Spending Spree

There have been a few interesting developments in Liverpool's rail infrastructure these last few weeks but I've not mentioned them on here because, frankly, I've had other things to do with my time.  However, the BF has ABANDONED me to go and watch some sort of football match so I may as well kill my evening writing a load of nonsense about railway stations.

The biggest news has of course been the allocation of £1.6 billion by the treasury to try and stem the plummeting approval ratings improve transport in the Liverpool City Region.   Part of this will be spent on Bus Rapid Transits to connect the Airport and the two football stadia with the city centre.  Bus Rapid Transits are great.  They're a sort of cheaper tram, with long bendy buses, dedicated transport lanes, and raised platforms to allow level boarding.  Here's a BRT stop in Curitiba, Brazil, which is undeniably funky.

Liverpool's system won't be like that.  It'll have the longer bendy buses, of course: Close Personal Friend Of The Blog Steve Rotheram posed with a mock-up outside Anfield: 

The rest of it?  Not so much.  The route from the airport to the city is two lane avenues which could, theoretically, have one lane fully segregated for buses in each direction with stops built on the central reservation.  That's what you'd need for a BRT.  It probably won't be that though, seeing as Steve has been loath to even reverse the anti-bus lane policy of Joe Anderson.  Plus, that two lane avenue stops in the Dingle, forcing an airport express to negotiate packed city streets through Toxteth or down Riverside Drive, a single carriageway road lined with residences and parkland.  

Getting to Anfield is even tougher; the Walton Breck Road is narrow, has many side streets, and has homes with front doors opening right on the pavement.  Plus they close much of it on a match day anyway.  As for Everton's new stadium - the Hill Dickinson Stadium, which is a whole embarrassing thing of its own - both Regent Road and Great Howard Street have received huge upgrades in recent years.  Regent Road was narrowed to incorporate a cycle lane along its length and Great Howard Street was made into a dual carriageway throughout.  Neither of these improvements, you'll note, included space for a Bus Rapid Transit.

Nice buses though.

Speaking of Everton, the fact that 50,000 people will be turning up to the docks at least once a week for the next few decades has prompted Merseytravel to take decisive action to get them there.  They've built a long chain of fences for people to queue in at Sandhills, the closest station, and they've applied to build the following great improvement to handle the crowds.

It's a staircase with a bridge and a bit of a ramp so there's a second way up to the platform.  That's it.  Sandhills is still a single island platform on a side road that was never built to handle that volume of crowds.  It was built for people to change lines, mainly, because the area around it is light industrial units in the main.  It needs a massive upgrade - perhaps with side platforms and new entrances - which is more than a single staircase.  Perhaps this is an issue that should've been addressed when planning permission was given to Everton?  Perhaps they should've been asked to contribute to the costs, seeing as they're the ones causing the need for it to be rebuilt?  Perhaps there should've been a bit more planning?

Actually the very best thing to do would be to build a whole new station.  There have been vague plans for a new stop on the Northern Line at Vauxhall, plans I've mentioned many times over the course of this blog.  Here's a piece on it from 2014.  The issues then are still issues today; there isn't the population or employment to justify building it, but part of the reason there isn't the population or employment is because there aren't great transport links to the area like, for example, a Merseyrail station.  

Things have changed in that intervening decade though.  There's that bloody great football stadium for a start.  The Titanic Hotel has opened, and the Stanley Dock is progressing as a residential development in stages.  New apartments have sprung up by the canal and the city centre is creeping north along Regent Road.  The time to build it would be now, while land values are still sufficiently low and before some canny developer snaps up the land and holds the region to ransom.  So expect to see that open in, oooh, 2076?

"But wait!" I hear you cry.  "Didn't they get £1.6 billion?  Can't they spend that on a new station?"  Of course they can, and of course they will.  Just not this station.  Steve-o is very keen on sharing the wealth around the six boroughs that make up the Liverpool City Region, and that means everyone gets a nice new station.  Sefton got Maghull North in 2018; Knowsley got Headbolt Lane in 2023; and Liverpool itself will get Baltic in - well who knows, but theoretically before the end of the decade.  Building Vauxhall station would mean Liverpool would get two new stations in a row which obviously cannot stand.  It doesn't matter that Liverpool is the centre of the city region, the hub around which it flows; it doesn't matter that there's a strong case for it being built.  The other boroughs have to get their turn first.  

