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?

Map! Rant (Temporary Version)

Hamilton Square's been back in the news this week.  The works there have exposed some of the fine Victorian tile work - which will sadly be covered up again with new cladding - and also a load of old posters.  Many of these seem to be from the 50s and 60s.  (It would be remiss of me not to point out the one that says New Brighton is "gay").  You can view an excellent gallery of the rediscovered posters at the Echo website - here.  Or, if you'd prefer, here's a badly filmed video of the station done by me through a train window yesterday.

Please send my Oscar to the usual address.

The continuing closure of the station has resulted in a new, temporary version of the Merseyrail map.  My heart sinks just typing those words.  Merseytravel produce some fine display materials and some excellent posters, but for some reason, when it comes to the network map, they always fail.  It's as though they assign the work experience boy to those jobs, even though the map is one of the most important pieces of artwork they produce.

The closure of Hamilton Square is more inconvenient to passengers than the closure of one of the Liverpool underground stations.  Hamilton Square is at the heart of its own district, separate to the rest of Birkenhead.  There are Council offices, the Wirral's Magistrates Court, a police station.  A significant legal centre has grown up in the area.  There's a college nearby, not to mention the bus and ferry termini at Woodside.  In addition, Hamilton Square is the point where the Wirral Line splits north to the New Brighton and West Kirby lines and south to the Chester and Ellesmere Port lines.

Merseytravel have provided a bus service which travels between Conway Park (on the West Kirby line), Birkenhead Central (on the Chester line) and the Hamilton Square district to enable as many journeys as possible to continue uninterrupted.  The Merseyrail map needed to be adjusted to show both the closure of Hamilton Square and the alternative bus service.  This is how they did it.

That's not right.  In fact, that's so wrong, it actually hurts.

Here's a few basic rules of railway map design.  A solid line indicates a regular service.  A broken line shows an irregular or interrupted service.  A circle indicates an interchange between train services.  These are rules that have been established, at least since Harry Beck's Tube diagram in 1931, and probably before.

This map violates those rules.  The broken lines seem to say that Wirral Line services terminate at one of the three stations in Birkenhead town centre: Hamilton Square, Conway Park, or Birkenhead Central.  The broken lines hint at their former paths, but, for some reason, they can't go that way.  Your journey will be inconvenienced in some way.  The new map implies that there was a direct Conway Park-Birkenhead Central service, which there wasn't.  And Hamilton Square has exactly the same symbol as the open interchange stations.

Yes, there's a big green box at the bottom of the map saying Hamilton Square is closed.  But it's at the bottom of the map.  It's near Chester, in the spot that used to tell you about the bus service into Chester city centre.  It's not near Hamilton Square.  There's not even an asterisk on Hamilton Square to show that there might be something unusual going on.

Contrast with a similar situation in London.  At the moment, Embankment station on the Underground is undergoing escalator maintenance.  The escalators there are the only way to reach the deep level Bakerloo and Northern platforms, so the works mean those lines are no longer accessible.  Here's how TfL handled the change on their map:

It's abundantly clear what's happened there.  The brown Bakerloo and black Northern lines continue uninterrupted to Waterloo from Charing Cross.  The District and Circle lines at Embankment (which remain open) are still on the map.  And a dagger next to the Embankment station name shows you that there is something unusual about that station, and so you should refer to the box at the bottom for further information.  It's simple.  In fact, Merseytravel had it even simpler, because they didn't have the complication of only half the station being open.  Yet they managed to hash it up quite royally.

Here's what I would have done.  Now bear in mind: all I have to work with is MS Paint and my own clunky fists.  I don't have access to Photoshop and years of training and artistic skill.  So this is the best I could come up with, but it shows the principle.

The Wirral Line remains unmolested, so you can still take a train straight into Liverpool city centre.  Hamilton Square's circle is removed from the line completely, and an asterisk guides you to a key at the bottom of the map.  And the purple line shows the bus services, including the stop at Hamilton Square.  It's not perfect, of course - I had to get rid of the large BIRKENHEAD caption, and the purple line shouldn't go through the station name - but I repeat: I am not a trained graphic designer.  That revision shows there's something odd going on but most of your train journeys will be unaffected, and there's a bus route for those you who are affected.  (You could possibly add the ferry in as well, given that it effectively replicates the James Street-Hamilton Square portion of the line, but that would probably be over egging the pudding).

