Don't Embrace Your Curves

One day, someone will write a history of British New Towns, and under the chapter on Skelmersdale they'll put The name was probably a mistake.  It's a hard, guttural name; filled with Celtic and Norse overtones, yes, but still ugly on the tongue.  My mum used to find it hilarious; whenever we drove past the sign on the M58 she'd giggle to herself, and sometimes murmur, "Skelmersdale. It's so Northern."  Building a New Town means you can start again - the planners could have called it "Lovelytown" or "Happyfields" or "Absolutely Gorgeous City" if they'd wanted, but no, they stuck with Skelmersdale.

And the shortened version is Skem, which is even worse.

Mind you, they made so many mistakes with Skelmersdale, it's hard to know where to start.  It was built as an overflow town for Liverpool in the Sixties.  The idea was that Scousers would be taken out of their substandard homes and put in new houses in a town filled with jobs and parks.  It was designed to be self-sustaining, with factories to work in, schools for the children, and shops and leisure facilities to keep them entertained.  The M58 was built along its southern edge so that all the goods could be swept out to the Port of Liverpool or the M6.

It turned out to be more of a hole in the centre of Lancashire, sadly.  The businesses didn't come, driven away by the economic recessions of the Seventies and the general collapse in manufacturing in the North.  People felt disjointed, abandoned, with nothing to do and nowhere to go.  A town built for 80,000 residents today houses barely half that.  It means that there are wide, unused boulevards all over town, gigantic roundabouts constructed to carry commuters swiftly to work, underpasses to segregate pedestrians from the fast-flowing traffic that never came.  And there's no railway station.

There used to be a railway station.  Skelmersdale station was on the western edge of what is now the Old Town, built to service the small hamlet of the same name and on a branch line that ran from Ormskirk to Rainford (then Rainford Junction).  There were a couple of other stops on the route, notably at Westhead, but it wasn't a principal route and British Railways closed the station in 1956, with the tracks getting lifted in 1968 and turned into a road.

At no point does it seem to have occurred to anyone that a railway route to Liverpool - even a roundabout one via Ormskirk - might be a good idea for the residents.  The car was the future: everyone would have their own, and if they didn't, motor buses would be an admirable alternative.  Skelmersdale was a New Town, remember; the planners didn't want everyone rushing back to the old city at the drop of a hat.  It's notable that the M58 doesn't go anywhere near Liverpool, instead slicing across the top of the city like it's afraid it might catch something if it gets too close.

Problem was, a lot of people in Skelmersdale didn't have cars.  These were Liverpool's poor, remember, and though they had new three bedroom semis, they weren't given an Austin Montego as well.  They needed public transport.  Even today, the bus journey from Liverpool to Skelmersdale takes an hour.  That's a long journey.  It's difficult not to note that while Skelmersdale has problems with crime and deprivation, its neighbours in West Lancashire with their own train stations - Ormskirk, Burscough, Parbold - are relatively affluent and successful.  Skem needs a station.

The need for a Skelmersdale station has gathered pace over the last five or six years or so.  Merseyrail's plans for a station at Headbolt Lane has brought the idea of an extension back onto the table.  The Kirkby line is very under capacity; with only three stations of its own, a train every fifteen minutes and an extensive dwell time at the terminal, it'd be a great opportunity to send trains  Skelmersdale's way.

With that in mind, Lancashire County Council have launched a new West Lancashire Highways and Transport Masterplan, with the Skelmersdale rail link its top priority.  The idea is to create a triangular junction south of the town, then send the trains from Liverpool and Wigan along what is currently Whiteledge Road to a new combined bus/train terminal in the town centre.  Interestingly, the masterplan seems to completely void out the road, raising the possibility that the road will be sacrificed for the railway - a pleasing reversal of history. 

There had been two other schemes, to create park and rides at the edge of town: one by upgrading the currently underused Upholland station, the other by restoring the Ormskirk-Skem branch.  This is the bravest and most gratifying option though, and I'm glad to see it's the one that the County Council want to pursue.  There are a few issues, mainly to do with funding: while Network Rail, the County and District councils are all on board with the idea, none of them really want to pay the millions of pounds required to make it happen.

Another, pleasing side effect of this scheme would be poor old Rainford station being brought into the Merseyrail fold.  It's always been an orphan: the electric lines stop at Kirkby, even though Rainford is also in Merseyside, leaving it with a substandard service compared to its neighbours in the Merseytravel area.

That's not it for railways in West Lancashire.  The report also notes that Burscough and Ormskirk, while having a lot in common, don't actually connect together in a very meaningful way.  There's a train service between the two towns but it's erratic and slow, and if you want to continue on to Liverpool you have to change trains.

The consultation proposes electrification of the line at least as far as Burcough Junction, the single platform station at the south of the town, and possibly further towards the centre.  In the process, they've finally laid the "Burscough Curves" plan to rest.  This would have restored the connections between the Preston/Ormskirk line and the Southport/Wigan line:

I've never been keen on the restoration of the Burscough Curves.  There's already an electric line to Southport - this would have been indirect and slower.  It seems that Lancashire County Council agree with me, and have now decided to push for electrification beyond Ormskirk.  Their idea is that one train an hour from Liverpool will continue on to Burscough Junction/a new Burscough Central station, giving them a good regular service south and helping to alleviate some of the traffic on the A59 and in Ormskirk town centre in the process.  This will also have a positive knock on effect for the Preston services, because the trains will have less distance to travel so they might be able to have an every hour service as well.

