Centralism

Last week I wrote a piece about the plans for Baltic station and in passing, I sarcastically mentioned how there was "no further info on how and when they're going to sort out Liverpool Central."  Literally the next day Steve Rotherham put out some info on how and when they're going to sort out Liverpool Central.  Well played, Rotherham.

I say that: this was more of a hopes and dreams announcement rather than anything actually tangible.  Still, they included some whizzy CGI, which is always pleasing to see.  

The announcement came with the establishment of a Liverpool-Manchester Railway Board, which exists to try and get funding for improvements to the connections between the two largest cities in the North West.  Their vision is for a brand new high speed railway via Warrington and Manchester Airport with new termini at each end - an underground station at Piccadilly, enabling through running to Leeds if anyone decides that joining up with a third major city is something worth doing, and a massively revamped Liverpool Central.

This last part came as a surprise.  Central did, of course, once have direct trains to Manchester, as well as London and other destinations.  Beeching axed most of the routes in the Sixties, diverted the long distance ones into Lime Street, then the Link and Loop project sent the commuter routes underground.  The train shed was demolished, the platforms swept away, and Central became nothing more than a local station.

It is, however, a local station and a half.  Despite having only three platforms, Central is the tenth busiest station outside the capital with 11.4 million passengers last year - 900,000 less than Glasgow Queen Street, and more than Lime Street.  The Northern Line platforms in particular are beyond capacity, a single island somehow expected to cope with twelve trains an hour in each direction, including terminating services from Kirkby and Ormskirk that need to be turned round.  Something has to be done.

The proposed solution appears to be using the new Liverpool-Manchester route as an excuse to completely rebuild Central, gaining access to funds that wouldn't otherwise be available, and creating an entirely new station that none the less contains elements that are more than 150 years old.  But enough of that: where's the whizzy CGI?

It's important to note that these are images of what Central could look like, which does, of course, mean nothing.  I could look like Ryan Gosling given enough money and plastic surgery, but it's not going to happen.  This appears to be the existing entrance to the station on Ranelagh Street, with the existing shopping mall demolished in favour of a large open public space.  This is a great idea.  Central's shops have always been down at heel, and (with the exception of the Sainsbury's Local) have never really taken advantage of their location.  There are people streaming through there eighteen hours a day and yet most of the shops open at nine and close at five, leaving a dead space in the evening.  The only sadness is that this will mean the end of the legendary Leather Shop, a store that nobody has ever gone into, nobody has ever purchased anything from, and which has none the less existed on this site for decades.

Another image shows a second entrance to the station; the building behind the overhang is the Art Deco Oxfam so we can deduce this seems to be an opening out onto a pedestrianised Newington.  This makes sense.  The movement of traffic from the station is no longer straight out into the shopping district.  Bold Street and Ropewalks are vibrant, busy areas, and a back entrance would shorten the journey for people going to, for example, Chinatown or the Philharmonic.  

Connecting the two entrances is this long concourse which appears to finally take advantage of Liverpool Central's big plus: land.  Most of the time, expanding an underground station in a city centre is an expensive job involving a lot of demolition.  Central had the good luck - depending on what way you look at it - to have been demolished in the middle of an economic downturn.  That means the land where the old above ground station was has never really been filled in.

This image from Google Maps - I drew the rough paths of the Northern and Wirral lines on myself - shows that beyond the mall at the front there's car parks, workshops, nothing much.  Over the years proposals have come and gone - a couple of skyscrapers, a leisure development that ties in with the adjacent Lewis's building - but nothing of any real import has actually happened.  Meaning that the land is there to be exploited, and building work can be carried out with relatively little disruption to the rest of the city.  A new concourse can fill this gap between the buildings and cover any new tunnelling work - of which there will presumably be a lot.  The plans are vague, but since the images don't show any actual platforms, we have to conclude the new line from Manchester to Liverpool will occupy a third underground level, below the Northern and Wirral lines.  That's a pretty deep construction, but is again ideal if they're going to use the opportunity to split the busy Northern platforms.  The simplest option would be a central rail line with platforms either side, getting rid of the island, but I would hope they would try and future proof it a little and build four platforms - two for terminating services and two for through services. 