It's not difficult.  It just requires a little bit of thought from the designers at Mann Island.  They need to put themselves in the mind of an infrequent traveller, a foreign tourist who wants to get from Liverpool to Chester to visit the Walls and wants to know the quickest, easiest way of doing it.  I'd be put off travelling on the Wirral Line by that dotted section if I didn't know better.  It hints at hassle that doesn't exist.

Please, Merseytravel.  Try harder.

New! Improved!

There's been a few quiet improvement projects happening at stations across Merseyside.  I say "quiet" because not much fuss seems to be made out of them; the workmen just seem to be toiling away and no-one's noticed.  I devoted a quiet Sunday to having a look at how a couple of them were getting on.

My first stop was Birkenhead North.  It's recently gained a new park and ride facility, with a secure car park on the opposite side of the tracks to the station building.  Now things are going up a notch.

The wrought iron footbridge has sadly been dismantled and taken away so that the station can become accessible to all.  Now concrete and steel are slowly forming into a brand new over bridge.

These will be the new lift shafts, in a new structure similar to the one at Hooton.  The bridge is going to go right across to the car park, making the platforms directly accessible from there and avoiding the need for a long walk round on Wallasey Bridge Road.  The new bridge will connect everything together into one complex.

Of course, you can't just demolish a bridge without giving passengers an alternative route; that would be annoying and lead to a lot of people being electrocuted on the third rail as they try to get to Liverpool.  They've jerry-rigged a new bridge at the opposite end of the platform which looks like one of those structures the Army have built in Somerset.

There was a reminder of how important the new bridge will be while I was there.  A young mum with a toddler and a pushchair struggled up and down the steps, taking five times as long to get to the middle platform.

(That makes me sound like a right bastard, but she did have another lady with her; she wasn't on her own.  I didn't just watch her and hope she'd fall over like some kind of sociopath).

The sad part of this is that Birkenhead North still has some of its original ironwork on its platform canopies, which the bridge will no longer match.  That's the price of progress I suppose.

One train journey later I was at Bidston.  It's always been an odd, desolate little halt; because of the marshy soil around the junction it was constructed from wood, as they were afraid something heavier would sink into the ground.  There's a single island connected to the road and the footpath by a pebble dashed bridge.  As the terminus of the Borderlands Line it's possible to wait here for quite some time - especially if there are problems with the trains - but the passenger facilities have mainly been a couple of benches on the platform.  Not so great when the cold winds sweep in from the Irish Sea and gather pace across the acres of bare fields and swamp that surround it.

Something needed to be done.  Now if it was up to me, I'd have moved the whole shebang to alongside Tesco across the way; that would be before the service to New Brighton branches off, so you'd have increased the number of trains to the station, and there would have been a better connection to the superstore and the retail park which are the main attractions round here.  You might even have got Tesco and the retail park to help pay for it.  That would be quite an astronomical ask though, and there are higher priorities elsewhere, so instead the architects at Merseyrail and Merseytravel came up with an alternative.

Their solution was to box in the open area between the ticket office and the toilets to create a new waiting room.  Glass walls and electric doors have been put in to create a warm, cosy space.  The roof's also been replaced with glass to leave it bright and airy.

 
In some ways, it's too welcoming.  While I waited for my train a gang of tween girls arrived and set up shop in the waiting room, breaking up the tedium of "playing out".  They grouped in a corner and played Let It Go from Frozen on a loop via their mobile phones.  While it's nice to have your ears assaulted by something that isn't misogynistic gangster rap or banging techno - I appreciate Idina Menzel as much as the next gay man - it's still incredibly annoying, particularly as the open space and slate floor made it echo into something unrecognisable.  (Also, Pharrell Williams' Happy should have TOTALLY won the Oscar.  So there's that too).

Ironically, a song about how "the cold never bothered me anyway" ended up driving me out into the biting wind and spotty rain, and I went onto the platform.  There's another, slightly bittersweet, technological improvement out here; despite the sign, there's no longer a pay phone at Bidston station, because when did you last see someone use a pay phone?  Someone who wasn't a drug dealer, anyway?  Instead a purpose built Help Point has been installed, which is sad, but it is the 21st century after all.

The work's not finished at Bidston, thankfully, because there are some distinctly slapdash features around - pipes held in by insulation foam, puddles on the concrete.  A poster apologises but the "inclement weather" (i.e. apocalyptic end of days storms straight out of the Hellmouth) has meant the work has had to be delayed.