The eventual aim is for the whole route to Preston to be electrified of course, but that's just an ideal.  I mean, where's the benefit in connecting two major north west cities with a fast, direct rail route?  That would be MADNESS.

The whole consultation exercise opens on the 2nd December.  In the meantime you can read the document here. 

That was all a bit boring and worthy, wasn't it?  Sorry.  I'll get back to wandering the countryside making innuendos soon, I promise.

Best Days

A-level results day inevitably prompts mixed feelings in me.  Feelings of nostalgia and regret.  It's eighteen years since I flunked my A-levels, denying me my first choice university (Keele) and sending me off to Edge Hill in Ormskirk instead.  At the time I was distraught and unhappy.  Now I see it as a blessing.  I've been to Keele, and it's a massive sucky hole of misery in the middle of nowhere (highest suicide rate among all UK universities, I believe).  Edge Hill was small enough for you to get to know people, to have fun and not be lost, and it had that wonderful Merseyrail line to take me off to Liverpool.

I fell in love with Liverpool, I fell in love with the BF, I fell in love with some of the best friends I've ever known, all while I was at Edge Hill.  I didn't make it to my first choice but I had a hell of a good time anyway.  The best time of my life, in fact; everyone should be a student.  It's three years of being an adult, but without any responsibility.  You get to drink and have sex and stay out all night and eat junk food, but you don't have work in the morning or a mortgage or kids or anything to drag you down.  It's half a life away - literally - but it still makes me smile.  My only regret is the one that's beautifully articulated in the song I Wish I Could Go Back to College, from Avenue Q: "I wish that I'd taken more pictures."

For some reason Edge Hill didn't shut up shop after I graduated; in fact it just grew and grew, like a giant academic fungus.  The campus is enormous now; what were sports pitches and the Rose Garden when I was there are now giant teaching centres with acronym names.  The boiler room has been replaced by a huge student complex with coffee shops and breakout areas - we had the bar and a vending machine and the Terrace Cafe, and you'd only go there if you wanted something to eat and you were really desperate.  It's a behemoth.  In a way it's outgrown Ormskirk itself; this tiny market town now has thousands of youths streaming through it for ten months a year.

Last week I went back to Ormskirk to meet Jennie (second from left above).  We took her adorable children Adam and Joy to the park, went on the swings, had a coffee, bitched about life.  The usual stuff 36 year olds do.  Coronation Park was on the way back to our student house in Cottage Lane; it was strange for us to be there without being just a little bit drunk.

At the station there was a real indication that Edge Hill dominates the town.  For many years, Ormskirk's Attractive Local Feature board was this:

Pretty typical for a small country town.  My latest visit revealed that the ALF had changed:

This pleases me for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I'm glad that Merseytravel and Merseyrail are still doing the ALFs; I was worried they'd been phased out.  Plus they kept the old colour scheme.  And of course I'm just happy to see Edge Hill getting some recognition, even if they picked a pretty bland building to represent the university.  I suppose they want to look all "modern" and "thrusting", but that building could be anywhere.  They should have used a picture of my beloved LRC (Learning Resource Centre, now unimaginatively renamed the "Library"), or the Venue, or a drunken student getting his stomach pumped after failing to handle all the alcohol in the "Around the World in Forest Court" booze crawl.  Next time, come to me for advice.

Now I'm off to have a little nostalgia fest: drinking cheap lager while I listen to Space and Gina G and Echobelly and Alisha's Attic and Terrorvision (Whales and dolphins, whales and dolphins, yeah!) and missing the old days.  

God Bothering

Things were not going well.  I'd got up at silly o'clock.  I'd forgotten my camera, leaving me with my iPhone and its delicate battery life.  I'd been accosted by a ticket inspector at Preston, despite having already passed him two minutes before on my way to the loo.  And now I'd made a wrong turn, making me retrace my steps and probably meaning I'll miss my next train.  Things were not going well.

It wasn't an auspicious start for the first Northern Rail excursion.  I'd decided, somewhat randomly, to tackle the East Lancashire Line.  This runs from Preston to Colne via Blackburn and Accrington, and seemed to offer a good mix of town and country.

I'd gone to Preston via Ormskirk, because it's always fun to revisit my Edge Hill days, and also because it was a little bit different.  I'd been pleased to see a community notice board giving the history of the station - until I spotted that it used 'formally' instead of 'formerly'.  This, of course, rendered the rest of the information useless; all I could see was that massive grammatical error, glowing at me, expanding to fill the rest of the poster.

