Home Run

The first thing you see when you step out of Walton station is a wall.  Five metres high, with a rounded top.  The distinctive exterior of a prison.  This is Liverpool Prison, or, as it was known before the modern world decided to suck all charm out of everything, Walton Gaol.  The main prison for the Merseyside region, famous and infamous, home to 1300 people and not somewhere I ever hope to see the inside of.

Prison frightens me, as I think it does for anyone who's never so much as shoplifted a Mars Bar.  One of my most persistent fears is that I'll be accused of something I didn't do and end up serving time for it.  A friend of a friend was once accused of molesting some kids he'd babysat for as a teen.  It got all the way to trial before being thrown out by a judge who was baffled by the lack of evidence; he was entirely innocent, of course, and it turned out his accusers had made similar allegations about other people in the hope of getting compensation.  Still, imagine getting that close to being locked away, tarred as a criminal, put in the nonce wing; vulnerable, scared, and entirely innocent.  At least if you've done the crime there's a slight edge of "it's a fair cop".  I shuddered slightly as I walked by.

The traditional, Victorian, HMP Slade gates are now hidden behind the wall, and a new entrance has been built in the corner of the complex.  Colourful images of the city skyline welcome visitors like it's a theme park; in reality, it's an awful place to be, regularly condemned for its conditions, overcrowded, and in need of comprehensive redevelopment, if not demolition.  There's a real problem with drug use and the small signs pinned to the walls advising that flying drones is illegal don't seem to be as off putting as you'd expect, strangely.  

I turned south onto the Southport Road, one of those fine avenues that are all over Liverpool.  Long straight lanes constructed to allow trams to run with ease, but completely devoid of them in the 21st century.  Semis with paved over lawns were the norm, with the households' other cars parked on the pavement.

A side road took me between two expanses of municipal green.  The Stuart Road Playing Fields straddled the road, wide lengths of playing fields laid out for the betterment of the residents.  There probably should've been a leisure centre here, but instead there was an "Activity for All" building.  It seems to be a sort of indoor football pitch with a cafe attached.  Looking at their website, it's a community interest company, doing stuff the council used to, which is the modern way I suppose.  My main objection is that it uses the American spelling of centre on its exterior.

I walked round the side of it to get access to a leisure facility I've never seen before in the UK.  The playing fields are home to the Liverpool Trojans who proudly proclaim they're the oldest baseball team in Britain.  As such, they've got a diamond laid out behind the "center".

That's an actual baseball diamond, sitting in a park in Bootle.  It's fascinating to think that there are leagues and games going on for these sports all over the UK with a small but loyal following.  I actually don't mind baseball; it's the most tolerable of America's big sports, with a proper history and style to it, and like all the best sports you don't need hundreds of dollars of equipment to play it - just a bat and a ball.  It also helps that it's basically Posh Rounders, and we've all played rounders at school, so it's that little bit more comprehensible than whatever nonsense happens during an American Football game.  Also, and this is very gay indeed, but I really like baseball shirts.  They're very appealing.

I took the opportunity to stand on the Home Plate like I was [quickly googles "famous baseball player" here - who was the one who was married to Marilyn Monroe?] Joe DiMaggio and take a selfie.  Look at me, I'm doing a sports.  Then I turned back and walked through the car park to the street, attracting the attention of a wiry gentleman and his mate in a car with the engine running.  They watched me as I left, examining me for possible narc giveaways, but then concluded I was simply a fat loser and left me to it.

The houses along Stuart Road get a great view of the playing fields, and it was clear that many of the owners had spruced up their homes with extensions and attic conversions and the like.  One household had left a pair of unwanted bar stools on the pavement for any passers by to claim, so if you like black leatherette, head there now.  A carpet van was parked on the lower stretch, hazards flickering, while the workmen manfully carried an enormous length into a house that didn't look big enough to accommodate it.

On the back streets behind, there were terraces of Victorian redbricks, two up two downs.  Occasional new builds gave away the locations of bomb sites.  Outside a sheltered housing development, there were two workmen, one in his forties merrily carrying a single bag to his van, while behind his teenage apprentice staggered under the weight of a load of tools.  He helpfully opened the back of the van and waited for his protégé to catch up.