The press release vaguely mentions two other parts of the scheme intended to alleviate the pressure on the city's termini.  One is a tunnel to enable more local trains to go to Central instead of Lime Street; this was, of course, an original aspiration of the Link and Loop back in the 1970s.  That would've used the Victoria Tunnel to get there, with a new station at the University, but the various crises of the decade put the end to it.  Ironically, that may have been a good thing on one level, as Central would've reached breaking point a long time ago if there were also services from St Helens and Huyton trying to pass through it.

The other suggestion is an underground route between Lime Street and Central, providing seamless interchange and effectively turning them into one big station.  I'm less keen on this idea to be honest.  The inspiration is apparently King's Cross St Pancras, where you're able to move entirely under cover from the Eurostar to the Leeds trains and vice versa.  What this misses is that the reason they're interconnected is because there's a bloody great Underground station in the gap.  Also, the two stations are literally next door to one another, while Central and Lime Street are very much separate.

It's a five minute walk between the two, which ok, probably isn't great on a rainy Thursday, and yes, is not the most glamorous of routes (call in at the Blob Shop on your way past, you know you want to).  But it's nothing that couldn't be helped with some traffic calming and a little light refurbishment.  An underground route would be several hundred metres long, if it went as the crow flies (not guaranteed given the large buildings en route) and you'd probably need some travelators in there.  It'd be windowless, obviously, and if it's not behind the ticket barriers, it would be a magnet for the unhoused and the undesirable.  It's one of the reasons they filled in the subway from Lime Street to St John's, after all.  Also, judging by how the roof of the passageway between the mainline and underground stations at Lime Street has been leaking for, I would estimate, the best part of a decade, maintaining such a passageway would be an expensive job that's beyond the capabilities of the authorities.

I'm cautiously optimistic.  The Mayors working together is a start, and a new incoming Labour government would mean the city region's politics would align with the national ones (I mean by the colour of their rosettes, obviously; Liverpool is to the left of pretty much any potential administration).  I'm not enamoured with the designs, mainly because they're old fashioned to me - they remind me of the concept for the rebuild of Camden Town, which dates from the turn of the millennium.

Baltic's industrial feel was far more intriguing to me, but I get that you need a hook to grab people when you have concept art; a big sailing roof or a neon glow is headline grabbing in a way that simplicity isn't.  My only sadness is that I've reached that point of middle age where I look at the proposals pessimistically and wonder if I'll even be around when they're built.  

Well, that was a cheery way to end things, wasn't it?

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.

Impermanent Way

There used to be two routes from Liverpool to Southport.  One is still there: the ramrod straight Northern Line from Liverpool Exchange (now Moorfields) into the town centre.  The other took its own sweet time getting there.  The Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway made its way from Aintree to Southport via the most indirect possible route.  It ran across empty fields and called at tiny hamlets with barely a couple of houses.  It lost money hand over fist, and was finally put out of its misery in 1952.

Head down Shore Road from the present-day Ainsdale station and you arrive at what was Ainsdale Beach halt.  It would've been handy for the Pontins resort, except that didn't open until 1970.  Yes, they were still building new holiday camps when Bowie and Bolan were in the charts.  Even more incredibly, it's still there, looking like Strangeways in satellite pictures.

Great for the beach and everything - the good thing about Southport is there is a hell of a lot of beach (not so much of the sea, but loads of sand) -  but it's weird to think that in 2018 people are still having the Hi-de-Hi! experience.  Especially when it keeps making the news for all the wrong reason (just today: bed bugs biting a toddler).  The shuttered hulk of the Sands seemed to act as a warning to travellers.  This resort couldn't even support a pub.

I'd decided to walk from Ainsdale Beach to what would have been the next station on the line, Birkdale Palace.  The entire railway was torn up after closure, and the section between Woodvale and the town centre was turned into the Coast Road, a handy bypass for the small, exclusive villages that trail away from Southport.  It's a simple two lane road, with a combination bike and footpath alongside, and I thought it'd be a pleasant walk on a warm day.

I made a mistake almost immediately.  After a while of walking on tarmac, I spotted a pedestrian sign pointing into the grass at the side of the road.  I can't resist a detour, so I swung off the main road and into the hillocks at the side.  That was how I found myself on a long, undulating path, rising up and down on the dunes, wedged between the busy road and the fenced off fields.