A wretched Pacer arrived to take us north.  Whose idea was a 2+3 seat configuration?  No-one, ever, wants to sit on the row of three seats.  We're British.  A double seat invites far too much potential intimacy; the three-seater row pins you in a corner, with the possibility of two strangers installing them alongside you and trapping you up against a window.  It's like being stuck in the centre of a theatre row next to a Weight Watchers coach trip.  It just makes you wonder if you'll ever get out again.

Still, it had at least been thoroughly Colour Tsar'd on the inside, with familiar purple seats and yellow and grey handrails.  It pleased me that this Merseyrail-adjacent line had Merseyrail-adjacent branding.  Almost as though they were getting ready for it to become part of the Northern Line properly (oh, I can dream).  It was a while since I'd been this way, so I enjoyed watching the view, as various tired commuters got aboard with coffees and cans of Red Bull.  The man who sat in front of me smelt of some excessively rugged shower gel - something that came in a grey bottle and probably had SPORT written on the front in an angled font.  None of your Original Source Lime for him - he was a bloke.  Sadly it wasn't strong enough to cover up the stench from the fag he'd smoked on the way to the station, meaning there was a weird mix of nicotine and locker room.

Croston still had its Jubilee bunting up over the entrance to the platform.  Somehow I knew that it would.  It's so Middle England.  We stopped at Midge Hall so the driver and the signalman could chat; behind it the old station building was covered in weeds and moss, unloved, abandoned.  Then we were at Preston, a wonderfully impressive station.  It's all through platforms, and dizzyingly busy.  The logistics of it all baffle me.  My Ormskirk train was almost immediately replaced by one to Manchester Victoria; there was one to Blackpool North beside me, and a Glasgow bound Pendolino across the way.  A freight train thundered through in the distance, not stopping at the platform, noisily clattering en route.  I thought of the shifting points, the signals, the co-ordination that was needed to make everything work efficiently, and my head swam.  It was too early in the morning.

Finally the Colne service arrived, and took us south through the city's suburbs to Lostock Hall.  It's funny how seemingly unique names can turn up again; I visited Lostock Gralam last year, not realising it had a half-brother forty miles away.  Since it was the first train after nine o'clock, the platform was full of pensioners, and I fought my way through a blue-rinse posse to get off.

It's a simple and unromantic little halt.  I wandered up to the street and prepared to take my sign pic.  I don't like using the iPhone for pictures.  Its dimensions are just a little bit off; it's easy to use as a phone or a touchscreen computer, but when you take a photo it's a bit too big for your hands.  I'm still getting used to it as well - I can never remember which volume button to press to take a photo.  I had a try at turning the phone round for the self-pics, as I'm used to, but it just didn't work.  In the end I gave up, abandoning the 8mp camera on the back for the less powerful camera on the front.  It means all the sign pics are a bit rubbish.  Sorry about that.

Lostock Hall was as plain as its railway station.  A couple of pubs, a war memorial, some basic shops.  The Pleasant Retreat Inn was covered in England flags, as you'd expect the day after they beat Ukraine in Euro 2012.  A car pulled up outside a small suburban house, bouncing onto the pavement.  The driver got out and manhandled a screaming baby out of the back seat, carrying it into the house with the air of a woman who was having a very bad morning.  I guessed that she was very late for the childminder.

A sense of disquiet was starting to crawl over me.  Shouldn't I have run into my next station by now?  I seemed to be getting further and further out of Lostock Hall with no sign of Bamber Bridge.  I found out the reason soon enough: a big sign at the side of the road welcoming me to Penwortham.  I was going in completely the wrong direction; in fact, I was halfway back into Preston.  I risked my phone battery by taking a look at Google Maps.  Yep, there it was, the turn I'd missed about fifteen minutes before.

I did a 180 degree turn on my heel and went back into town, panicking that I'd miss my train.  I had a fairly packed schedule planned; one missed train and I'd have to start cutting stations.  I took the correct turn - by a pub called the Tardy Gate, which just seemed to be mocking my lateness - and maintained a brisk pace along the main road.

An underpass signalled a change of scene with surprising swiftness.  I'd come through stoutly ordinary streets; semi-detached houses and British Legion halls and corner shops.  I emerged into Victoriana, with avenues and a church tower poking out of thick mature trees.  Bamber Bridge was most definitely different to its neighbour.

As if to underline its separation, the first landmark I saw was a monastery.  Not the most common of sights anywhere, but a real change from the working class Lostock Hall.  Sadly there was no sign of any monks, but there was a wonderful Virgin Mary in front of the church, carved from a single tree like a Catholic version of those large breasted figureheads on ships.

My worry about being late meant I skipped Bamber Bridge's town centre, taking a short cut through the back streets to get to the station quicker.  I was passed by two men on a tandem, pedalling sweatily; they then passed me again, going in the opposite direction, which probably means there were two drivers and no navigator on board.

Bamber Bridge has a level crossing, a signal box and a pleasant station building, but only the first two are still in use for railway purposes.  The last one's been restored but instead of selling tickets, it's being used as a day centre for the town's pensioners.  There's probably some symbolism in there if you look hard enough.

It does say Bamber Bridge behind me, honest.  You just have to squint a bit.

My prayers to a non-existent deity had been answered; I had a minute to recover on the platform before my train arrived.