The Breeze Pub is, per Google, "temporarily closed;" the Facebook site hasn't been updated since January last year and half the sign is missing, so expect it to be converted to bedsits any day now.  It's a terrible shame when a pub closes of course but looking around it was a miracle it had lasted this long.  A real back street boozer, no gastropub menu, reliant only on local patronage, not a destination in any way.  Society has changed, as has what we want to spend our disposable income on, and for all the trumpeting about "save the British pub!" if nobody wants to use it then is it really good to preserve it?  If it were up to me I'd have put all the WH Smiths under preservation orders and insisted on government money to force them to go back to the orange cube logo and selling records but this is the problem with capitalism; the market dictates.

A series of bollards across the road discreetly demarcated the old city from a new development.  Walton Hospital was a famous neurology centre on Rice Lane for a century, but consolidation of the services in the area plus a need to expand saw it move to Fazakerley - sorry, Aintree - Hospital in the 90s.  The empty site has since been converted into a twist of cul-de-sacs and town houses with neat little driveways and Ring doorbells.

The railway line ran across the back here.  A couple of bridges crossed it, taking you to undeveloped scrubland, ready for enterprising homebuilders to sweep in at some point, but also the site of a never-was station.

The plans for the Link and the Loop back in the 70s were incredibly ambitious, with underground loops meeting at a new six platform station called Rocket, a below ground University stop, and new halts all over Merseyside.  One proposal was a new station called Breeze Hill, between Kirkdale and Walton.  It shows up on some early "proposal" maps, sometimes as a replacement for Walton and Rice Lane - allowing interchange between the branches - and sometimes as an extra station to fill the gap.

It never happened, of course, and I can't really see it ever having had much demand; it would've cannibalised the stations either side if it was an infill.  It's not really a huge gap, and there's not a density around there to justify it.

It is, however, fun to imagine where it might have been, and this cutting behind the old hospital seemed like a prime candidate.  No expensive tunnelling necessary, next to a useful amenity, space to encourage new development.  I wandered onto the bridge and snapped a photo of what might have been in a world where Merseyside got everything it ever wanted.

Back onto the road, and round the front of the Walton Hospital, now converted into apartments of course.  It's still a prominent local landmark and pleasingly preserved, even if the clock is wrong.  

There's still some medical provision on the site.  Clock View Hospital is a mental health centre, catering for acute cases, and housed in a pleasing modern building.  I shuffled past, once again hoping never to see the inside of it.  Next door was a block of housing association apartments with inset balconies.  Strangely, each balcony had a glass screen at the top and bottom, with only a narrow gap around it to let fresh air in.  It negated the principal of a balcony, to me, and if anything reminded me of Hannibal Lecter's cell in The Silence of the Lambs, with its perspex front and air holes to let you smell Jodie Foster's L'Air du Temps.  It's an unfortunate association given the building across the way.

I was on Rice Lane proper now, a road that gives its name to a station I'll be visiting another time.  There's a huge Sainsbury's, and a former pub, and a small curved building which houses a pizza delivery firm.  It's a surprisingly elaborate building, considering its humble occupant, and that's because it was originally built as the entrance booth to the Liverpool Zoological Gardens.  

Where there's now a housing estate and car park was, for a period in the 19th century, a space for chimpanzees and elephants.  It was a disaster almost from the start, with the owners constantly adding new attractions to try and pump up visitor numbers (a concert hall! a camera obscura!).  It gained a reputation for prostitutes, though, which meant it definitely wasn't a place to take the family on a quiet afternoon, and finally closed in 1865 after thirty two years.  The pizza place is the only remnant of the old zoo.

The road's lined with retail units with flats above, though more and more were being converted into ground floor residences too.  The Revival 7 tea room carried the Royal coat of arms over its door, though the wording underneath was Recognised by HRH, a delightfully vague term.  I'm imagining the Queen being driven along the road in her limo on the way to Aintree Racecourse and pointing at the shop out the window - "oh a tea room, how nice" - and that was it, Royal patronage.  

I turned off into a side road.  Victorian villas that would be getting high six figures elsewhere in the city looked dirty and unloved; multiple bells by the door told the story of their conversion.  As I rounded the corner, a man was hefting a wardrobe down his driveway to his waiting car.  I felt like I should've offered to help him, but I've recently been suffering from terrible back spasms - I spend way too much time slapping on Deep Heat patches and grimacing at the dinner table.  Don't get old, folks.

Between the side walls of two houses was a tiny public footpath, which I eagerly took.  I love delving into the backs, the off grid routes.  This one takes you over the top of the Kirkby branch of Merseyrail...