My final stop on my tour of the new look Merseyrail was Aigburth.  Readers with long memories may remember a moment of hysteria when news reached me that the historic canopy at the station was being removed.  It turned out to be the kind of panic that erupts when people are left uninformed.  Network Rail were working on the canopy, and they planned on getting rid of some of it, but they'd not really publicised the plans; rumours erupted, petitions flew around, and the work had to be halted while everything was smoothed over.

Now Aigburth has a much smaller, more square canopy over just one part of the platform.  This is to help with maintenance and also to stop the roof from chucking its waste water all over the tracks.  I'm still not happy - surely there should be more covered space in a country as rainy as Britain? - but it's certainly not the holocaust we had believed it to be.  The ironwork has also been retained, which is good to see, and also offers a glimmer of hope that it might one day be used to support a decent canopy again.

These are tiny, piecemeal projects, not grand schemes that revolutionise stations and the way we travel.  They're not Crossrail or Liverpool South Parkway.  Still, in their own small way, they improve the experience of riding the rails, and help to increase traffic and satisfaction across Merseyrail.  Always a good thing.

The Definitive Ranking Of Merseyrail Lines

This is an homage* (*blatant rip off) of the excellent Buzzfeed post by Tom Phillips you can read here.  He's a bit harsh on the Northern Line, and I wouldn't have put the DLR first because it's not a Tube line, but anyway: at least he is satisfyingly cruel and cutting about the Arabfly Dangleway.

THE DEFINITIVE RANKING OF MERSEYRAIL LINES

Note On Methodology: for the purposes of this evaluation, the lines are broken down into sections, based on their terminus - so there are four entries for the Wirral Line, and three for the Northern Line.  Otherwise this would be a very short list, and I would miss the opportunity to waffle on.  I'm also going to deal only with the bits of lines that exist entirely on the Merseyrail map, so if you want to hear complaints about the points work at Manchester Oxford Road you'll have to go elsewhere.


19.  That annoying bit of red line between Earlestown and Warrington Bank Quay

It's too short, it has a stupid kink in the middle, and it doesn't really relate to any proper services.

18.  Ellesmere Port to Helsby and beyond

Because it gets about four trains a month, and to get one you have to clamber up and over the bridge at Ellesmere Port like a hamster in a run. It's like they don't want you to use it.

17.  The line to Blackpool North.

A route which exists purely to carry low-rent stag parties to fun pubs, and which never quite shakes off the smell of stale booze and unspent testosterone.

16.  Ormskirk - Preston

Everyone tumbles off the fast, frequent, electric Merseyrail train and wanders up to a manky Pacer that's chugging like a tractor running on pig manure instead of diesel.  It'll be rammed, no-one will be happy, and it takes forever.

15.  City Line to Wigan

With the exception of the rather fantastic St Helens Central, this is a stream of boring stations with odd names ("Thatto Heath"?  You're just making these up now).

14. Kirkby to Wigan

It's a line for people who want to go to either Wigan or Kirkby.  It might get a branch to Skelmersdale in the future.  Must I say more?

13. The Mid-Cheshire Line

It connects Chester with Manchester, it goes through some very pretty countryside (including the Delamere Forest), and it's got some very posh bits.  Usually full of nice old ladies going out for tea and lunch in Altrincham or somewhere equally glamorous.

12.  Crewe and Runcorn

Ok, it's got nice fast whizzy trains, but they don't always stop at Winsford and Hartford, and Acton Bridge is practically a ghost station.  That's just rude.  Also the trains tend to be full of twats shouting into their mobile phones to let you know they're very important.

11.  Southport to Wigan

Because my friend Jennie used to live in Parbold, and so I have a great deal of affection for this line.  It's my list, alright?

10.  Wirral Line to Ellesmere Port

Get your own damn line, Ellesmere Port, and stop stealing Chester's trains.

9.  Northern Line to Kirkby

Fun fact: the Queen was made to ride the line out to Kirkby when she opened Merseyrail in the Seventies.  I bet she was overjoyed about that.  Now it's just a little stub, and you have to sit on the platform for what feels like forever before the train leaves, all the while hoping that those scallies bounding down the ramp towards the platform aren't going to sit in your carriage.  They always do.  And they always decide to try and compete with one another for who has the most offensive and misogynistic rap music on their phone throughout the journey.