Three new stations have been announced.  Carr Mill is in St Helens, out on the East Lancs Road, and will serve the north side of the town.  It'll allow a park and ride to be built and, as you can see from the picture above, there's a load of nice empty fields next to it that could be covered with a lot of cul-de-sacs.  Trains will run from here to Liverpool and Wigan on the City Line.  

Halton's new station will be at Daresbury, on the edge of Runcorn between Chester and Warrington.  There's a large business and technology park here and plans for lots of new homes so the new station will open up the area.  It's not an especially great line, to be honest.  Halton might have benefited more from an often-suggested station at Beechwood, where the line crosses the West Coast Main Line to Liverpool and would therefore mean Runcorn would get a great spot for interchanging.  

The line's in a tunnel here, though, so that would be extraordinarily expensive, not to mention the difficulty of building on a packed railway line with fast trains running through to London.  Perhaps when HS2 to Liverpool is built and there's more capacity and HAHAHAHA I COULDN'T FINISH THAT SENTENCE WITH A STRAIGHT FACE.  So there you go: Daresbury it is.

The intriguing new station is on the Wirral, at Woodchurch, and not just because it's the one closest to my house.  This part of the peninsula is a station desert, which is a problem because the Woodchurch and Beechwood estates are two of the most deprived in the county.  A fast rail link to the city centre would be a valuable asset, and the fact that it's next to a junction on the M53 and would enable a nice park and ride is a bonus.

The problem is, that's not an electrified Merseyrail line; that's the Borderlands Line to Wrexham, currently operated by diesel trains and terminating at Bidston.  Woodchurch has always been on the drawing board but for when the line is electrified, something which hasn't happened and probably never will (if we can't electrify the Midland Main Line I don't think the tracks through Caergwrle are top of anyone's list at Network Rail).  

Announcing that Woodchurch is definitely going to be built therefore raises a question: what trains will serve it?  The value of the station would be bringing it into Merseyrail; if it's still getting the sort-of-one an hour service it gets right now, it's not worth bothering with, especially if those services then end at Bidston.  You could electrify the line as far as Woodchurch (not forgetting there's another station, Upton, in between), but third rail electrification is frowned upon these days as too dangerous, so you'd need overhead electrification, which would need new hybrid trains.

Of course, Merseyrail already has some hybrid trains: the battery ones that go to Headbolt Lane.  And after their disastrous early days that service seems to have settled down and runs pretty well.  You'd need to buy some more new trains though, and are Merseytravel really going to give Stadler some more money after all the hassle they've caused?  

If you're extending Merseyrail, too, with the minimum two trains an hour, preferably four, in each direction expected, then that leaves very little room for Wrexham trains.  Meaning they get cut back as well, much as happened with Northern trains at Headbolt Lane.  In the process, you make the Wrexham Line even less attractive as a route.  

The other question about Woodchurch is where it'll be.  Looking at the map you'd expect it right next to the motorway and the dual carriageway Woodchurch Road, where all the traffic is.  The problem is, that's not handy for the estate that gives it its name.  The M53 scythes across the land between the railway and the estate in a cutting so it's pretty hard to get to. 

There is this footpath under the motorway connecting the high school to the Holmlands Estate across the way which could be used to provide access.  Putting the station there though would mean losing that connectivity to the buses and motorway traffic.  It's a bind: are you building the station for pedestrians or drivers, for people already on buses or to tempt them away from it?

The final development is the most surprising of all, because I don't think anybody even knew it was on the cards: a million pounds to revamp the entrance to Moorfields.  The station's ticket office has always been odd because it's up an escalator: you have to go up to reach the underground.  The reason for this is an ambitious 1970s scheme to build a network of pedestrian footbridges across the city centre, a quite mad scheme which unsurprisingly died a horrible death and has mostly been demolished.  It means there's an ugly void under the entrance which, unsurprisingly, attracts people who need shelter or who want to perform unsavoury acts out of view. 