...and drops you neatly at the back of Walton station in time for your train.  I'd completed a loop, or, if we're going to use baseball terminology, I'd rounded all the bases.  I think.  I don't actually care enough to check if that's right.

This entire trip was paid for by Ko-fi donations.  Once again, thank you for your support!

Closing Remarks

When it came to 2025 on the blog, the main phrase is "completion".  I completed the Amsterdam metro map, two years after almost doing it.  I completed the Stockholm metro map, one year after actually visiting every station but forgetting to take a picture at one, so that was more a way of satisfying my particular brand of OCD.  And finally, after six whole years, I finished the West Midlands Railway map. 

That last one is pretty bittersweet.  A lot of the enthusiasm for it was wrecked by Covid.  A period of not being able to travel anywhere, at all, meant that I got out of the habit of going round the rails.  I got out of the habit of leaving the house, to be frank, and I've still not properly recovered.  It became hard work.  It wasn't helped by the West Midlands not being Britain's most scenic area; it's difficult to motivate yourself to travel two hours to pootle around the back of industrial estates overlooked by gasholders and motorway flyovers.  There were undoubtably highlights - I will go on at length about Coventry to anyone who asks me - but I'm glad it's over.  

I will still have to go back.  The Severn Valley Railway reopened its line, following the landslip that cut off the end, so Bridgnorth is once again collectable.  What I'm really waiting for is the two new lines to open - the Camp Hill and Wolverhampton-Walsall routes - but they seem to be existing in a strange limbo state where they're sort of finished, but also not finished.

The highlight of the year was obviously my trip to Helsinki, which was great fun, and makes me wish I could travel all over Europe visiting stations.  I can't, of course, but I can dream, and I do have a spreadsheet all ready with how to do it.  If funds are available in 2026, I have two potential cities in mind, but really, if an eccentric billionaire wants to send me to Istanbul or Beijing or Sydney I'll happily do it.

The question is: what happens next?  I have a couple of ideas going forward.  One is hyper-local: a revisit of Merseyrail's stations and their surroundings in a bit more depth.  I started this blog in 2007 and some of those early entries are really basic, not exploring the local area, not really doing much in fact.  I thought that maybe it'd be interesting to have another look and see what's changed.  Not least my decrepit old face.  Unfortunately I did run this idea past one person and he responded very much in the negative, so that's sat in the back of my head.

My other thought was the Tyne and Wear Metro.  This is one of the few Metros in the UK and, apart from a little pootle about it when I stayed in Newcastle, I've not really touched it.  It's sixty stations, it's a lot of big city but also great scenery, and it would enable me to visit both Horden, which opened during lockdown and still remains unvisited, and the newly opened Ashington line.

What puts me off is that four hour trip across the north every time.  It'd be tiring and, as I discovered heading to Birmingham every time, it can get boring taking the same train over and over.  I'm in two minds.

I'd love to continue with this blog.  It's kept me going in many ways over the years and I love having a project on the go; the last six months without one have felt a little bit empty.  Obviously I'd love to go all over the UK, visit every station, go to every nook and cranny, but that's both impractical and expensive.  That'd involve hotels and passes and a level of commitment that'd be a struggle.  A boy can dream, eh?

As usual, I thank you for reading.  It's an increasingly dwindling readership in the 21st century, with most people doing videos or going over to other projects, but I am at heart a writer, and I can't sit there in front of a camera and push my ugly mug at you.  Thanks again.

The Bitter End

There are a lot of stations on the West Midlands Railway map.  One hundred and seventy, by my count, if you include the tram stops and the ones that don't actually get a railway service (I'm looking at you, Wedgewood).  It's a big old mass of orange that splays across the centre of England.

 

In 2019, I decided I was going to visit them all.  

 

I'd already been to some of them.  Crewe, Macclesfield and the like; the ones that overlapped with the Northern map.  And one day in 2013, I went to the three stations at the heart of Birmingham: Snow Hill, Moor Street, and New Street.  I didn't need to go back.  I'd already collected them.  But I didn't feel like I could, in all conscience, say I'd finished the West Midlands Railway map unless I went back.

 

 

So here I was: older, fatter, greyer.  Stood outside Birmingham Snow Hill taking a picture.

 

Snow Hill is one of those stations that closed in the Seventies for reasons that feel unfathomable today.  A mainline station at the head of an underground tunnel is something most big cities would kill for in 2025: a Victorian Crossrail.  British Rail did close it, though, and in true Birmingham style, it now sits underneath a multi-storey car park.