Pleasington was as nice as its name implied.  I was suddenly surrounded by greenery and nature, dappling the sunlight onto the platform.  I trekked up to the railway bridge to find elegant Victorian villas and the kind of pub you want to stretch out in front of with a pint and a newspaper.

I was soon leaving the village though, ducking down a side route between some houses.  The path ran between fenced off fields, descending into a dip and then a small copse.  The stresses of the morning began to fall off me.  I felt my forehead begin to delicately toast in the sun and realised, sadly, that I might have to start wearing a hat when I went out in the heat.  My hairline was crawling back to a point where it couldn't protect me any more.

The recent few days' sunshine still hadn't dried out the path through the woods, and I had to adopt a splayed, slightly indecent swagger to avoid puddles and mud.  There were nettles and thistles either side of me, lending it a slight air of danger, then I stepped into what seemed to be a car park.  I didn't expect that.

In reality, I'd hit the Witton Country Park.  It's a wide expanse of maintained parkland on the edge of Blackburn, and I'd arrived in the morning rush.  Cars were pulling up on the straight roadway through the centre and emptying out eager dogs for their daily walks.

A dozen sprightly looking pensioners came towards me, brandishing walking sticks and maps in plastic bags.  They were all wearing stout boots and thick socks, ready for a day's hiking through the park woodlands.  At the back, a single man was staring intently at a GPS device, as though he could make it work with his eyeballs.  Part of me hopes I'm that active at their age, while another part hopes that I can just spend my retirement in a chair with a nice cup of tea.

I crossed a pretty bridge over the river, and passed through wide open spaces of neatly cut lawn.  A sign at the side advised me that the space was reserved for "the operation of power driven model aircraft" at the weekends.  I'd never seen that before, and I resolved to come back one Saturday to watch the toy planes taking off.  I'd bring one of my own, but I have a real sadistic streak in me; the most fun you can have with a model aircraft, as far as I'm concerned, is crashing it.

Outside the park, I followed a priest along the pavement.  He was wearing the full garb, which pleased me.  I'm not keen on the God stuff, nor the paedophilia, misogyny, homophobia, racism and other unpleasant aspects of the Church, but I do like the outfits.  Nothing cheers me like a well-dressed nun in a habit.  Then the priest turned into an old people's home, and it struck me that someone was about to die, which killed the mood a bit.

There isn't a cherry tree at Cherry Tree.  I'm completely baffled about how this happened.  There were plenty of other trees around, yes, but not a single fruity one.  How hard would it be to plant a sapling?  Come on, Northern Rail.  A couple of quid in a garden centre and you get a moment of good PR.

In a complete reverse of the situation at Bamber Bridge, I was hopelessly early for my train, so I settled into the shelter.  I hoped that the plastic roof wouldn't enhance the sunlight, like a greenhouse, and turn my skull even redder.

If I was heterosexual, I'd have found Cherry Tree a delightful place to wait.  There's a college nearby, and the platform slowly filled with a succession of lanky, skinny teenage girls wearing tiny shorts and low-cut tops.  A straight man wouldn't have known where to look; as it was, I just wondered if they couldn't have worn a slightly less powerful mix of perfumes.

The next station's officially called Mill Hill (Lancs).  Presumably this is to stop people trying to get a train to Tufnell Park from here.  It was an island platform, which surprised me, and was a bit unloved; a stretch of concrete with a set of steps up to the road.  The bright sunshine really pointed up the cameraphone's flaws.

I was now in Blackburn proper, and the streets were a tight mesh of brick terraces rising and falling with the hills.  I crossed a bridge over and passed onto a patch of green, where a toddler was practising running under the watchful eye of his mum and nan.  He hadn't quite learnt how to control his legs.  I stepped out of the way to avoid a collision while he barrelled off into the distance, gurgling gleefully.

The road into the town is called Redlam, which sounds like a particularly sinister anagram; I felt like I should be able to rearrange the letters to spell BURN IN HELL.  It's an undistinguished main road, with convenience stores and pubs.  The Union Jacks and England flags were out here too, but they took on a slightly sinister air here - a quarter of the town is Asian, and the BNP have won seats on the Council.  The Jubilee, the Olympics and Gabrielle from The Apprentice have helped make the flag a joyful part of our national psyche again, something you can wear without embarrassment, but it can still carry a dark undercurrent in the wrong place.

I passed small houses that fronted directly onto the road.  There was a boy practising his guitar in the window of one, frowning at his music as he reclined on leather chair.  A massively fat lap dog was in another; his owner had left the front door open, revealing that, for some reason, they kept a dressing gown on a coat hanger in the hall.  Perhaps it's in case the postman knocks while you're watching Homes Under the Hammer naked.

"Regeneration" was in progress further on - or at least, I assume, that was what was going on.  Entire streets of terraced houses were boarded up and vacant, waiting for a bulldozer.  There didn't seem to be much happening.  I imagined everyone being turfed out a few years ago, promised shiny new houses, only for the recession to hit and the whole thing fell apart.  I hope they're somewhere better.  What was sad was the new houses around these Victorian relics - 1970s versions of the same, and now looking as tired and unpleasant, if not more.  New doesn't always mean better.