I'd picked probably the most boring and yet also most tiring way to walk to Birkdale.  The path was rough and threadbare, but the high sandy dune to my left meant there was no way to get back down to the pavement.  To my right was an vista of overwhelming flatness, just a load of scrub and the odd tree until another dune blocked the horizon.  And it rolled, tight on my calves going up, slippery sand going down.

On my left I could see the tops of the cars and the occasional brightly coloured cyclist, but there was no sense that I was by the sea.  It was clear why the S&CLER's route had failed to win over passengers.  You don't mind an elongated journey if it is at least pretty.  The quickest way from Lancaster to Carlisle is not via Barrow, but thousands of people make that journey specifically to see the beautiful sea views from the train.  Here, the train would have pootled along on its endlessly snaking path, and all you'd have seen was a series of green hillocks.  On the other side of that dune in the above picture is the wide expanse of Ainsdale Beach and the Irish Sea, shimmering in the June sunshine.  You can't see any of it of course, so you'll just have to imagine it.

It was also quite clear that I was the first idiot to come this way in a long time.  I hacked and slashed through stinging nettles and brambles, my lightly tanned arms suddenly crisscrossed with red lines.  My bloody mindedness stopped me from giving it up as a bad lot and turning back - I'd come so far! - but I certainly cursed that tiny little pedestrian man and my stupid curiosity.

The backs of houses appeared, and I was able to escape onto the foot-slash-cycle path.  This presented problems of a different kind.  Suddenly there was traffic.  The thing about these theoretical shared spaces for cyclists and pedestrians is that cyclists go a lot faster and tend to be a lot stroppier.  I was perfectly within my rights to walk on the path, and I stuck to one side of it to allow the people on bikes room to go round, but I still got angry bells for having the temerity to be in their way.  The long stretch of the cycle route gave them a chance to really hammer those pedals, and they didn't need some fat blogger lolloping in their way.  After a while I just stepped off the pavement when I saw a cyclist coming; it wasn't worth trying to stand my ground any more.

Birkdale Palace station served the hotel alongside, which was just as glamorous as you're imagining.  Opening in 1866, the hotel aimed at the more luxurious spa end of the market, hoping to attract rich Victorians wanting to take the air.  Its guests included Clark Gable and Frank Sinatra, but despite its glittering reputation and handy transport links its parade of owners all ended up going bust.  It finally closed a century after opening, and was demolished.

There's nothing left of the station, and the site of the hotel is now uninspiring houses.  There's still a Palace Road, though, and the Fishermans' Rest pub occupies the former hotel gatehouse. 

I wandered into the chichi Birkdale village, with its award-winning delicatessens and butchers and endless gift shops.  I nipped into one, because it's the BF's birthday soon and I needed a card, and witnessed a posh woman bark "Weddings!" at the staff.  Just that.  "Weddings!"  Not a question, not an enquiry.  The woman behind the counter showed her the cards, and the posh woman snapped "Matching paper!"  She was exactly the kind of woman who would complain to the manager if she received poor service in a shop, without realising that it's a two-way street; maybe if you were less vile, people would be more helpful.  I hope the waiters spat in her champagne at the reception.

Birkdale was certainly far too posh for me, dripping with sweat and with jeans covered in sand and brambles.  I could've done with a drink, but there were only glamorous bars with people in perfectly starched shirts sat outside sipping at chilled white wine; I didn't want to depress the house prices.  Instead I slinked to Birkdale station for the train home.  The quick, direct, no need to go via Sefton, train home.

Swiss Movement

The train bursts out of the tunnel into monochrome.  The world is black and white.  Thick snow whirls against the windows.  The Stanley Dock buildings, normally a redbrick monolith, are just a grey blob in the distance.  The only colour is the bright green corporate branding of a BP garage, glowing through the weather.

I'm on my way to Southport for breakfast.  The wonderful Bob Stanley, Saint Etienne legend and lover of anything that can be given the description, "New Elizabethan", posted this on his twitter feed:

On the main road in Southport was the Swiss Chalet, a cafe straight out of a Cliff Richard film.  I knew I had to visit before it closed forever, so I grabbed a Day Saver and headed for the Northern Line.

The carriage smells of Doritos, thanks to a man working his way through a party sized bag of Chilli Heatwave flavour, and there's the occasional incursion of snowflakes through an open window.  I wasn't sure why the window was open on what seemed to be one of the coldest days of 2015 so far, but there was a woman sat right underneath it.  She clearly needed the air.

