ALF-icionado

Back when I started doing this blog - gulp; four years ago - I had two aims.  Visit every Merseyrail station, and take a picture of all the ALFs.  These are the Attractive Local Feature boards that are on some of the platforms.  I still don't know what they're called officially.

They're a lovely little quirk of the Merseyrail network - picture boards guiding you to local highlights.  My local station, Birkenhead Park, has two, which I'm ridiculously proud of.

In recent times, however, the ALF seems to have come under threat.  Southport abandoned its ALF in favour of a drab tourist board, meaning I never got a chance to photograph it.  Birkenhead Central lost its Soccerbus service to Tranmere, and so the ALF went too.  I'd hoped it would get a replacement - something plugging the town centre - but nothing came.  It means that, oddly, Earlestown has a better promoted shopping centre than Birkenhead, because it has an ALF.

I was overjoyed when I discovered that Ellesmere Port was finally getting not one, but two ALFs, thanks to e-mails from Sally the Nice Lady at Cheshire West & Chester, and from Mike at Merseytravel.  A reversal of fortune like that called for a visit, so I got Robert to join me on a Sunday trip to the end of the Wirral Line.

I first visited Ellesmere Port back in 2008, and I was scathing.  I'm glad to say that there's been a turnaround in its fortunes, thanks largely to Cheshire West and Chester (and of course, Sally) taking an active interest in the station.

There are the ALFs, for starters.  Two - yes, two! - of them:

That is, indeed, a fish.  Makes a change from the usual slightly sinister birds.  It's interesting to note that these ALFs are laser printed photographs, rather than the usual illustrations.  It gives it a different look.  I'm hopeful that this makes the process of creating the ALF easier, as now you can put a stock photo on rather than having to commission someone to paint a picture of a faceless rugby player.

There's a large dwell time between the train arriving at Ellesmere Port and leaving again - about ten minutes - so the whole time I was larking around on the platform, I was being watched by a bemused guard.  I tried to put this out of my head as I carried on cooing over the station improvements.  It's been repainted (in the mandatory Colour Tsar shades, of course) and it's got one of those fantastic information pods which appeared on the unmanned stations:

I'd much prefer there to be a manned ticket office, of course, but if that's not going to happen, a touch screen activated robot sentinel will do fine.  I had a bit of a poke around on it, playing with the tourist info and the map options.  Am I alone in still finding touch screens thrillingly futuristic?  I know in this era of iPhones and iPads everyone has one in their pocket, but I still get a little thrill every time I dab away at one.  Perhaps I just watched too much Star Trek: The Next Generation growing up, and I need to get over my secret wish to be Geordi LaForge (*cough* Beverly Crusher *cough*).

Anyway, Robert and I stomped up the steps to the footbridge where - praise Zod - they've finally put in a station sign.  When I visited before I had to squat under a platform sign, which just isn't on.  Now they've got the full Merseyrail box experience:

Alright, I'm going to have to be picky: I hate that CW&C have got their logo on there.  I know they probably paid for the thing, so they want some promotional value, and Ellesmere Port is on their patch - I just hate the way it muscles in.  At least we still have the Merseyrail "M" up there though.  To celebrate the appearance of the sign, I got a photo of me beneath it:

Yes, it is an interesting shirt, isn't it?

By now, the guard had called out the train driver to have a look at Robert and I fannying around with a camera.  We made the executive decision not to get on the train back, in case we got interrogated by the guard as he checked our tickets.

Besides, we had to look at the flowers.  Flowers!  At Ellesmere Port!  Ok, there was a beer can in amongst them, but combined with the pots on the platform, it was certainly an improvement.  Sally has entered the station for North West in Bloom and I think it deserves an award just for its step up.

There was more good news at the ticket office itself: the comedy Tickets sign, with its falling 's', had been replaced by a more sturdy version.  One of the poster boards outside had also been used for a photo montage of Ellesmere Port station's history - a lovely touch, and yet another reason thank Sally, Merseyrail, and everyone in between.

Robert and I headed into town for a coffee in the Port Arcades.  It's great to return to a place you had disliked and find it's improved a hundredfold.  The station isn't ever going to be up there with St Pancras as a wonder of railway architecture.  It's pushed to one side, the bridge over the tracks dominating the scene, and it's surrounded by industry and grime.  What it can do, and what a lot of Merseyrail stations do well, is act as a transport focus and a showpiece.  As the ALFs show, there's a lot going on round Ellesmere Port, and it would be great if the station's regeneration was symbolic of the town itself looking up.  Perhaps there'll be posters advertising four trains an hour on this route soon; perhaps, one day, we'll get that extension to Helsby.  I'm not holding my breath, but the works here show that tiny steps are always possible.