The shops were now reflecting the multi-ethnic mix of the town - an Asian cash and carry, a Polish supermarket, and dozens of takeaways from every region.  The chippies and fried chicken takeaways were filled with kids from the nearby high school, a pleasing two fingers to Jamie Oliver.  I don't like the idea of grossly obese children any more than the next person but I quite like the idea of his campaign collapsing under the weight of its own smugness.

I was enjoying Blackburn.  Ian came here a few weeks ago and didn't enjoy himself; it was a town of skunk and skanks.  (He also used a "four thousand holes" gag I wish I'd come up with).  It wasn't pretty or glamorous but it had a certain earthy charm.  A town that worked for a living.

I cut through the Cathedral Close.  Accordingly to Wikipedia (which is, let's face it, Gospel) Blackburn got a cathedral in the twenties because it was handy for the train station.  I love the practicality of that decision, and it makes me wonder if there were equally pragmatic reasons behind other religious choices - if Jerusalem's a Holy City just because early pilgrims couldn't be bothered walking any further, or if St Paul's only called that because the founder couldn't spell "Theobald".

Despite later additions, Blackburn Cathedral still feels like a parish church, and can't really overawe the way good religious centres do.  It was a pretty haven in the centre of town though, right behind the main street.  More regeneration cash has been splashed here - modern art and benches and hundreds of signs.  That seems to be the main focus of a lot of money; put an eight foot sign up every few metres to tell you that you're on King Street.  Just in case you forget.

Blackburn's the home to Thwaite's brewery, which I didn't know and which was another tick for the town.  They make some pretty good beers.  The brewery's high tower can be seen from all around, a remarkably practical and pleasingly Northern skyscraper.

And the cap on it all was Blackburn railway station.  Which is wonderful.  The town has combined a nineteenth century building with twenty-first century redevelopment to make a really joyous hub, with a practical bus gyratory outside.  Until fairly recently a Victorian train shed covered the platforms, but years of neglect meant it had to be demolished at the turn of the Millennium.  The easy solution would have been to simply not replace it, or, at best, wheel out a copy.

Instead, Blackburn was gifted with a new, innovative roof, a glass dome that sweeps over the platforms.

It's like a budget version of the fantastic entrances to Canary Wharf underground station.  That's not a criticism; they've done an awful lot with very little.

In addition, the station's been cleaned up, repainted, scrubbed.  Clean white and blue tiles cover the walls - practical but bright.  The ticket office is well appointed.  There are open public toilets.  It's everything a good small town station should be.

I wasn't surprised to find plaques in the station entrance celebrating the works, including some architectural prizes.  It was a joy to visit.  I started this blog because I love railway station architecture, and places like Blackburn are why I keep going.

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.

Pomp and Circumstance

It's never a good sign when the woman on the counter looks at you with confusion after you ask for a ticket. "A what?", she asked.

"A Lancashire Day Ranger ticket," I repeated, turning another shade of crimson.

"Can we do those here?" she asked her colleague, who was busy sticking down a date stamp on a Trio ticket. Two thoughts ran through my head. The first was righteous indignation: yes you can, woman, you can buy them from any station, and if you turned your eye to that computerised screen and turned on a couple more brain cells I'm sure you'd be able to find it. The other thought, running parallel with the first and occasionally overwhelming it, was: Oh God, maybe you can't get it from here. Maybe I'll have to go to Lime Street. Can I just slip away without anyone in the queue noticing? Oh God.

Fortunately her colleague had in fact received training on the computerised ticketing screen, and was able to find the Lancashire Day Ranger ticket and sell it to me. I was able to finally advance into Liverpool Central.

I'm going to pause now, for a bit of background. Over the last week I've sent out a few e-mails to some local organisations, explaining about the blog and asking for info on various different projects. One e-mail went to Merseyrail asking what was going on at Central, and if there were any artists impressions or diagrams that I could have to put up here as a point of interest. I got a lovely e-mail back from a lady in Customer Relations, saying she was going to speak to Merseytravel and get back to me (I also got something else, but I'll cover that in another post sometime). A day later, on the Thursday, she forwarded me some information that Merseytravel had provided for her, a Word document clarifying the details of the Central project. Unfortunately, Merseytravel couldn't provide her with any illustrations for "commercial reasons". Fair enough, I thought.

So I was a bit surprised to walk into Liverpool Central the next day to find this poster:

...that is, a poster explaining about the building work at Liverpool Central and featuring artist's impressions of the MtoGo shop and an overhead plan. If you can't quite see it in that picture, here's a couple of snaps I took of the five foot high renditions on the fences round the building work:

I'm glad Merseytravel overcame their fears about sending these diagrams to an interested blogger somewhere on the internet, and seized the opportunity to instead show this commercially sensitive material to the several thousand people who go through Liverpool Central every week. Bravo!

Anyway. I boarded the train to Ormskirk, and got in there about eleven-thirty. There's always been a ticket inspector here, but today, presumably in honour of the esteemed visitors to come, they were out in force - half a dozen of them, in fact. I managed to get by and headed into the town centre itself.

