Guess Who's Back. Back Again. Shady's Back. Tell A Friend.

Of course, when I use the phrase "shady", I'm not really talking about my drug-fuelled violent rapper alter-ego.  I'm more talking about this sort of thing.

Anyway: hello.  It's me again.  That bloke who went round Merseyrail.  Then Northern Rail.  Then the Metrolink.  I'm back again.

And why?  Well, obviously, it's because of railways.  It's because of trains and maps.  It's because I'm a little bit bored and purposeless.  I'm drifting along, not really going anywhere, and I need to find some purpose.  I need to get out the house more. 

I cast my eye about the railway networks of Britain, looking for somewhere to go, somewhere to map.  Metrolink was alright but it was all way too much wandering around similar looking backstreets in Manchester; the stops were too close together for me to really feel any variety, and they were so frequent there wasn't much of a challenge.  I need something a bit more difficult this time.

Not too difficult though.  Scotrail, for example, would be very interesting, if it didn't take three hours just to reach the border.  Heading for somewhere in the far north would take the best part of a day and would need an overnight stay.  I'm not made of money, sadly.  That's without mentioning the stations on the side of a mountain, served by the sleeper train once a day, where I'd dismount the train and have to hang around on a rail blasted platform for twelve hours before heading back the way I came. 

Wales, meanwhile, has been sort of done.  I've been all over the north and middle, so we're just talking the south of the country really, and again, that's a long way away.  What I really needed was a midpoint.  Somewhere that's not too far away, but it sufficiently challenge.  A midland, if you will.

WAIT. A. SECOND.

West Midlands Trains took over the franchise covering Birmingham and its environs at the end of 2017.  It's actually divided into two separate companies.  The London Northwestern Railway covers the long distance services; the trains from Liverpool to New Street are LNWR, as are the stopping services to London.  I won't be concerning myself with that one, so there'll be no need to visit the likes of Tring.

Instead I'll be covering the commuter services, known as the West Midlands Railway. and collecting the stations on the map you see above. (A map that needs updating - Kenilworth is shown as "opening 2018".  Sigh.  You can see the PDF here).  That's Shrewsbury to Hereford, Stratford to Lichfield, plus the likes of Worcester and Leamington Spa.  Plus lots of small commuter stations within Birmingham itself, places with intriguing names like Jewellery Quarter and Acocks Green and Rowley Regis. 

I've touched on this area before, of course.  I visited Moor Street, Snow Hill and New Street with Robert and Ian back in 2013, but since then New Street's been comprehensively rebuilt and I've not really seen it so I'm declaring them "uncollected".  Same for Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury, which I've barely touched.  I am going to count this part as collected already, though:

Again, I went here with Robert and Ian (in 2012 this time) but these stations don't receive a railway service and are basically waiting to be closed (in fact, there's nothing left of Norton Bridge).  I'm not keen on riding the bus again, so that'll stay.

That still leaves me with 130 stations to cross off the list.  Plus the trams, maybe.  If I feel like it.  Shall we see what happens?

Open Return

June 17th, 2007, and I sat down in front of my computer and announced that I was going to visit every Merseyrail station.  Just the Northern and Wirral lines, mind; doing any more than that would've been daft.

Five years after that, I thought I'd give the Northern Rail map a go as well.

Five years after that and I've done so, so, much more.  All of Merseyrail.  All of Northern Rail.  A whole load of others as well - bits of England and Scotland and Wales that have delighted and excited me.  And now I'm asking: what's next?

There's a hole, you see.  A big gap where station collecting used to be.  It had, though I hadn't realised it, become an obsession, and when you lose the obsession, you don't know what to do with yourself.  This must be what it's like when a stalker finally kills the starlet.  You're stood over the half-naked corpse with the butcher's knife in your hand feeling discombobulated and lost.

I thought I might write a book.  I tried.  I traveled to a bunch of bits of Britain last year to collect lines that I thought would be interesting (it's why there was suddenly a big gap in the blog in 2016).  The Severn Beach Line, the Borders Railway, the tiny tube trains on the Isle of Wight - places like that.  But much as I enjoyed the travelling, the writing - not so much.  There's a big difference between writing a proper book with actual facts and context, and chucking out a blog post off the top of your head.  Writing is hard.  I mean, depressingly, awfully, gut-wrenchingly hard.  Sometimes I'd manage to finish something I quite liked, and that'd be great, but most of the time it was just relentless, awful, misery.  At the point where trying to write was actually making me cry I thought, nope, have to let this go.  It's just not going to happen.

And I'm aware that I've got rusty.  Towards the end of last year I noticed a clunkiness creeping into my blog posts - leaden phrases clanging down on the page, sucking the joy out of the rest of it.  It was probably the sadness of knowing that it was all coming to an end.  So I stepped away after Manchester Piccadilly and did nothing.

There's still that hole though.  That gap in my life that I want to fill, because I really do enjoy getting out and about and writing a load of nonsense about it.  So I thought I'd do something easy.  Just slide back into the habit, as it were.

TRAMS!

Everybody loves trams.  They're a wonderful way to get about, quiet and efficient and attractive.  And the north-west is lucky enough to have the best tram network in Britain: Manchester's Metrolink.  It has 93 stations, stretching from Altrincham to Ashton and from the Airport to Rochdale.  So that's the plan: visit every tram stop on the Metrolink, even the ones I've already been to.  May as well.  It's just sitting there doing nothing, after all.

It's big enough for me to get my teeth into, but it's small enough for me to use it as training wheels.  This is me trying to - oh lord - get back on track.  Ninety three little ticks to get me back in the habit.  In fact, I've already done my first batch.  And who knows what will follow then?  Maybe I'll do all the stations in Britain!  (No, I won't).