spontaneously producing cash with my body.  I'm leaning towards the latter explanation.

I thought I'd walk along Regent Road, rather than the busy main route of Great Howard Street, but after a couple of blocks I realised that was a mistake.  It was quieter, yes, but too quiet.  There were no other pedestrians, and the buildings were unfriendly and dark.  It was very "first five minutes of a Death Wish film" so I looped back onto the main route by Tai Pan, the enormous Chinese supermarket.  There was a constant noise from the cars, and the whole path was being torn up and remodelled as part of the dualling of Great Howard Street, but at least I felt like I was in the city.

There have been plans for a station along here for decades.  There's a mile and a half of track between Moorfields and Sandhills; a long gap without a station for Merseyrail, but especially so given that's an inner city district.  Nothing's happened, because it's area with few residents and mainly industrial businesses.  Garages, factories, warehouses. 

So what's changed?  The first shot in the arm was the Titanic Hotel, opening in the warehouses by the Stanley Dock.  Opposite it, the Tobacco Warehouse is being converted into 500 flats.  Further south, the apartment blocks are starting to spread north across the border line at Leeds Street.  There's also the TenStreets plan, where the Council is hoping to turn the stretch from the Stanley Dock to the Princes Dock into another new cultural neighbourhood like the Baltic.

The biggest driver for a new station, however, is Everton.  They've been trapped in their cramped ground at Goodison for decades, hemmed in by city streets and a church occupying the corner spot.  They tried to move to the King's Dock, then suggested moving out to Kirkby, but they finally seem to have settled on a new stadium on the riverside at the Bramley Moore Dock, about three quarters of a mile from Sandhills.  A second station further down the line would help to spread the passenger load on match days.  Plus, to be cyncial for a moment, Merseytravel could probably get Everton to help pay for what would be a fairly expensive station on top of a viaduct.

A site hasn't been identified for the new station yet, but there's a big patch of open land next to the railway which remains suspiciously unbuilt on.  Doesn't that look right for a station with long ramps to properly accommodate crowds? 

Further south the line becomes hemmed in by roads and businesses, workshops, tyre shops.  Every arch rattled with the noise of machinery.  An apprentice mechanic hovered outside the entrance to one, sneaking in a fag break. 

The only problem I have with the proposed station is its name: Vauxhall.  Nope.  There's already a large, popular Vauxhall station in London.  We don't need another one.  Call it TenStreets, call it Stanley Dock, call it Love Lane (the inappropriately romantically named street that runs parallel to the railway).  Use a bit of originality.

I walked further south, past the remains of The Goat pub, the traditional sign that my train from Ormskirk was nearly in town.  I love Liverpool, and I love Merseyrail; I love when Merseytravel manages to do something great like build a new station.  Maghull North already seems to be a success and it's not even a week old.  A station off Great Howard Street could be a success too.  Let's not wait twenty years before we build it.

People Watching

You know people?  People in general?  Annoying, aren't they?  Their foibles, their prejudices, their way of stinking and moaning and complaining and just ruining things for everyone?  People are just so annoying.

I was reminded of this when I was in Maghull yesterday to see an exhibition about a proposed railway station.

Here's the situation: on the fringes of Maghull, right at the limits of Merseyside, is Ashworth Hospital, the high security institution.  It used to spread over two sites, but a few years ago the southern site was closed and demolished.  First it was earmarked for a prison, but then the government changed its mind and decided to build hundreds of new homes there.  Merseytravel nipped in quick, pointed out that it was right next to the Ormskirk branch of the Northern Line, and suggested a new train station might be a good idea.  Sorted!

The exhibition at Maghull town hall was to show the plans to the locals and allow them to express their feelings about them.  And goodness, they were keen to express them.  I stepped into a small room full of pictures and maps and some incredibly furious people.  They were haranguing the three or four members of the Merseytravel staff.  I heard complaints about the car park layout and the lack of acoustic fencing and the sheer inconvenience to them this new station will cause.

And here's the thing: I don't understand a single one of their objections.

I'd been out at the site of Maghull North that morning, in the middle of a relentless, unpleasant rain storm.  It was miserable and wet, with cars whizzing by and splashing the pavement from puddles in the gutter.  I found the roundabout that will lead into the new housing estate, and the fenced off entry to the development site.