Sandhills seems deserted until the train came to a complete halt.  Then the doors on the waiting room slid open and bundled up humanoids shuffled on board, like the world's slowest zombie film.  Sandhills is aggressively chilly at the best of times; the wind whips across the Mersey and hammers at the viaduct, whisking at coats and umbrellas.  With snow too, it must be hell.

The seat across the aisle from me is taken by a teenage girl who is, at first glance, talking to herself.  Only when she shifts her head does her hair catch on her shoulder and reveal the slim microphone of a hands-free kit.  She begins what seems to be a monologue - I assume she's on the phone to someone; hopefully she's paying, because the other person isn't getting a single word in - that stops suddenly when two British Transport Policewomen push down the aisle and into the next carriage.

"Fuuuuuuuck" she hisses into the mic.  "The police are on the damn train."  I guess that the little chatterbox has declined to buy a ticket, and secretly pray that the police make their way back with an inspector.  We pass through Bank Hall, a white strip of platform against the black walls, and she bellows, "I just missed a call off Kevin 'cos I'm on the phone to you!"  A tap at her smartphone with her touchscreen enabled gloves and she switches to Kevin.  "Yeah, I know.  I'm getting off, like, now."  While I wonder if there's any call for a Scouse Catherine Tate, the rest of the carriage heaves a sigh of relief when she leaps off at Bootle Oriel Road.

Her replacement is a neat middle aged lady with enormous glasses, swaddled in a camel coat.  She immediately pulls out a 2015 diary from her sensible handbag and begins flicking through it.  Barely a month into the year and already the pages are defaced with squiggles and doodles.  She snaps through the weeks, sighing at all the jobs still to come.

The snow doesn't seem to be settling everywhere.  The roofs of Bootle are white, but the streets just look wet, and the playing fields of schools are streaked with green.  It tries to hide the heaps of rubbish abandoned trackside at Seaforth, but can't make it pretty; nor can it conceal the boarded up windows or the graffiti on the tower block.

A man, further down the carriage, seems to have a cold, or the early stages of one.  He coughs, hacks, sniffs, then clears his throat of a voluminous amount of phlegm.  I'm scared he's about to gob it onto the floor of the train and I'll have to stare at it for another half an hour, but he gets off at Waterloo and the spit goes with him.

Beyond Blundellsands the houses double in size.  Terraces are replaced by semis; there are gardens and driveways.  At Hall Road, the old engine shed has been demolished to leave what a sign advertises as a Development Opportunity; no-one is biting, and so there's just an expanse of concrete.  The coastal dunes appear, sandy heights, mixed with the sand traps of our first golf courses.  With no buildings or trees to stop it the wind barrels across Liverpool Bay and assaults our little train, hammering at it loudly, making me hunch up in my seat.

As we approach Hightown the woman across the way folds her diary back into her bag and clutches her head, suddenly panic stricken.  She closes her eyes for a while so she can think hard, then tips her head back and stares at the ceiling.  Her fingers play with the mittens in her lap.

Floodlights and high fences; the military firing range skulks between the line and the sea, red and white Keep Out signs every few metres.  The snow seems to be letting up.  Formby just looks damp, not frozen.  The platform is packed and a stream of pensioners board the train; one takes the seat opposite diary lady and pulls out a crumpled copy of The Times.  There's suddenly life on board.  Until now the passengers have been silent, but now there's a gang of old ladies gossiping at one end, and two workers in high vis jackets laughing boisterously at the other.

More golf courses, low rises among patches of flat, so artificial looking, with their tatty little flags hanging limply in the rain.  The woman with the diary gets off at Ainsdale, and then there are trees, high, regimented pine trees, dark and swaying and filling my window.  A pair of hardy walkers battle the winds with their tiny Jack Russell; he's wearing a little tartan coat.

There's a sudden smell of chimney smoke before Hillside, drifting in through that bafflingly still open window.  Fake flowers in tubs look ridiculous on the platform, the bitter darkness around them making their plastic blooms look cheap.  The computerised voice has started spluttering; her next station announcements are accompanied by a sharp crackle of static and feedback.  The heavy squeak of the brakes as we pull into Birkdale, wheels struggling with the wet and cold tracks, add to the feeling that this train is past its best.