It reopened in 1987 thanks to the local transport executive's persistence and is now a key gateway into Birmingham.  It's smaller than it used to be, and undeniably uglier, but it's the best they could manage given that the original station was completely demolished.  What a marvelous waste of everyone's time and money.  

There's something sneakily charming about its ugliness, like a dog that has a protruding tooth or a cat with a mangy ear.  It's perfunctory but it is practical; it does the job.  There are some escalators (in one direction) and some toilets on the platforms.  

The former tram platform is still there (excuse the elbow).  Bringing it back into use for heavy rail would be a great idea, everyone knows that, which is why there's no money to do it and it's still vacant years later.  Snow Hill feels underappreciated and unloved.

The opposite is true of Moor Street, one hop on the Cross-City Line later.  It's long been the position of this blog that Chiltern Railways is Tory.  It just is.  There's something about its entire network, its entire existence, that says it doesn't mind what they get up to in their own homes but do they have to rub it in our faces?  (One of its stations is called Denham Golf Club for pity's sake).  It's a vibe I've picked up as I've taken their trains over the last six years.

Back in 2013, I didn't know this, and so the nineteenth century cosplay was delightful.  It was like being in the golden age of steam, only without the steam!  Now, with my prejudice against Chiltern Railways fully installed, it makes me grumpy.  It's not "beautifully preserved", it's "the good old days" in station form, a flashback to the 1950s when England was great.  Moor Street would've absolutely voted Leave.

This is grossly unfair of course.  Moor Street works as a station; it's bright and airy, it's well-maintained, it's got ticket gates and electronic next train signs and PA systems.  It's been brought up to date without smashing the old station to pieces.  If more stations had done the same the network would be a much more pleasing place to visit.  I'm just a miserable old sod.  This is what twelve years does to you, kids.  Be warned. 

Last time I was here I got a picture under the basic sign outside the front.  This time I used the full expanse of my arms to manage a shot under the tastefully minimal gold writing along the side of the building.

Of course, there's a fourth mainline station coming to Birmingham city centre - the biggest one of all: Curzon Street.  It's alongside Moor Street, though it won't interchange with it directly; similarly there are actually tracks to New Street running between both stations, but they won't get platforms or anything.  

I negotiated the barriers, diversions and general chaos that comes when you're building a tram extension next to a massive new station and ended up at Eastside City Park.  It's a pleasing strip of proper greenery in the middle of town, a nice place to wander and gather your thoughts among manicured lawns and hedges. 

Or rather, it would be, if the length of it wasn't currently dominated by one of the largest building sites in the United Kingdom.  Curzon Street is absolutely huge.  The diagrams around the worksite give you a clue to it:

A long tongue, stretching from the Middleway to the Queensway, swallowing up entire streets and disappearing them underneath tracks and platforms.  The railway will arrive here on concrete viaducts above the city and they're crawling closer and closer to the front, gleaming white, the future pushing its way into Birmingham. 

In the middle of it all is the original Curzon Street station, opened in 1838 and closed again less than twenty years later, already overwhelmed by traffic.  For nearly two centuries it's been looking for a purpose - it was a goods station for a while, then it sat empty in front of a parcel depot - until the new Curzon Street turned up on its doorstep and it became part of the plans.

 

What the plans are is strangely vague: there will be a new square here and it might be part of the entrance building to the HS2 station, or offices, or something?  It's Grade I listed and a huge heritage asset so everyone's keen to give it some purpose but at the same time... what do you do with it.  In the renders it clings to the underside of the station, overwhelmed, at an angle to the viaducts and ignored.

I have, somewhere in my soul, given up on HS2.  I can't follow it any more, what's getting built, what isn't, when it's going to open, which bits will open.  At present it seems to be an embarrassment to everyone and I'm not sure I'll ever get to ride it.  I wandered around the site, thrilled that such a huge station was coming to life, and at the same time, wondering when it'll be done.  

And bloody hell it's needed because New Street isn't any good at all.  I've tried, over the past six years, to keep my cards close to my chest about Birmingham's main station.  After all, it sees millions of users every year, and it doesn't get hopelessly snarled up.  Nobody died.  And it's just had that big expensive make over, too!  Network Rail deserves some kind of award for simply managing to rebuild it without causing chaos.