The ideal plan would be to knock it all down and start again, but that's never going to happen.  That tube on the left hand side of the photo contains the escalators underground; there are cross passageways barely beneath the street that would have to be avoided.  It might happen if there was enough demand for space that an expensive oversite development could pay for it, but right opposite Moorfields is a Yates' Wine Lodge that's been closed and abandoned for twenty years with no sign of it going anywhere so there clearly isn't the demand.

What's happening instead is a bit of remedial action to make it more user friendly.  A new staircase will come down to the street in a straight line, a relief for anyone who knows the current arrangement which involves a blind corner on a landing favoured as a place to hang out by unsavoury types.  The space underneath the escalator hall will be filled in.  I should imagine this is where the bike racks will be moved to, which makes sense: it'll be secure and lockable but out of the way.  It removes the security concerns and makes it a more pleasing place to visit.  Plus there's new lighting and shiny signage.  I do like a shiny sign.

There you go.  A load of negativity rescued by a nice little bit of positivity at the end.  I may be a cynical bastard but sometimes I'm happy.

Closure

Sadface.

It seems appropriate that my final journey started underground.  As you might remember from my forthcoming children's series, Hamilton Square is always feeling sad that it doesn't get to hang out with the cool kids; it's nice that I got to include it on this auspicious occasion.

Yep, this is the story of how I finished off the Merseyrail map.  Accompanying me, for the first time in ages, was the Bf.  He wanted to be there for this important moment, even though he never even reads the blog (he's not a big reader).  Hopefully - hopefully - there would be people at James Street to join in too.

Obviously I was terrified no-one else would turn up.  The Bf tried to console me, saying that at least he would be there, and wasn't he the most important person anyway?  Which shows that you can be with someone for fifteen years and they can still not know you at all.  I can see him any day of the week.

I wasn't disappointed.  Yep, there were people ready to join me on the trip.  Six people, which is actually a nice amount to have - it's enough that you can chat to everyone, not too many, and enough to momentarily boost your ego.  Who were these fellow travellers?

From left: Gareth, Darrell, Lorna (doing her best to hide), Jamie, Robert and another Jamie.  Introductions were done, photo taken, station collected, and so it was into the lift and off to catch a train.  (Incidentally, the Bf was behind the camera, and therefore is in none of these shots; part of my plan to keep him as the Maris Crane of this blog).

Here's what happened.  I was so busy being relieved that people showed up at all, and trying to keep things light and amusing, that I completely forgot where I was going.  I just instinctively wandered out of the lift and straight to the Wirral bound platform, as though I was going home.  Even more weirdly, everyone followed me.   It was only once we were stood on the platform itself that it was gently pointed out to me that we were going the wrong bloody way.  Not the best of starts.

We scurried back up the stairs, ignoring Robert's constant complaints about having a sore knee, and made our way through the labyrinth of corridors to the Loop platform.  Unsurprisingly we were the only people there.  I don't know why more people don't use it to get back to the Wirral - it only adds an extra five minutes or so to your journey, but it means you're much more likely to get a seat home than if you board after the train's been everywhere else in the city centre.

A quick scoot under the city streets and we were out at Moorfields.  This was, of course, the station in the very first Merseytart trip, so coming back gave the whole project a circular feel - a loop, if you will (do you see what I did there?).  We ignored the homeless man crouched at the foot of the escalators, hacking into his glove, and collected the station sign.

It was time to walk to the next station, Lime Street (lower level).  The main line station was collected during that embarrassing time when I was in the Liverpool Echo, in the only example of professional photography on this website; the underground station remained uncollected.  Ignoring Robert's continued whines about his sore knee, we marched across town via the Queen Square bus terminal.  It really was a beautiful day, one of those great Spring moments where there's enough sun for it to be pleasant and not sweaty.  The city centre was throbbing, probably still on a high after the National, and we mixed and merged with happy, laughing Scousers.  Damn, but I love this city.

I'd decided that we'd get our photos outside the St George's Hall entrance to the station, so we'd be in the shadow of one of the finest Liverpool icons.  There were two pensioners already waiting there, though what for, I have no idea; I like to imagine they were Merseytart groupies, just here to catch a glimpse of their idol, and possibly touch the hem of my garment.  Or maybe they were just waiting for a lift home.