The guard talks over the computerised voice to announce the end of the line, adding a "small reminder" for us to take all our goods with us.  The Times is folded away and the woman roots around in her handbag for her Concessionary Travel Pass - I must be one of the few people on the train with a paper ticket.

I barrel out of the station and straight down to Lord Street, not pausing, so that I could reach  the Swiss Chalet before it gets busy with lunch.  It's a tiny doorway with Grill Room above it, white on black, then a flight of steps upstairs.  I push up, nervously.  I have a prejudice against cafes on the first floor of buildings; totally irrational, but I'm always slightly afraid of what I'll find when I get up there.  By then it's too late, there's no turning back, and you have to partake.

Upstairs it's warm and clean and very, very empty.  I'm the only patron.  At the back, a little grey haired waitress in a very traditional black uniform is chatting to the chef.  His kitchen is fully open for us to see inside, and he leans on the counter, master of his domain.  I hesitantly slide into one of the banquettes at the side and the waitress spots me.  She hurries over with a menu, apologetic for not spotting me, and then leaves me to look down the page.

It's a feast of food you didn't realise restaurants still served.  There are six starters: soup of the day (mushroom, I've been told), grapefruit cocktail, prawn platter, tuna platter, egg mayonnaise and orange juice.  Just a glass of orange juice.  It's brilliant.  Further down there are lamb cutlets, gammon (with a choice of pineapple, egg or mushrooms), a mixed grill.  Omelettes, sandwiches - open and closed - and various things on toast.  I plump for a tea and a toasted sandwich.

"Do you want chips or salad with that?" she asks.  I go for salad.  "Aww, being good are you?  Well done."

The seats are leatherette, the place mats are decorated with herbs.  On the walls are pictures of French drinks (reproductions) and hefty pieces of tree bark to underline that Swiss Chalet feel.  I don't think it's been redecorated for at least thirty years, probably more.  Karen, the second waitress, bashes her way up the stairs and calls her hello across to her colleague.  Diane tells her it's been dead - "bit of snow, risk of slipping, they don't come."

I warm my cold hands on the stainless steel teapot as Diane offers the chef a drink.  He's Spanish, and he goes for "one of his Spanish hot chocolates"; she wanders behind the counter and busies herself with the steaming hot water.  She's barely served it up before my sandwich is brought over.  Toasted white bread and a pile of salad leaves and carrot shavings.  "Do you want any sauce with that?" she asks.  "Salad cream?"  I decline, and take up my knife and fork.

As I eat, a pair of pensioners stagger up the stairs, pausing at the top for breath.  They greet Diane by name and take a seat in the window.  She chats to them for a bit, then takes their order, two coffees and a toasted teacake each.  The wife snorts.  "I guess that means he's off his diet!"  In the background, Kate Garroway is taking hints for beating a cold on Heart FM.  "Chew a raw clove of garlic?  I don't think my husband would be happy about that!"

I'm suddenly sad this place is up for sale.  The owner is retiring and I doubt it'll be bought as a going concern.  It'll be ripped out and upgraded; the banquettes will be replaced by sofas and wooden chairs.  The grill hatch will be closed off.  They'll offer paninis and lattes and another piece of the past will quietly die.  I wonder where the pensioners will go for their teacakes.

I eat my sandwich - the salad is incredibly dry without any kind of vinaigrette; I should have taken her up on her offer of salad cream - then I wait by the till to pay.  There are postcards tucked into the top of it, from loyal customers no doubt.  Diane is busy talking to her regulars, but the Spanish chef spots me and calls out for her.  I over tipped, partly because I'm hopeless at that sort of thing, partly because I felt bad about her being put out of a job.

I went straight back to the station.  I'd been in Southport only the previous week, with my friend Jennie; we'd have gone to the Swiss Chalet then if she didn't have a pram with her adorable son Robin in it.  My train is waiting for me at platform 3 and I realise that it's the one I came in on.  The skies have now turned bright blue, a fact that had annoyed Diane in her chat with the old folks - "I'm covered in layers!"  I'm the only one in the front carriage until just before departure, when a distinguished man with a walking stick and a Metro under his arm clatters aboard.

The guard on this train is far more refined than the one on the journey in.  His voice is only slightly accented, as though he went to public school and had the Scouse forced out of him.  "I'll be making my way through the train as we work our way down to Liverpool; if you have any questions feel free to ask."