8.  City Line to Warrington

Liverpool South Parkway makes this a surprisingly useful line, busy and interesting.  You can interchange for a whole lot of more fascinating places.  Also: Widnes.  Oh yes.

7.  Wirral Line to New Brighton

Like the Kirkby line, it's too short and stubby, but it's got the seaside at the end, so at least you can have an ice cream.


6.  Wirral Line to Chester

This would be a perfectly fine line if it didn't have Chester on the end.  Chester is a big succubus of snobbery and pretension, and doesn't deserve to be on the same route as perfectly respectable places like Bromborough and Birkenhead.  Also, I'm pretty sure you get radiation poisoning every time you go through Capenhurst.


5.  Northern Line from Southport to Hunts Cross

It's too long.  It takes an hour to get from Hunts Cross to Southport, and boy, don't you notice it.  Somewhere around Freshfield fatigue sets in and all those level crossings and golf courses become a blur, until next thing you know the guard's waking you up back in Hunts Cross because you've slept there and back again.


4.  The Borderlands Line

There's town (Bidston, Upton, Heswall, Wrexham).  There's country (a lot of unpronounceable places in the hills).  It's got a river crossing, it's got posh bits, it's got rough bits.  And did I mention that it goes to ANOTHER COUNTRY (ok it's only Wales, but it counts)?  Points are however deducted for  terminating in the middle of the marshes at Bidston. 

3.  City Line to Newton-le-Willows

It's the first intercity railway in the world.  If this line didn't exist, we'd all still be stuck in tiny villages, eating mud and marrying our sisters because no-one could go anywhere else to experience new things like cauliflower and eggs and people with less than eight fingers on each hand.  It's railway history, no, legend, and poor old William Huskisson died in the process.  You should doff your metaphorical hat every time you travel on it.  HUSKISSON!

2.  Northern Line to Ormskirk

I'm not just putting this second because it's my old home line: the Ormskirk branch is a veritable roller coaster of emotions and experiences.  SHIVER as you pass Walton Gaol and the Ashworth High Security Hospital!  THRILL at the idea of crossing the track on that really really high footbridge between Walton and Kirkdale!  LAUGH as you speed past all the poor queuing cars at Switch Island!  PERVE at the many attractive students who take the train on a daily basis!  ENJOY the sweet spot between Sandhills and the plunge into the tunnel where for the briefest of moments, the two cathedrals and the Radio City Tower are in perfect alignment, and you fall in love with Liverpool just that little bit more. 

1.  Wirral Line to West Kirby

You board at a petite Victorian terminus in a charming seaside town.  There are fast, regular trains, that take you through classy suburbs and expanses of golf links.  At Moreton and Leasowe, there are actual biscuit factories, like Willy Wonka but crunchy.  Under the motorway and past the docks, then a stop at Birkenhead Park - the oldest public park in the world - before you go to the modern, shiny Conway Park.  Then you're underground, through Hamilton Square and under the River Mersey into the Loop.  Four stations to take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in Liverpool city centre.  And before you know it, you're back on the way out again, heading back towards the sea.

We have a winner.

Thanks to Sean for suggesting this.

Four Way Split

Take a train.

Stand on the platform 1 at Hamilton Square and take a train.  At that point, it'll just be a Liverpool train.  It'll have Liverpool on the sign board on the front and the automated voice will tell you "This train is for ... Liverpool Central.  The next station is... James Street."  You'll pass under the river and then it'll change. That Liverpool train will magically shift its state and become something else.  Without you even noticing, your surroundings will transform, morph, and suddenly you're going somewhere else.  All without leaving your seat.  At James Street, you'll learn where you're going.

"This train is for... Chester.  The next station is... Moorfields."

It looked like I was heading for Chester, then.  I was playing a game.  I'd decided, for no reason at all, to travel all over the Wirral Line.  I was going to go to each of its termini, just riding the rails.  Just taking in the route.

I got a seat at Liverpool Central.  The guard and the computer voice beg you to leave the train at James Street for Liverpool ONE, and some do, but it still hasn't caught on properly.  People still cling to Central as the heart of the city - good news for the Central Village development, when it eventually shows up.  I wonder if it's the name.  If Bold Street or Ranelagh Street would get the same volumes of traffic; if people are just conditioned to go that way by the name.  Two tourists clamber off the train, carting bikes, nervously checking out the line diagram to make sure they're in the right place.  A woman helps them; she got on at Moorfields with hair still damp from the stylist.  As we leave the station she fingers her new style anxiously, still unsure about it.