Ormskirk was experiencing that brief sigh of collective relief it gets for the period when the students are on holiday. I used to work with disabled children on the playscheme here in the summer, and so I knew Ormskirk out of term time is a completely different place. It's like the town is dusting itself down after a particularly rigorous boxing match, and is tending to its wounds, ready for the next round. I bet the pubs hate it.

I had a bit of a mawkish wander round, letting out a sigh of sadness at the empty Woolworths where I had bought GoldenEye on video, and trying to remember what used to be where there is now a Costa coffee. Mawkishness leads to melancholy, which leads to, in my current state of fragile mental health, a sudden precipitous drop into depression, insecurity and fear.

I was gripped with panic. What on earth was I thinking of, coming all this way to gate crash an official event? I'm criminally, painfully shy; I don't go to parties and talk to strange people, I stay at home and watch Coronation Street. I've been this way since I was a child, and most of the time I can just about get by, but here I was trying to introduce myself into a social situation all on my own with no-one to hide behind. I felt scared and alone, and the depression that I've been fighting the last few weeks swept over me until I was drowning in self-loathing.

I found a bench outside the registry office and phoned the Bf in work, to express my terror and to try and get some words of consolation. He was supportive, of course, and he said to me: "You don't have to go. You can turn round and come home and it won't matter."

Yes, I thought. I can do that. My legs were weak with the emotional barracking, but I managed to get up and stagger round the corner to see the station with, blessedly, a train waiting on the platform. It was 12:25, so I'd be able to slip onto the train and off before the distinguished guests arrived.

I was halfway down Station Approach, being pleasantly surprised by the new look of the station building when a whole load of photographers, dignitaries and a town crier came out for some official snaps. They were early! I froze outside, then gingerly crept forward. I could take a couple of photos from a distance, I thought, and I snapped one.

The official opening, by Sir William McAlpine, chairman of the Railway Heritage Trust, had already taken place, alongside other local notables - the Mayor of Ormskirk, and so on. Once the paparazzi shots were done, everyone went back inside to press the flesh. I carried on past the station, pretending to be terribly interested in the new cycle racks so no-one would spot me, and so that I could take a picture of the new glass porch over the entrance.

"Scott? I recognised you from your blog." It was Keith Lumley, Network Rail's Media Relations Manager, and the man who had told me about the event in the first place. I blustered a hello, and he explained that the opening had been brought forward as Sir William had to leave early. "Do you want to come inside and have a look round?"

I was still scared, I can't pretend otherwise. But Keith was friendly and open, and he took me inside the new look ticket office. I have to say I was gobsmacked by the transformation. Previously, the station had consisted of two halves. On the one side was the ticket office, and on the other was a news stand. The passenger area consisted of a corridor between the two, which lead to cramped conditions and at busy times (such as on a Saturday night), queues out the door and into the road.

The whole area has now been opened up, and feels light and beautifully spaced. Yes, the Colour Tsars have been in, and there's a distinct yellow and grey tone to the building, but it's not as in your face as at other stations. The station successfully manages to marry its 19th century roots with 21st century needs. I particularly like the large, glass fronted ticket office. There's even a toilet now, and space for a vending machine.

Keith showed me the plaque unveiled by Sir William, then pressganged the Town Crier into having his photo taken with me. Please remember, when you see this photo, that I was recovering from an anxiety attack, was extremely embarrassed, and was slightly scared to be stood next to a man with a moustache last seen in the Coleherne c.1978:

I said to Keith that I was surprised there wasn't a retail area in the station, given that there used to be a newsagent. He took me next door, to what used to be a waiting area. I'd never been in it before, as it had always been either locked up or occupied by bored teens, but now it had been stripped out and refurbished to form new commercial space. Keith explained that this space was to be rented out for what ever business wanted it: a cafe or a bar would be ideal, especially as you can be waiting for a couple of hours if you miss a Preston train. At that moment, however, it was being used for the catering, and the dignitaries were scrabbling for sandwiches and cups of tea. I felt even more out of place and gatecrasher-y, so I thanked Keith for all his help and made a getaway. (Sorry if I seemed brusque Keith - it was nothing personal, I promise you!).

The platform area has also been refurbished, and slightly ambitiously renumbered into Platforms 1 & 2: in actual fact it's one long platform with buffers in the middle separating the electrified from the non-electrified lines. The distinctive yellow and grey Merseyrail signs are fully in evidence here, and inside the station, there are "cactus" line diagrams showing the stations available - one for the Northern Line, and one for the Preston route and connecting services. Also inside the station is a distinctive piece of wooden rafting under the roof, which makes it feel almost Scandinavian.

I took one last photo outside of the new, vastly improved Ormskirk station: the glass portico's new as well. It's a worthy project, done well, and all the stakeholders in the project - Network Rail, Merseytravel, Merseyrail and Lancashire County Council - should be proud of their achievement. I suspect if this had been Ormskirk station when I lived here, I'd have started Merseytarting a lot sooner.