A bit further down the road was the bridge over the tracks.  According to the Merseytravel website, by 2017, this site will look like this:

In 2015, it looks like this:

And this is why I didn't get the objections.  Remember, on the right hand side of the tracks, there is a secure hospital for the criminally insane and a prison and a motorway junction.  This is not bucolic, fragrant, England's green and pleasant land.  When Ian Brady is one of your neighbours, it's pretty hard to lower the tone.

A new railway station will improve life for everyone.  A fast, frequent service to Liverpool and Ormskirk.  A manned station building to discourage anti-social behaviour.  A park and ride facility, close to the M58.  Full access for the less able.  Relief for Maghull and Ormskirk stations, both of which are in the top ten busiest stations on Merseyrail.

I'm biased, I know.  I just can't see the downside.  There are studies that show living within walking distance of a railway station can add 10% to the value of your home.  It'll help alleviate the pressure on the local roads from those hundreds of new houses.  I mean, the railway line's already there: there are already electric trains whizzing by eight times an hour, nineteen hours a day.

I heard a woman at the public exhibition describe the plans as a "disgrace".  Perhaps she was an architecture critic; the station building is a bit perfunctory.  More likely she was just "people".  People are annoying.

You can comment on the plans for Maghull North here.  Please say something nice.

Horses for Courses

The Wirral Line, so far, is pretty much sewn up. Two branches complete and a couple of random ones polished off along the way. But I felt I was neglecting the poor old Northern Line. So early Saturday morning, I board the train and head out for the Ormskirk line to polish off a few more.

This line is very familiar to me. I was a student in Ormskirk, at Edge Hill College of Higher Education/University College/University (delete as applicable). I used this line with alarming regularity. Ormskirk is a very pretty little town, but when you're 19, you crave the big lights, big shops and especially, big pubs of the city, so I'd be on the train into Liverpool the first opportunity I got. But that was of course over a decade ago now, so it's all a bit stranger, a bit more alien.

Travelling along the line I was struck by how things had developed. As you rise up out of the tunnel onto the viaduct, the train gets a magnificent view of the dockside estate. What had changed in the intervening years was that the crumbling warehouses were being replaced by office buildings, new industrial units and, in some cases, luxury apartments. Yes, it's a slow transformation, and there's still an awful lot to do. The massive hulk of Stanley Dock still rots in the distance - the world's largest brick building, and no-one quite knows what to do with it. There was a family of tourists on the train, and the dad got quite excited by the huge warehouses. Bless him; he tried to interest his small daughters in the industrial architecture ("Look! A bonded tea warehouse!"). They couldn't give a toss; quite reasonably for six year old girls, I think.

I carried on going, past Sandhills, Kirkdale and Walton, heading for Orrell Park. Walton, I've already done; Sandhills, I'm leaving until it's redeveloped, which should be soon; and Kirkdale is somehow tied into the Kirkby line for me, mentally, so that can wait. In my head the priority was Orrell Park, Aintree and Old Roan, because - OCD alert! - I always liked the O-A-O symmetry of their names.

I knew nothing about Orrell Park whatsoever. I didn't even know where it was. But it was quite a sweet little station, tucked away on a side road, with a man actually cleaning the platform of litter as I arrived. Yes, reader; someone clearing up litter.

It actually turned out that Orrell Park was just moments away from Walton shopping centre, a long messy conglomeration of shops threaded along a busy main road. I like this sort of thing. I come from a town where, if you want to shop, you go into the town centre; that's it. I sort of like these neighbourhood shopping areas, that have a tiny branch of Boots and a little Woolworths next to green grocers and butchers. It's interesting, and it's just another "big city" thing for me.

I walked from here to the next station, Aintree. Perhaps I'm educationally subnormal, but until I moved up here, I had no idea the Grand National was held in Liverpool. I don't know where I thought Aintree was, I just didn't think it was round here. The racecourse has taken idiots like me on board and has helpfully signposted their main attraction:

Merseyrail have also embraced the whole equestrian theme to a quite ludicrous degree, viz:

The horses! The horses! They're everywhere, and I think they went to my head a little, so I went a bit daft when I decided to collect this sign. There was just something about the whole positioning, that made me decide to go for the railway-alien-antenna look. I probably did it just to distract myself from the colossal shitness of that station building. Seriously people, if you're going to spend all that money building a brand new station, how about building one which doesn't look like a public toilet?