There's a blue spark as we cross the junction, and the lights vanish, and then we're back at Hamilton Square again.  A nurse boards and sits in the bank of seats across the aisle from me.  She crosses her sensibly shod feet and flicks through an Argos catalogue, letting it fall open on random pages, then urgently moving it on again.  She drops it on the dead Metro beside her as we break out of the tunnel into Birkenhead Central. Sunlight, but no sunshine; a grey murk and the threat of drizzle.  There's a train stabled alongside the southbound platform, the Councillor Jack Spriggs.

Green Lane is almost empty, as usual.  There's a single waiting passenger on the Liverpool platform.  He's sat in the shelter with a little lunch beside him on the bench, a can of Dr Pepper, a packet of ready salted.  The train squeaks and groans as it clambers up the incline, a ridiculously steep gradient that takes the train from underground to an embankment.  We're suddenly over the top of gardens and rooftops and basketball courts.  A quote on a wall - John 3:16 - God loved us so much He gave us His only son.  Whoever puts their trust in him will not be lost but will have eternal life.

At Rock Ferry, we pull alongside a train heading the opposite way, and I look through into a mirror image.  A boy with a rock star haircut and a leather jacket sullenly takes up a seat, earbuds jammed deep inside his skull.

This is, in its own way, my line, the one I travelled on the most.  Twice a day, there and back, to my job in Chester.  It's such a long time ago now.  It doesn't feel familiar any more.  I can't do the timings in my head any more - I can't work out where we are just from the view out the window.  The summer foliage confuses me too.  In my head, this trip is always cold, frosty, on a grey morning where you can see your breath.  Two men in high-vis suits are opening a drain cover at Bebington.  Some parkland, longer back gardens from a time when houses weren't squeezed on top of one another, and then Port Sunlight.  The concrete square of the Unilever building hangs over the track, ugly and basic, exiled to the western side of the tracks away from the pretty village.

The green cage for cycle parking at Spital has a single bike in it.  A man leans against the cage, red woollen hat, hoodie, drinking coffee from a silver thermos and looking like he wants to be back in bed.  The guard passes through without checking our tickets and doesn't close the connecting door properly behind him.  It clatters and thuds with the movement of the train until the braking at Bromborough Rake makes it click into place.  The trees that over hang the platform here have made it wet and slick with fallen yellow leaves.  A man with a double buggy tries to control it on the steep ramp, while excited babies wave from the front.

The guard comes back - still no ticket check - but he closes the door properly this time.  The doors open at Bromborough with a clatter of key and a sigh of pneumatics, then he leans against the glass partition with his head tilted back until Eastham Rake.  The grey concrete walls here still jar, twenty years after they were put up.  They're aggressively urban after the pretty quasi-rural halts that preceded it.  The paint at the base of the fences is flaking.

Under the motorway, across the county line, the ugly industry of Hooton.  Network Rail vans parked in a compound.  Hooton always meant halfway to me: it took as long to get from home to here as it took to get from Hooton to Chester, even though there were hardly any stations.  The driver opens up the train to maximum, enjoying the long stretch without stopping.  It pounds the rails, engine whining, whistling.  Anonymous, secretive cubes at Capenhurst, protected by double rows of razor wire.  Cranes extending it and its hidden uses.

The smell of pollen and wild flowers bursts through the open windows.  Count the road bridges, the places where the noise of the train amplifies suddenly, then the BANG as another train hammers past, air colliding with air.  For a brief moment, I can see across the plains to Wales, purple mountains rising up.  The little stubs of platform that are all that remains of Upton-by-Chester station and we're approaching Bache - "Leave the train here for the Countess of Chester hospital" says the computerised voice, but she sounds like she's been cut off, like she wanted to say more but someone took her mic away.  The train sighs as it rolls towards Chester, as though it knows this is the end.  Allotments, apartments, then a junction and a depot and an expanse of railway lands.

More tourists on the platform at Chester, Italian and Spanish, pulling suitcases and calling noisily to each other.  I take a seat and let the train leave.  When I worked here there wasn't anywhere to sit, just window sills you'd lean on, hollows carved in the stone by a hundred years of buttocks.