And so, to the final section of the Loop, and Liverpool Central.  I didn't quite know what to feel as we stepped off the train.  The weird thing is, it was so familiar, it didn't feel special; I was here only last Thursday, with my friend Jennie, so it wasn't like I was stepping into a new world.  It was the same old,  knackered round the edges Central.  But as we rose up the escalators, it started to dawn on me.  That was it.  That was all of it over and done with.

There was no fanfare, no fireworks, no dancing girls to greet us.  It was just another day at the busy station.  There were crash barriers piled up against one wall, not to hold back the screaming fans, but a relic of the Aintree traffic.  We whisked through the gates and gathered in the shopping centre for the final picture.  (I decided that as that was the entrance to the station proper, that should be the location of the shot).

Cheese!

Nice to see that Jamie was overcome with emotion right there at the end.  Not that Jamie, the other one.

How do you close off such an experience?  How else: with alcohol (except for Darrell, who was still recovering from an extensive drinking session the night before and was sticking to water).  We headed up Bold Street to Bier, the great little alehouse tucked into Newington, and ordered pints of imaginatively titled beers.  The conversation swept round a variety of weird topics (Gus Honeybun!  Upgrading Doctor Who to Blu-Ray!  Fag haggery!  Hooch vs Two Dogs!) but it was friendly, convivial, fun.

As I sat there I realised: five years ago, I didn't know any of these people.  Well, obviously I knew the Bf, and I used to work with Lorna years back, but we'd lost touch.  Everyone else I knew just because of this blog.  We'd become friends - yes, friends - just because I'd looked at a Merseyrail map and thought "I'd like to go to all of those stations one day."  The Internet is a wonderful thing.  People are pretty wonderful too.

(Yes, I've just got an iPhone, so yes, I have Instagram, so yes, I had to take a couple of pretentious looking pics.)

I slipped to the loo and changed into the t-shirt Jamie had brought me (not that one, the other Jamie).  Emblazoned with the 1970s Merseyrail picture, it also had the dates of the whole blog on it: 17 June 2007 through to 15 April 2012.  It was a bit like wearing your own obituary.  He gave me some Merseyrail flip-flops as well.  I didn't put those on, because the toilet floor was suffering from a flood.

So, thank you.  Thank you to everyone who came - Darrell, Lorna, Robert, Jamie, Gareth, Jamie and obviously, the Bf.  Thank you to everyone who's read this blog over the years.  Thank you for commenting, suggesting, criticising, correcting, laughing and enjoying this project.  Thank you to Merseyrail and Merseytravel for tolerating my eccentricities.

I'm not going anywhere yet; there are a few more closing posts to come, and I've got a trip planned for a couple of weeks time.  But this is undeniably the end of an era.

And thank you again.

For What We Have Lost

After yesterday's post about the new MtoGo, I had a bit of a scour through my archives, and I actually found some photos of some of the old Mersey Bookstalls.  Think of this as the Merseyrail equivalent of those "In Memoriam" videos at the Oscars, only without the embarrassing bits where everyone applauds the famous people and ignores the studio execs.

This was the Lime Street stall.  There was a man on my commute who used to buy a cup of coffee from them every morning.  It came in a polystyrene cup, and I can't help thinking that it all tasted of styrofoam by the time he got up the escalators.

Here's the Moorfields Kiosk, and embarrassingly, it's not a Mersey Bookstall at all.  This area has now been replaced by a false wall and a shuttered area; before the MtoGo opened, they were selling tickets from there.  I wonder if there's a second ticket sales area for busy periods?  It can be annoying when you're queuing for a train ticket and the man in front is only buying a Bounty.

The only platform kiosk was at James Street.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is demolished during the station closure later this year, as it takes up valuable space for people to wait in.  I have never seen this one open, which is a shame, as in my imagination it's a real old-fashioned book store inside; very much like the early days of WH Smith.  Sadly the only periodicals Mersey Bookstalls ever seemed to sell were papers or pornography.