It was only as I walked away that I realised the man stood outside the station was Councillor Mark Dowd, Chair of Merseytravel: I briefly considered turning round and accosting him. But I couldn't think of any pertinent questions to ask him, and I didn't want to seem like a drippy fanboy, so I carried on. Besides, I had a bus to catch. Yes, you read that right. A BUS.

The Past Is A Bucket of Ashes

The third and final leg of the Preston-Ormskirk line; apologies for taking so long to write all this up - nearly a month! Trust me, I have a very good excuse, and as soon as I think of it, I'll let you all know.

Burscough Junction wasn't just another tart for me - it was an exorcism. (Cue wibbly FLASHBACK effects). I'd been here once before, at a very bad, very unhappy point in my life, and now I was coming back to see it again.

It was towards the end of my first year at Edge Hill, and the whole college had wound down. We were in that nothing period before exams, where people were meant to be revising, but in fact they were using the time as a pre-holiday holiday. Certainly my friends were taking advantage. Most of them had gone home for family visits (i.e. to empty Mum's fridge and have their clothes washed), some had gone to stay with boyfriends and girlfriends, and at least one of them went to stay with some bloke she'd talked to on the internet and had never met.

I was 200 miles away from my mum's, so a visit was a bit of an expensive trip, and the grant and the student loan were almost gone. So I was left in my flat at Forest Court, the halls of residence, with my insufferably laddish flatmates who I'd barely spoken to since Christmas because, well, they were insufferably laddish.

On top of that, I was in the middle of a long distance romance with a guy who lived just south of London. Our relationship had gone from the "intense" stage, to the "indifferent" and was currently in the "unavailable" part - well, it was for him, anyway. I was 19 and still not savvy enough to notice that I'd basically been dumped. Instead, I pined, and left messages, and hoped for a call that never came. There was no-one for me to talk to on campus, and so I slipped into one of those dark, lonely times that sometimes creeps up behind you and engulfs you. I felt abandoned and alone. I actually went a couple of days without talking to anyone - not a deliberate silence, just never encountering a person I could talk to. Finally I snapped. And I walked.

I walked right out of town with no idea of where I was going. Looking back, a third of a life away, I can't help thinking, "were you mad? Where the hell were you going?" Actually I think I did have a mad moment then, a time where I wanted to take myself out of the world. So I just marched out of Ormskirk, on a road I'd never been down before, and I kept going. I am sure I was an extremely attractive sight that day, wandering down country roads, locked in a world of self-pity. Especially as I had Hugh Grant-esque floppy hair at the time.

Eventually, some tiny, tiny voice in the back of my head must have told me I couldn't do this all day, and before I wandered to Wigan, I somehow contrived to end up on the platform at Burscough Junction. A rare moment of sanity that day, which was subsequently lost as I sat on the bench on the platform and blubbed for half an hour until the train came. Just sobbed, like a housewife watching Beaches for the first time, thick, wet tears of unhappiness and misery.

And then the train came and I went home. And friends started drifting back, and we started going to the pub again, and hanging out in each other's rooms and listening to Blur and getting drunk. But Burscough Junction retained that echo for me, and stayed as a black mark on my mental Merseyrail map.

Returning here brought everything back, a great big wash of horrible emotions. It really hadn't changed. There was a bit of peppy purple Northern rail corporate identity, instead of the previous British Rail red, but otherwise it was all there. A bare platform, a scrubby car park, an abandoned station building hidden in the trees. It was all staggeringly familiar. The only thing that had changed was my fringe.

Except, now I was in a much better place in my life. Yes, bits of it suck pretty royally, and yes, I do still have problems and dark days. But I have good friends, and a great relationship, and a sense of belonging and contentment I didn't have then. The fact that I was going to now do the same journey in reverse - getting off a train at Burscough Junction, instead of boarding one, and walking into Ormskirk instead of out of it - well, the OCD part of my personality sort of liked the parallel.

Walking to Ormskirk hadn't been in my original plan: I'd collected it months ago. I'd planned on walking to Burscough Bridge, the little town's other station, and heading home via Southport or Wigan. But having come this far, I felt that I had to finish the journey properly. Besides, if I went to Ormskirk, I would achieve a first: I would visit every single station on a line in one trip. (Ok, there's only five of them, but work with me, people).

Out came the Ordnance Survey. Burscough Junction is right at the bottom end of the town, and I left through one of those 1940s council estates - all red brick and grass verges and little gates. I love these types of houses, probably because they remind me of my Nana's house in Luton. Nice wide open streets with grass central reservations some miserable Council has signposted "NO BALL GAMES".

The OS map had shown me that it was possible to get to Ormskirk through a variety of public footpaths, and I thought that would be a much more interesting route than just following the roads. I turned off the main street and down a little industrial estate, where a stile was signposted as being the right of way. Fair enough.

At this point I should state I'm not a born rambler. I do admire Janet Street-Porter and all those Right to Roam people: I do. But when I found myself wandering between farmer's fields, with not a single other soul about, I started to get a bit dubious. This felt an awful lot like trespassing. I was following a track, and it looked like it was on the map too, but there was no-one else around. I was waiting for the farmer to turn up and slur "Gerrorf moi land!" (because even in rural Lancashire, farmers speak with a comedy West Country accent).