My train back is named: Operations Inspector Stuart Mason, a refreshingly banal title.  There's another dead Metro on the seat across from me and an open bag of Tesco pistachio nuts.  It's been opened along the side, and is full of discarded pistachio shells; I imagine someone moving the bag to sit down and inadvertently showering everyone, so I move it to the metal edge of the seat.  Two Scouse lads are "sick" of Chester, and are retreating back to Liverpool.

"A few bevs?"

"A few bevs."

"Magnet?"

"Magnet."

They rest their feet on the seat cushions as the doors beep and we move away.  It seemed like there was hardly any time between trains.  I notice a new sign for the drivers at Bache - REMINDER: Do you stop at Capenhurst? - and I realise I haven't seen Bache's ALF, my very first ALF, the one with the quizzical giraffe.  Is it still there?

We do stop at Capenhurst, and then I jump off at Hooton.  I'd thought about going all the way up, round the loop and back again, but the thought of seeing all the same stations over and over depresses me.  Instead I nip to the M to Go for a bottle of water.  The men in there are bantering with the station manager as she buys a coffee from the machine.  "Have you had any complaints because it doesn't do tea?"

"A couple.  But it's Costa, in'tit?"

"Yeah, but if you go into a Costa shop you can get a tea, can't you?"

"Do you want a cup of tea?" the larger of the men explodes, mock exasperated, his moustache quivering.  "I'll make you a cup of tea!"

I take up a seat by some discarded crisps.  A tall man and his girlfriend scurry along the platform - "fourteen minutes!" - and he spits heartily onto the track, presumably to clear his throat ready for the cigarette.  They sit further down and he puts dance music on the speaker of his phone for everyone to enjoy.  Fortunately it's mostly drowned out by the traffic on the motorway and the road bridge.  Another man, anxious, tiny, with a red backpack dangling off his shoulders: with his khaki trousers and neat blue shirt he looks like a very polite explorer.

A Liverpool train passes through, then a Chester train, then quiet again.  A robin lands close to my feet and eyes me up.  It wants to pick at those crisps, and I haven't moved, so I don't seem to be a threat.  It watches me for a little bit, then hops around some more, dancing round the potential meal, trying to estimate my danger levels.  The Ellesmere Port train clatters into the platform, and he whirls up into the air; lunch will have to wait.

Two businessmen are ahead of me on the train.  The bald one, head shaved and shining, barks into a mobile until the signal fades.  He turns to his colleague to complain, first about the phone, then about his missing pens.  "No-one ever puts a pen back in that office."

"What was that one you had?"

"It was a lovely silver Parker pen.  Just vanished.  Bastards."  They commiserate each other on their missing stationery, pads, pens, claimed by unscrupulous types without morals.

Little Sutton's much improved since I was last here.  The local schoolchildren have been let loose, and now the panels over the bricked up windows are bright and colourful.  A copy of Lord Kitchener wants YOU to join him at the station.  The two businessmen have moved onto their boss, his incompetence and his unfriendliness, but their Scouse vocabulary still comes through in their speech, resulting in strangely personable threats - "The more he does it, the more I think, fuck you, mate."  They alight at Overpool, along with a surprising amount of the train.

The last stretch to Ellesmere Port passes terraces, a siding with Network Rail men clambering over the tracks, blocks of flats.  The station building is wrapped in scaffolding and hoardings, in the process of being upgraded to contain a cafe and community space.  Until then We apologise for any inconvenience during improvement works.

I'd thought about hanging around and getting the next train out, as at Chester, but Ellesmere Port's an unfriendly place.  The platform had people waiting on it who didn't seem to want to board the train, who regarded it as an intrusion.  They smoked cigarettes and eyed it suspiciously, craned over the handlebars of bikes.  I got back on the same train I came in on, along with a gang of students from the local college.  They open cans of energy drinks in unison, a little chorus of hisses, enough to keep them alive for the trip home.  A harassed man boards at Overpool, with flyaway hair and a nervous chew on his bottom lip.  Union Jack flying in a garden at Little Sutton; a collapsed outhouse and weeds next door.

One of the students is holding forth about Tube trains, and his experiences on them.  They're tiny, but the new ones are better - "they're bright and modern, like this train."  I imagine that would please Merseyrail.  We pass through the deep sandstone cutting at Hooton and he moves onto the lack of etiquette on the Underground: "everyone's pushing.  There's no consideration at all."  He's so busy with his rant about That London, they almost miss their station, and have to run to get off at Hooton.