The fact of the matter is: New Street is too big and has too many services.  Having a central hub for England's railways sounds like a great idea, and indeed, if that's what New Street was it'd probably work.  If this was the spot where you'd change from a Plymouth train to a Carlisle train and that was all it'd be brilliant.   

Unfortunately, they also wedge in local services.  The stopper from Rugeley via Walsall, the line from Litchfield to Redditch, the new King's Heath service when that starts up.  These are trains that have no business running into New Street and sitting alongside routes to Edinburgh and London.  They should be under New Street, a whole different underground level, separated from the grown-up trains.  It should be like Stockholm Central, which I visited last year, with different levels for different distances: City for commuter rail, T-Centralen for metro, and then the top level for long-distance and terminating services.  There shouldn't be this endless shuffle of tracks and trains and platforms to try and accommodate every kind of service known to man.

The rebuild introduced colour coded "lounges" to try and keep passengers away from the platforms and to stagger them over the whole building.  Green, Red and Blue, though if you're changing trains, you need the Red one, and the Green one is sort of tucked away round the side and you can't really see it.  Perhaps I'm just thick but I still haven't got to grips with which escalator leads to which lounge from the platform.  I'll get off the train, head for the exit, and then get a surprise when I'm in the Blue when I need to be in the Red.  At least it has places to sit.

The real "wow" element is that massive open roof, and yes, it's very pretty and floods the top of the concourse with light (none of that light actually reaches the platforms, mind).  As a central space it's undeniably impressive.  It's also very hot.  Stupidly hot.  The ceiling is made of ETFE plastic, which is clear and easy to clean, and which you might remember was previously used at Manchester Victoria.  That station has a massive hole in one end where the trams and trains go in and out, meaning there's plenty of fresh air.  That's not true at New Street.  The trains are tucked away underneath the atrium and the entrances are all sealed with doors.  The result is a station so warm they've had to put in fans to try and keep the airflow going.

The refurb was paid for by putting in a large shopping centre over the top, the "Grand Central" that gives the tram stop its (incorrect) name.  It's really an extension to the Bullring and opened with a new flagship John Lewis store.

A John Lewis which is long gone.  It wasn't doing too well anyway, then the pandemic came along and closed the shop forever.  (The Solihull branch is still going strong).  The idea is that it will converted into offices with an atrium over the top, but the website doesn't seem to be working, and I've been coming here for years and not seen any advance.

Grand Central does have a decent food court, which is handy when you're waiting for your train, and there's a Foyles that I periodically wandered round.  And the toilets are clean and free.  I suppose it paid for the rebuild so we should be happy.

New Street also has a large mechanical bull, a legacy of the 2022 Commonwealth Games.  It's dropped onto the concourse next to Pret a Manger and while it's very interesting to look at - and the kids love it - I think most people would prefer some more chairs.  It also annoys me that it's been three years and "Ozzy" is still surrounded by very temporary looking barriers. 

The most notable legacy of the rebuild came in the form of the giant metal "eye" incorporating an LED video screen that overlooks the main entrance.  When the plans for the station were unveiled this was shown on the renders displaying the next few train departures.  "Haha" we all thought. "As if!  That'll be flogged as advertising space."  And yes, no sooner had the station opened than it was flashing up L'Oreal ads and dishwasher videos.  For a while.  The screens were turned off a few years back and now they're simply large black voids.  

What they should do with them - if they're not going to turn them back into advertising space - is write the words Birmingham New Street Station across the front, because at the moment, the signage is weirdly subtle.  I get discretion is very tasteful and all that but not for a railway station.  There you need massive three metre high letters and a double arrow so that everyone knows it's the station.  As it was, I had to take the sign picture in front of a small totem tucked into a floral arrangement. 

And that was, quite literally, the end of the line.  There is technically one more station on the West Midlands Rail map for me to collect: Bridgnorth, on the Severn Valley Steam Railway.  However, a landslip means that station is cut off from the rest of the route and there's currently no way of reaching it by train, and as we all know, if you don't get a train there, it doesn't count.

That was the end of the map for me though.  I went into the All Bar One in the station and ordered a glass of fizz to commemorate the occasion.  I was experiencing a lot of strange feelings, all colliding with one another, contradicting one another.  I'll put them in another blog post still to come.  There needs to be a proper coda to all this.

The prosecco tasted awful by the way.  I ordered a pint of lager instead.