Bonus picture:

What sort of hold does Shelly have over Merseyrail?  James Street was closed for extensive refurbishment, but for some reason, they didn't build an MtoGo here.  Instead, Shelly's News and Food have continued to keep passengers in Pepsi Max.  Is she Bart Schmeink's secret daughter?  Does she know about Maarten Spaargaren's first wife in the attic?  Are there corpses buried under the ticket hall that someone at Rail House didn't want uncovering?  The public must be told.

Not pictured are the stands at Liverpool Central and Hamilton Square.  I didn't take pictures of them because that was back in the days when I would be embarrassed about waving my snapper around in a train station.  I'm over that now.

Sweet Spot

Good news for hypoglycaemic trying to avoid slipping into a coma on the train to Ainsdale: there's a new MtoGo at Moorfields.  Of course, the very first MtoGo was in the Old Hall Street exit, but this one has been installed in the main ticket hall.

As usual, the Colour Tsars have had a field day.  There are all the expected gubbins - sweets and crisps and bottles of pop - in addition to the boring old train ticket stuff that they have to sell.  Funny how Merseyrail decided to double the retail offering just before the number of passengers using the station gets a massive boost with Central's closure.  What a coincidence.

Much as I like MtoGo (it's a properly interesting concept, and unique to Merseyrail), I was sad that this shop meant the end of the final Mersey Bookstall shop on the network.  Poor buggers, operating from a hatch in the wall.  They didn't have fancy yellow ties and automated next customer signs.  You were lucky if they weren't on a tea break.

Progress, eh?

Closing Time

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].

Riddle Me That

The passageway from Old Hall Street to the platforms at Moorfields is ridiculously long.  I mean, colossal.  By the time you emerge at the other end you expect to see Manchester Town Hall, not the back of the Echo building.

As built, it was also a little bit dull.  White tiles, white tiles and white tiles.  Which is fine in a public toilet, but in the throbbing centre of a city's transport system, not so much.

Over the years, Merseytravel have attempted to rectify this situation with some mosaic art in one section, and internationally themed display units provided by a local school at the other end.  It's not bad.  I've never actually covered it in the blog because it's in the Old Hall Street section, and I keep forgetting it's there: my instinct at Moorfields is always to turn left at the top of the escalators and head for the main exit.  Force of habit.

A couple of weeks ago another piece of art was erected in the corridor - the fourth section of the Animate the Underground project.  I have to admit, I wasn't keen on the first part of the scheme; I felt it was a bit twee, and it is definitely in the wrong place.  Putting that painting alongside the sublime Dream Passage is like asking your average bloke to stand next to Russell Tovey; all well and good, but look at what's to the left.  Fortunately the subsequent pieces have been a real improvement - at Lime Street, they liven the drab underpass, and at Hamilton Square the effect in the narrow corridor is brilliant, like entering another world.

The new piece, The Birth of Liverpool, doesn't have the same dreamlike effect as the piece at Hamilton Square, but at least it's not overwhelmed by the rest of the art.  On the contrary it's Birth of Liverpool which draws your eye as you enter the passageway.

The theme here is the city's maritime history.  There's a liner and a lightship, the famous Jesse Hartley clock tower that stands at the entrance to the docks, and the White Star building.

There's also, for reasons I can't quite fathom, Stevenson's Rocket.  Not sure why that's there.  The Overhead Railway's on there too, but at least that used to travel along the docks when it was around - the Rocket never even got a glimpse of the sea.

In the centre is the grand old bird of the Pier Head, the Liver Building.  The Liver Birds are hatching out to stand guard; there are also - sigh - blue and red eggs waiting to open.

And, of course, there's the riddle:

I have NO IDEA.  Not one clue where these things are leading us.  When all is finally revealed with the final poem at Central, I bet I still won't be able to work it out.  It may as well have been written in Swahili.

It's a very good piece; I especially like the way it meshes together, so that each repeated picture flows from the one before.  As a transport buff, I'm pleased to see the trains and boats, a potent reminder of the city's past.  Liverpool's a world class city in so many ways - it should be shouted from the rooftops.