The guard does a ticket check, nodding his and thanking you for each orange square, and we head back over the familiar line again.  "We are now approaching Spital" will never stop sounding revolting.  Every station has the green GoGoGo! cycling banner and a cage for bikes; hardly any are in use.  The man at Green Lane left his empty crisp packet and Dr Pepper can behind when he caught the train; they're like a shed snakeskin on the seat.

I close the loop at Hamilton Square, passing through the same platform I boarded from ages ago.  Now that they're endangered I feel affectionate towards the brown plastic seats - part of me hopes there's not enough money to redevelop these last couple of stations.  Lime Street is skipped again, its platform covered in a tent of scaffolding poles and fences, the new white panels checkerboarded with blank holes.

I get off at Liverpool Central to use the loo.  It's the second best place to have a pee in the city centre now, clean and efficient and with Dyson Airblades.  (The best place to pee is John Lewis because you don't need a train ticket to use them).

Back down to the platform.  It's rowdy down there; the races are on at Chester, and suits and posh frocks are tottering around after being in the pub.  They're noisy and excitable and I am ridiculously pleased when they all get on a train and leave.  An old woman tells her grandson to sit in the empty seat between me and a heavy man with a briefcase.  She's wearing leopardskin and pulling a pink wheely-suitcase.  I stood up to offer her my seat but she waved me back down.  "He's just come from the hospital, otherwise we'd both stand up," she explains, but I see her take my seat when I get on the train.  The man with the briefcase made no move to offer his seat at all.

The guard informs us in thick, guttural Scouse that this is the New Brighton train.  There's a school party spread along the platform at James Street, legs out in front of them, waving at us as we pass.  Across from me, in the bike seats, a woman in a blue cagoule eats a packet of cheese and onion Snack a Jacks with a slow deliberation.  Each rice cracker is held between two fingers and slowly raised to her mouth; she considers it, then crunches her way through it, before reaching for the next one.  She's wearing pinstripe trousers and girlish pumps over white socks.

She gets off at Conway Park, which is black.  While I've been underground a storm has crashed into Birkenhead, and the canyon of a station seems to be battered by it.  The brightly lit strips with the nameplate on it shine even more distinctively, like beacons.  An imperious looking man alights at Birkenhead Park - he could be Colin Firth's stunt double for The King's Speech, if there were any actual stunts - and then onto Birkenhead North.  People in hoods, like ETs, hunched over themselves, dart across the rain-strafed platform and onto the train.

The driver toots his horn as we pass the depot.  Long chains of carriages stretch alongside us, with a Beatles Story train looking unfeasibly bright next to its yellow and grey siblings.  Its psychedelic colour scheme is completely out of place in the middle of this barren stretch of railway and weeds.  Round the back of the retail park and under the motorway, then up onto the viaduct and Wallasey Village station.  A bamboo screen has been erected along the platform to shield the houses below from nosy commuters.  It gives the station an incongruously tropical air, exotic like a jungle hut.

A sign says that Wallasey Grove Road "is tended and cared for by the Edible Wirral Partnership" but the beds look tired, and there are weeds everywhere.  Perhaps they're "encouraging wild flowers" and a "bee friendly" environment, like I am on that corner of the garden I can't be bothered with.  The backs of apartment slabs, then the first glimpse of the sea at New Brighton.  It's thick and grey, unappealing under the drive of the rain, and Seaforth is hidden under mist.  There are more sandstone stripes in the cutting, fossil beds laid on top of one another, then the train clunks and shudders and we're in the station.

A couple of workmen are fixing the CCTV in the station building as I cross to the bookshop over the road.  I thought I would kill time in here until the next train, but it's too small and crowded, and the staff are too cheery.  I didn't feel relaxed enough to browse; I felt like I was being watched, and they were ready to jump in with help and conversation.  Only as I leave do I realise that the woman behind the counter is dressed as a pirate.

I leave and get back on the train.  It clicks furiously, as though a cricket was trapped under the wheels.  Dots of rain fall through the window and smudge the ink in my notebook.  At Grove Road, schoolkids with blazers over their head to hide from the rain get on board, and then another load at Village.  A banner advertising the Railpass has a picture of a man whispering into a woman's ear; someone has poked out her eyes, leaving her with two black spaces either side of her nose.  It somehow makes her look sarcastic, as though she's listening to the man and thinking "Christ, not this again."