The sun's refracted off the water on the parked cars at Birkdale; it shatters into pieces and fills the carriage.  We pause a little longer because there's a teenager with a broken leg struggling to board.  The tannoy has been fixed - turned off and on.  Through a series of level crossings to Hillside, where a woman in an elaborate furry hat boards.  Behind her is a tiny brown spaniel.  I would never feel comfortable taking my dog on a train - what if it needs to pee?  She goes to the front of the carriage and the dog settles in at her feet, used to the trip.

At Ainsdale another swarm of pensioners board; their Reactolite glasses have turned black in the sun, making them look like the cast of Oceans 80.  They're talking about someone who's about to go in for heart surgery in frankly disturbing detail - "is it open or keyhole?" - and we're nearly at Freshfield before I realise they're talking about a dog.  In the seats opposite is a smart-looking man in a buttoned up wool coat; at his feet is a University of Liverpool bag.  He's bashing at his smart phone, tapping out a series of messages, until an expanse of golf course kills his signal.  He tucks the phone back into his pocket, but at the next station it's out again.  Across from him an old man reads the Racing Post.

The guard appears in the carriage, and it turns out he's something of a silver fox; a little chubby, but with a lovely smile.  He leans in the doorway and watches the scenery spin past.  Behind me, the old people are now talking about someone called Elsie.  They've lowered their voices and I can tell from the murmurs that Elsie is not getting a glowing report.

"Tickets and passes please."  To my surprise, the smart man looks suddenly shifty.  He looks up at the guard pleadingly.  "The man at Ainsdale told me to pay at my destination."  The guard doesn't seem convinced, but he tells him he'll have to pay in Liverpool and moves on.

Two women have clearly got chatting on the platform at Formby, and are now in full flow.  "I'm going to the Adelphi.  Three courses for six pounds."  They both oooh approvingly.  "There's usually a roast," the woman continues, "or a beef thing in gravy, but the veggies never alter.  Still, six pounds!"  They both seem blown away by this, even the one who goes there regularly.  It suddenly becomes clear why the Adelphi - once the jewel in Liverpool's hotel crown - will never stop being crappy and down at heel.  With a constant stream of pensioners filling its dining rooms, why change?

Another dog gets on at Hall Road; its owner keeps it well away from the furry hat lady's spaniel.  At Blundellsands, a Britpop refugee sits down across from me.  He's got huge sideburns and a tight leather jacket and looks very Paul Weller circa "Stanley Road".  He balls one hand into a fist over and over while across the way the smart man is talking loudly on his phone.  The entire carriage is horrified to learn that the Bristol office is DEFINITELY closing.  Britpop pulls out an iPod shuffle, and I choose to believe he's listening to a mix of Menswear, Kula Shaker and Elastica.

Racing Post gets off at Bootle New Strand, and is replaced by another Metro reader.  I don't like the Metro because it's taken one of the lovely parts of rail travel - people neatly folding their read newspaper and leaving it on the seat for someone else to pick up - and turned it into an irritation.  Now the train is flooded with copies of that day's paper with its wraparound cover advertising the newest drama on Sky Atlantic.

The train is really getting warm now; I suddenly understand why the woman on the journey up had the window open.  It's stuffy, filled with people who've overdressed for the weather, noses poking out of hoods.  There's a canal at Sandhills, struggling to look pretty in the midday sun, but too industrial to pass.  The wrecked viaducts on Pall Mall, the old lines into Exchange Station, beg to be put to some use, but I can't think what, then we disappear into the tunnel under the Echo building.  Britpop gets off at Moorfields, but we are joined by half a dozen other passengers.

I've decided to go to the end of the line.  While most of the train gets up and shuffles off at Liverpool Central, I stay seated, the same place I've sat for three quarters of an hour.  Someone smelling of chips gets on board - not chips, fries; they smell wet in a way that chips don't - and a woman with leggings printed with the sky holds an expensive looking carrier bag between her legs.  Behind me, someone is talking about their daughter - "Catherine was very overweight so they took her to Slimming World and she lost four stone!"  I wonder who 'they' are; I imagine some kind of intervention, with Catherine being bundled into the back of a van and driven to a church hall to be re-educated.