Anyone got any idea about what the fifth mural will show?  It's Liverpool themed, and we've now had football, John Lennon, local artists, and the docks.  What icons are we still missing?  I'm going to take a punt at the two cathedrals.  Your suggestions are gratefully received!

Night Train

I'd been to see my friend Jennie, which doesn't happen often enough. She works at Edge Hill University, my old alma mater in Ormskirk, so visiting her is doubly pleasurable: I get to see her, and what condition her pregnant belly is in at the moment, and I also get to do a nostalgia trip round the campus. Not that there's much left from my day (fifteen years - erk). I used to have Writing Fiction classes in a white hut that was probably leftover from the war; that's been replaced by a huge silver building that looks like a stormtrooper's helmet. Everywhere you look there are steel and glass monoliths that dwarf the old landmarks I used to love.

So anyway, Jennie and I met up and went into Ormskirk for a meal. After walking out of Echelon because the staff couldn't seem to be bothered serving people, we headed for the Left Bank Brasserie. A very good decision, as it turned out, as the food and service were light years ahead of anything Echelon had to offer: highly recommended.

Jennie dropped me off at the station around nine o'clock. The train at that time on a Friday night is a funny thing. The serious clubbers have already headed into town, to get tanked up before they start. The last minute dashes into town won't happen until the pubs close around eleven, and drunks head for the final train to chance their luck.

I sat in the still-gleaming station building to wait the twenty minutes for my train. There was only one other person in there, a man in his fifties who shifted from seat to seat uncomfortably, as though he was sizing them all up. I wanted to interrupt and tell him that they were all equally unpleasant.

Behind the counter, the bored station master was staring at his smartphone. I'm not sure what he had on there - judging by the levels of scrutiny he was giving it, I'm guessing he'll be going blind soon - but it entirely captured his attention while I sat there. Who can blame him? Nobody came through wanting a ticket.

There were a few people on the platform who'd forgone the warm waiting room - probably because of the man playing musical chairs - and when the train came we spread ourselves along its length.

The amount of times I have taken this journey! Travelling through cold, dark nights headed for assignations in Liverpool. My first boyfriend would pick me up from Moorfields, and I'd travel in to meet him slightly sick with excitement. The trains were always empty and slightly melancholic. Of course, that was in the days before the carriages were refurbished, when there was a musty smell to the seats, and they usually showed the ravages of the Saturday crowds in their roughed up seat cushions and litter. Later, after I met the current Bf, I'd head to his for the weekend, usually with a bag of washing so I could skip having to use the launderette on campus.

I leaned against the glass and watched the dark. The route back from Ormskirk travels through countryside for the first part, then a lot of deep, impenetrable cuttings, so at night all you see is blackness. Then you burst into the hot white glow of a station and one or two people shuffle on board. There was thick fog that night too - as Jennie and I concluded, weather to be raped in - so even the lights of the houses were obscured. I may as well have been underground.

My fellow passengers were the same people I used to travel with when I was a student: the buttoned up young girl, slightly anxious at being alone in the train. A guy in his twenties with earphones rammed deep in his ears. Through the glass of the interlinking doors, I could see two rude boys restlessly wandering the carriage, baseball caps tucked on the back of their head, swinging idly off the poles. I used to be terrified of having to share the car with people like them, waiting for them to get bored and pick on me for some imaginary slight. Never happened.

At Old Roan, noise and excitement came aboard in the form of four drunken women, mid forties, partying hard. Slightly tipsy and talking loudly about what a good time they were going to have, though they weren't going to get too drunk. One turned to her friend and asked about her shoes, "Are they ok, Jackie? Because they really hurted you?". I resisted the urge to lean over and correct her grammar, but only just. They lost some of their fizz as we continued; the Christmas ban on alcohol on Merseyrail meant they didn't have anything to keep them topped up all the way.

I was the only person to get off at Moorfields; I usually am. It's always my preferred station, so much better than the hustle and fuss of Central. I can't deny it was a bit eerie wandering the empty corridors, the only sound being the rhythmic grind of the escalators.

There's something beautiful about a quiet train, something that slices into you and makes you run back over your mind. My journey had been a strange mix of memories and the present, as though I was viewing everything through a filter. Fifteen years since I'd done that journey for the first time, and even though there was a new Ormskirk station, and the trains turned purple, weirdly, I felt eighteen again.