Most of the kids get off at Birkenhead North, thankfully, changing to the West Kirby line no doubt.  A neatly dressed man gets on at Birkenhead Park in an outfit that positively gleams.  Everything looks new and crisp; shiny shoes, pressed trousers, a white jacket that's unscuffed.  I decided that he was off for a night out on the pull, making himself look the very best he could, but then he got off at Conway Park and torpedoed my theory.  No-one dresses up for a night out on the pull in Birkenhead - it's not worth the effort.

Four Network Rail men get on the train at Hamilton Square; clocking on or knocking off, I wonder?  I get off with them at Moorfields, and they look around for the lift - "I'm not fucking walking."

I'd decided to change at Moorfields because I thought it would complete the set of underground stations.  Only as I stood on the platform did I remember that I hadn't been to James Street.

Final leg now.  The train hits Central, and fills immediately; it's four o'clock on a Friday and the office workers with flexi time are out of there.  There's a crisp packet on the seat in front of me, cheese and onion, the artificial flavourings still lingering in the air.  It's passed to the neighbouring seat by a little round woman with a severe red bob.  She produces a historical epic from her bag, cracks the spine and begins reading.  Then the crisp bag is passed on again, to the seat next to me, by a trim pensioner carrying a hot pink handbag.  She's wearing open toed sandals and probably regrets it.

Further on in the carriage two teenage girls are showing their mum their purchases, delving into carrier bags and producing the treasures inside.  A shoebox is taken out and a single trainer is put up for the others to coo over.  A bikini is taken out of a Primark carrier: "Is that for your holiday?"

Through the tunnel again, a pause at Hamilton Square.  The young stylish couple across the way are big on public displays of affection.  Their bodies are rammed together, tight designer jeans swathed around touching knees.  She clutches her iPhone in a fist, its screen strobing across her clothes.  A cyclist boards and the standing commuters shuffle uncomfortably to let him on, but no-one moves the crisp bag on the seat next to me.

The stylish girl's coat slips from her shoulder as we move off again, revealing a pale shoulder under a white vest top.  She gazes out into the carriage through panda eyes, until her boyfriend reclaims her, pulling her back in for another kiss.  At Birkenhead Park there's a chirrup of phones as the signals are recovered, and a corresponding movement of arms into pockets to retrieve messages.  A schoolboy pushes the crisp packet onto the floor and takes the seat next to me, but sitting sideways, tapping at his lime green Blackberry with a well-practised thumb.  It plinks and beeps, new messages covering up his Everton football club wallpaper.

There's a thud as we clonk over the junctions and pass round the back of the giant Tesco Extra.  Bidston station is swathed in netting and building work.  The couple squeeze their way off the train, holding hands.  I can smell thick, cheap aftershave; I suspect it comes from the teenager next to me, spritzing himself anxiously all day to fight off adolescent sweats.  He receives a picture message but can't work out what it is: after turning his mobile a few times he replies with "?".

Someone is talking behind me in an Asian language, Mandarin or Cantonese or something, having half a conversation we can't understand.  That's the third foreign language I've heard on the train today, and it doesn't include the incomprehensible Glaswegian at Chester or the treacle thick Scouse accent.  There are flats at Leasowe I don't remember having seen before, but it's been a long time since I came this way, a very long time.  The boy and the pensioner both get off at Moreton, and the woman with the bob swings round, riding the rest of the journey side saddle so she can stretch her legs.

There's a stretch of unlikely countryside between Moreton and Meols, with paddocks and Shetland ponies and meadows.  The rain returns, but listlessly this time, falling against the window in splatters.  We pass over the barrow crossing before Manor Road, the one that seems to claim a victim every year, and then we're at the station proper.  It's nearly six years since I collected the station, but I suddenly remember being here, coming down the steps to the platform, listening to the Coral on my iPod.

Hoylake is pretty, of course, and probably about to get a makeover ready for the return of the Open next year.  Then the train clears its throat and rumbles, readying itself for a rest at the terminus.  The neatly mown expanse of the golf course provokes a burst of energy in the carriage.  Books are tidied away, bodies stretch, phones are produced and "I'm just coming into the station now" seems to be on everyone's lips.  At West Kirby I tip onto the last station of the day, the last branch, the end of the line.

I text Jamie.  Fancy a pint?