Still, I thought, Aintree: home of one of the most famous racecourses in the world - at least I'll get a decent ALF out of it. I was shocked - no, disgusted - to find there was not a single ALF on the platform. In fact, this was to be an entirely ALF free excursion. This is the best I got:

"Aintree Station: Alight here for Aintree". Really? Do you think so? Consider me outraged. My stern letter to Merseytravel about the quality of their ALF boards just got even sterner. It's one thing to not have a board at all. It's quite another to be patronised by the signage.

Grumbling, I boarded the train for what I intended to be my final destination, Old Roan. This is another station which has had a load of money thrown at it. Sorry, it's not a station: as the sign shows, this is the Old Roan Bus Rail Interchange (well, it would if my fat head wasn't in the way). What this means is a train station with a load of bus stops outside, but still, I admire the commitment to integrated transport.

I nipped out of the station in search of a little bit of history: the infamous Paradox. When I was a student, they used to organise bus trips to this legendary nightclub, a huge edifice towering over the railway line. The reason it was legendary was because it was cheap, it was scuzzy, and you were virtually guaranteed to come away from there with at least one filthy sex act under your belt. I never went because, as a sensitive young homo, they didn't quite cater for the filthy sex acts I wanted to commit (I had to go to the Curzon in Liverpool for those) but I would sit enraptured as my friends came back with tales of bacchanalian debauchery. That may be a slight exaggeration; usually they just got a few gropes and perhaps a happy finish, but still.

A friend had said he would be in Aintree, at the vast sprawling retail park that stretches between the station and Old Roan. But he hadn't texted me to say he was there so, on a whim, I went back and caught the train to Maghull instead.

Maghull was always going to be difficult to reach, because it's impossible to walk to. This is because of Switch Island, the charming sounding but actually nightmarish road junction which is to the south of the town. At this point, the M57, M58 and A59 all collide in a huge level junction, above a canal and below a railway line, in the kind of half-finished mess that transport projects sadly seem to descend to. Originally the M57 was meant to carry on to the coast, and the M58 would have integrated into it, and it would have been impressive; instead they just sort of gave up (see here for the full story: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/badjunctions/57-58-59.shtml). It's just a roaring confusion of lanes upon lanes which make no sense. I felt quite smug whizzing past it on my train.

Maghull is an unattractive name for a not terribly attractive place. Try saying out loud; it's like you're clearing your throat. The townspeople seem quite proud of it - I was so desperate for an ALF I took a photo of the sign - but really, it's a not very nice town. It's the proud possessor of the ugliest town hall I have ever seen in my life, out on the dual carriageway (in another signifier of what a rubbish town this is, the station is miles away from the middle of it, so I couldn't go and see it; do a Google Image search, if you can bear it). And its station has a level crossing which, as I've indicated previously, I think are just awful. No wonder I don't look happy.

Full disclosure: I'm prejudiced against Maghull because, when I was at Edge Hill, there was a group known as "the Maghull lads". These were a bunch of lads who seemed to be rotated between all the women of Edge Hill, breaking hearts everywhere they went. Anyway, they were quite unpleasant to my friend Jennie, who to this day pronounces Maghull as if it were a gum disease, so perhaps I shouldn't be so blinkered. I'm sorry Maghull. I'm sure you have many charming hidden features. Somewhere.

Maghull also had a little bus station attached, which contained one of the early signs of the death of civilization:

There are about 15 different things about that poster which depress me inutterably. Fortunately, my mate arrived at this point to stop me from throwing myself under the next train. He whisked me away in his car so he could buy a new fish from a local garden centre. He picked an unattractive brown lumpy thing, which he then promised to name after me; surprisingly, I continued talking to him after this, and after a bit of lunch he dropped me off in town for the train home.

I got off at Hamilton Square. I was going to leave this one for later, but I was there, and I was keen to finish off my day of tarting, so I snapped a couple of shots. Hamilton Square is where the original electric train between Liverpool and Birkenhead ran to, and its very attractive station building still bears the signs. "Frequent electric trains" - how marvellous is that? The huge tower was a water tower, constructed to run the hydraulic lifts which took Victorians down to the subterranean depths. It had a twin in Liverpool, at James Street, which like so much in the city was bombed in the war.

(Actually, I should admit to something. Though I was pleased to cross another station off the list, and architecturally it's the best of today's buildings, the best thing about Hamilton Square for me was the poster below.

How fucking gay am I? I can't help it. I just think the name "Lucky Santangelo" is simultaneously the worst and best name in Christendom. God bless you Jackie Collins and your limited command of the English language).