Back in the Saddle Again

I'm getting there, I'm getting there. A month after my foot accident, I'm finally able to leave the house. I've managed to limp round Sainsbury's, I've had a potter round the garden, and now, finally, I've been able to return to the trains.

The occasion was another of those epoch-defining moments where I met up with another of my trusty readers. This time it was a case of Hello Sailor!, as the person I was meeting was Roy, a regular in the comment section who was currently on leave from his job in the Navy. We met up, along with Robert, and chucked back a few lagers. It was a good way to spend the afternoon, and once again reassured me that my readers are not insane losers. It's strange - when I started writing this blog, my terminal shyness would have stopped me from going anywhere near someone off the net. Now I seem to spend every month befriending another person I've only ever known through the odd e-mail. Who knew? You're nice people!

After that, I staggered back to Moorfields for the true highlight of the afternoon: riding the rails again! (I'd got a lift across to Liverpool). Disappointingly, Merseyrail has managed to carry on without me. There wasn't even a brass band in the ticket hall to welcome me back.

One thing had changed on the platform: the countdown clocks now had a little begging message, asking you to spread along the station. I've never seen this before, but it's about time.

I'm still not completely fixed, as the three-quarter of a mile walk home from the station reminded me: by the time I staggered through my front door I was in something approaching agony. I was also embarrassingly slow on the stair-ramp at Birkenhead Park. Normally I'm nimbly scaling the stairs like a mountain goat on a cliff face: yesterday I was overtaken by a pensioner with a tartan zip-up shopping trolley.

Still, it was nice to be back out there, and surely a return to tarting can't be far off. I'll leave you with a shot of my joy-filled face as I was carried home:

FEEL THE LOVE.

Plaque To The Future

Remember, back in October, I tried to visit Moorfields on the 30th anniversary of MerseyRail, but had my ambitions thwarted by a new toilet block? Well, Robert subsequently commented that the sign was back.

So a final Christmas shopping trip gave me the opportunity to have a shufti and see if I could find it. Since the cosmic significance of the 30th birthday trip was now lost, there wasn't much point, but it was nice to find it for completion's sake. If I can sound like an 80s American sitcom for a moment, I gained closure.

And there it is: Gawd bless you ma'am, and all that. Well done on your consumate unveiling skills.

Next to the plaque was a large copy of Centre of the Universe, Merseyrail's answer to The Great Bear (and which I still haven't got round to buying). It wittily associates notable Merseysiders with relevant stations, and my 007-head couldn't avoid pointing out that Chester's been appropriately renamed:



Please also note that Bache is replaced by Hugo Drax, which seems a bit odd at first, since Hugo Drax is in Moonraker and that was Roger Moore. However, it should be pointed out that in the novel, Sir Hugo Drax is originally from Liverpool, so this is a clever use of 007-Liverpool referencing (even if it's been placed in Cheshire). Strict Bond-geekery however makes me point out that Drax is in fact, not a Scouser at all, but is in fact the Graf Hugo von der Drache, a former Nazi hell bent on dropping a nuclear bomb on London. Even the most militant Liverpudlian hasn't advocated the atomic destruction of the Capital (well, maybe Derek Hatton).

From the station we plunged head first into the shopping carnival of Liverpool 1. I love shopping here now; it's amazing what a transformation it's made to the city, not just in terms of the range of shops, but also the shopping experience. There's something so pleasant about the whole city centre now, and the shops are well stocked and beautifully laid out. It certainly beats the hermetically sealed, faux-Classical hell of the Trafford Centre.

In the grand tradition of Christmas shopping, I bought a present for the person I care most about in the whole world i.e. me. Inside the wonderful new Waterstone's I found myself drawn towards this book, and I thought, what the heck. It's a great collection of before and after shots, showing historic Merseyside stations in the past, compared with today. It's highly recommended if you're like me and have any interest in the Liverpool and Wirral's railway stations. Some things have changed beyond recognition, some things aren't even there any more (Riverside station?) but a lot is pretty much unchanged: a positive comment on the health of the system, I feel...