I look up for the gap in the tunnel that signifies the old St James station, as I always do when I come this way, and briefly fantasise about a day when there will actually be a Baltic station there.  A sudden deceleration and we drift into Brunswick beneath high sandstone walls.  The woman with sky-painted leggings gets off, and I see that her expensive looking bag is from Swarovski.  The train is silent again.  No excitable pensioners, no groups.  A girl stares at her phone as though willing it to come to life, then drops it into her lap, exasperated, halfway through the tunnel to St Michaels.  When daylight appears she snatches it up again eagerly.

St Michaels station needs an ALF, maybe two; one for the Festival Gardens, one for Lark Lane and Sefton Park.  As we continue onwards, the computer voice tells us the next station will be St Michaels; she gets stuck on that station for the rest of the journey.  Clearly her reboot didn't take.  Aigburth obviously makes me think of Robert, who lives within spitting distance of its platforms, and Cressington is as charming as ever.  A workman is painting the woodwork in corporate grey.  I'm surprised his tin of paint is from Dulux and doesn't have Colour Tsar Approved stamped all over it.

Furry hat woman gets off at Liverpool South Parkway; I'd forgotten she was still there.  Her dog was so well-behaved throughout.  I also forgot to look out for any remnants of the old Garston station, though I don't think there are any.  It's now a slow creep to Hunts Cross, a kind of extended sigh at having to go this far.  There are men on the tracks by the Northern depot and I try to remember the last time I came this way.  I've certainly never gone end to end on the Northern Line before, top to bottom and back again.

I head out of the station for a bottle of water, and return in the midst of a sudden, violent hailstorm.  I'm behind two Community Police ladies, knocking off their shift for the day, chatting about where they're going to go tomorrow morning.  We huddle in the warm waiting room - there used to be a coffee bar in here, but it seems long gone - while the hail batters at the windows.  A new train comes in and we hustle aboard along with a member of the "Train Presentation Team".  He whisks down the aisle with a black bin bag, completely missing the Nature Valley wrapper under the seat in front of me.  I am momentarily anxious that future passengers will think it's my litter.

There are already people on board; I suppose they just grab the first train they see, rather than wait at the station in the cold, and go to the end of the line and back.  The new guard is a woman, and she tells us in enthusiastic Scouse to change at Liverpool South Parkway for mainline services.  Ones like the fast East Midlands train that we're forced to let by at the flat junction outside the station.  We cross over to the local lines and sink down to LSP's Northern Line platform.  The computer voice tells us to change for long distance services, but she says "Birmingham" with a slight question in her voice - "Birmingham?".  A kind of, why would you want to go there?

A couple get on, already bickering.  "Don't shout at me, I'm not stupid," she snarls at him when he calls her over to an empty seat.  He lays out a cushion on the seat next to him and their tiny dog leaps up and makes himself comfortable.  She pulls off her scarf furiously and they sit in angry silence; I'm so busy watching them I miss Garston again.  My neighbour is a man with an upside down head - bald on top, beard on the bottom - who taps at a game on his phone.  His high forehead wrinkles with concentration.

Aigburth again, and a gaggle of nice ladies with handbags in the crook of their arms get on board.  My ears pop in the tunnel after St Michaels.  The angry wife now pulls her coat off, but she seems to have calmed down, perhaps taking her cue from her dog who is utterly unruffled.  A harassed looking woman whose hair has escaped her pony tail boards; she jabs at her phone so hard I can hear the crack of stylus on glass across the aisle.

At Brunswick, a rough looking woman with a tooth missing is fascinated by the dog on the cushion.  She starts talking to it then, when it unsurprisingly fails to respond, she turns to the owner and starts yammering to them.  We learn that the dog is called Filo, which immediately makes me think of pastry, and the woman starts calling his name.  Filo looks terrified.  She calls out "seeya!" as though the angry couple were old pals and jumps off at Central.  I'm not surprised that the wife says "seeya!" back before following it up with a roll of her eyes and a whisper to her husband.

I thought about getting off at Central, but the OCD part of me knew I'd have to cover that last little bit of line so I ended up back where I started from.  A fabulous looking old lady takes a seat with her leopard skin suitcase and an enormous handbag; she looks like a Lancashire Elaine Stritch,  I get up, my knees protesting now that I'm 38, and wait by the doors as we pull into Moorfields.  There and back.