Things got worse when I hit a copse of trees, and the path I was following branched, and branched again, without a single signpost. It was a miserable nest of a wood, tangled bitter trees and broken twigs. Through sheer luck I found the bridge over the miserable stream at the wood's heart, and I squeezed myself along a narrow path between a brick wall and a ditch. The mud beneath me was rutted and torn by what looked like motorbike tracks. A new worry arose: bikers, tearing along the track towards me, forcing me to leap out of their way and into the rancid ditch. Did I mention I'm a bit neurotic?

Eventually I hit road, which should have been the end of my worries. Except I still couldn't relax, as there was no pavement, and in my head I couldn't quite work out which side of the road I should have been on (into the oncoming traffic? Away from it?). I ended up sort of leaping into the bushes every time a car approached, then poking my head out afterwards to make sure it was gone.

This game of hide and seek with the cars rapidly lost its appeal, and the OS map came out again. Aha. A pretty looking path, clearly marked, clearly signposted, beside a river. That will do.

I'd been walking for what seemed like an age, and I just wanted to go home now. The novelty had worn off. Fields of bare earth rapidly lose their appeal. I trudged along the footpath, and once again hit a copse of trees. No matter: there was a stile, and a green arrow pointing the way. Sorted. I climbed the stile, went through the trees, climbed another one on the other side, and ended up in someone's garden.

Oh.

As back gardens go, it was very nice: there was a neatly mown lawn, and tennis courts, and a large house at the end of a drive. But the fact of the matter was, it was someone's back garden, and I was quite clearly now in it. I didn't want to turn and go back the way I came, because just the thought of it was disheartening, so I decided to get out of there as quickly as possible. I ran for the driveway, barreled down the gravel, and headed for the gates. The very locked gates.

Fuck.

I was now officially trespassing on locked and barred territory. I clung to my Ordnance Survey map, so I could prove that I was only following orders if challenged, and I wished I had taken photos of the arrows that had pointed me here. I really didn't want to go back now, because that would mean another sprint across the lawn, right in front of the house; but they were very high gates, and I just don't do "clambering". I wasn't one of those boys who climbed the ropes in P.E. I sat on the bench and criticised the techniques of others.

At last: salvation! As the sweat dripped off my chin I spotted it - a low part of the wall next to the gate, just enough for me to scramble over with something like dignity. I was over and out so fast I may have actually broken the sound barrier. Or maybe that boom I heard was just the pounding of the blood in my ears. I moved on a bit to put some distance between me and the tennis courts, then checked the map again. Not the OS one, which was now a beautiful figure of fear to me, but instead the Google Maps on my phone. I was about twenty minutes away from Ormskirk, and, blessedly, the roads here actually had pavements.

The afternoon was dying. The roads turned into commuter tracks, the workmen's vans giving way to school mum 4x4s and saloons. Then, just before I hit the town, a field of colour: poppies, stretching in rainbow bands into the distance. After the unending parade of scrub fields, it felt glorious. I was clearly not the only one to think so - a proper photographer, with a tripod and a non-cameraphone camera was packing up his equipment too. I snapped a surreptitious shot, then ploughed on, down a road that triggered those sense memories again, until finally I began to realise: I was back in Ormskirk.

So where to go for the final pint (because rest assured, by that point, I was desperate for one)? The Buck i' th' Vine, winner of the Most Northern Pub Name Competition five years running? The Railway, for thematic reasons? The Plough, my favourite pub when I lived here? In the end I went with Styles, because I figured it would be relatively quiet at this time of day. Plus, I could get nostalgic about that time we stuck a panty pad on the underside of a table, and were delighted to find it was still there on subsequent visits (my grown up, 32 year old self can only shudder at the bar's disturbing lack of cleanliness).

Pint supped, I went back to the station and made sure to get a proper, Merseytart shot of the station sign this time, as I'd only got the platform sign before. I also got a nice surprise. I reported last year about plans to revamp and rebuild Ormskirk station. Well, they're only doing it! I'd assumed that in these Difficult Economic Times the project would have been abandoned, but no: the station building was a wreck, and billboards were proclaiming the plans. Well done, folks. Of course this means I'll have to come back again to see it when it's completed. Sigh.

That was it: the whole Preston to Ormskirk line was folded away, crossed off the map. I'd spent all day out in the April sun, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed it. It had been relaxed at times - in Croston, for example - and fraught at others - legging it across lawns - but it had felt like a real journey. Since I expanded the project to take in the whole of the Merseyrail map, I've realised that I'm going to have to do an awful lot of country walking. This trip seemed like a good omen, a whole line gone in one go, and a sign of positive things to come. And almost as if it had come to say farewell, the Sprinter I'd been on that day was waiting on the platform. I raised a respectful hand of goodbye to the train*.

*I did no such thing, of course. It was a Sprinter, not Thomas the bloody Tank Engine. I just thought it would be a nice way to end.