Failure to Launch

The excellent diamond geezer has a regular feature on his blog where he highlights the shameless attempts PR companies have made to get him to plug their stuff.  I get a few e-mails like that myself, though there's one key difference between me and him: I have no shame.

Don't get me wrong - the integrity (?) of this blog is very important to me.  You won't find me peddling corporate crap for nothing.  However, if they offer me free stuff, I may reconsider.

Where this is leading is that I got an e-mail from Sally at Cheshire West & Chester Council.  Readers might remember her cameo as the Nice Lady on the Jazz Train trip a few months ago.  Sally's the Mid-Cheshire Community Rail Partnership Officer, and was letting me know that they were launching a new Rail Walks guide.  Did I want to come to the launch?

Hmmm....

followed by buffet lunch in the Greyhound pub in Ashley at approx 12.30 – free booklet thrown in! 

Sold.

Even as I boarded the train to Ashley, I started getting tense.  I'm way, way too shy, and the idea of going to an event where I knew no-one was starting to scare me.  What would I say?  Who would I talk to?

As the train headed from Chester through the countryside, things got worse.  I began to sweat.  My head started spinning.  My breathing became shallow.  I knew what was happening: I had a panic attack coming.

I couldn't do it.  I couldn't face it.  Just the idea of being at that station, talking, existing, trying to make conversation - it all got a bit much.  The train pulled into Greenbank, and I jumped off.  I couldn't handle it.  I stood on the platform and sucked in lungfulls of air while the train took off behind me.  Big buckets of oxygen as I wrestled with my anxiety and shook.

Good grief I can be pathetic sometimes.

So unfortunately, I didn't get to the launch - which is a shame, because it looks brilliant.  The booklet for the rail walks can be downloaded here, and it's a great idea - I'm surprised it's not more common.  It encourages tourism in the countryside, it gets more users onto public transport, and it gives a purpose to those remote stations that might be overlooked.  I must get back out there and try one out.

Anyway, the one good thing about having my hissy fit at Greenbank was I could walk to Hartford station on the West Coast Main Line for a train straight back to Lime Street.  Hartford seemed very pretty - very moneyed Cheshire, lots of green lawns and discreet buildings.  The station was on a high street with a Co-Op, a pub and a church; it was so typically English it could have been in a Miss Marple.  A good Marple, not a rubbish ITV one.

It meant I was able to cross another station off the map, which was something at least.  A small crumb of comfort from the embarrassment of the day.  I headed down to the platform to wait for the train, which gave me plenty of time to look at one of the ugliest station buildings in Christendom.

British Rail's architects in the Sixties were just lazy, weren't they?  I bet they just drew a box on their plans and said "that'll do" before heading to the pub.  I suppose we should be thankful that it was at least staffed, though I feel sorry for the poor sod inside who has to spend his day selling tickets from a public toilet.

If anyone else wants to send me free stuff or invite me to shindigs, go ahead.  I'll try to turn up this time...

But Who Will Be Chandler?

Ellesmere Port. It's the unloved terminus of the Wirral Line. West Kirby and New Brighton have that glamorous seaside ambience. Chester is a hub with a historic past. Ellesmere Port's got a barely open ticket office, an inconvenient interchange with a barely used line, and is a mile from the town centre. On top of which, it's in Cheshire, the county that seems to treat its Merseyrail stations as irritations rather than assets.

That could all soon change. Cheshire West & Chester council, in association with Merseyrail, have put out a call for Friends of Ellesmere Station. CWAC (pronounced "Quack" by its employees, even though they're not meant to) want residents to help brighten the station up with gardening, tidying and general maintenance to make it a more attractive, less unpleasant place to hang out.

This does seem like a good idea on the surface, but my problem with it is: why is this a job for volunteers? Why isn't Quack funding the improvements themselves? Merseyside's stations are fully staffed while trains are running. Merseyside's stations are clean, bright, well-maintained. Some already have gardens, window boxes, artwork, thanks to the involvement of the local councils. The stations in Cheshire, with the exception of Chester, are unmanned, abandoned and a bit grim. Little Sutton's station building is boarded up. Capenhurst's station signs are pockmarked with dents. Overpool could do with a good wash. Even Bache - closest station to Chester Zoo and the University of Chester - is hidden behind a supermarket.

So I'm glad that Ellesmere Port could soon be getting a new shiny gleam. Station adoption has resulted in some great improvements across the country, and community involvement and commitment is obviously something to cherish. I wish someone was putting their hand in their pocket to fund a bit more than just a few hanging baskets.