Going Round The Back

For reasons far too dull to go into here, I nipped over to Liverpool today.  Heading for the lift at James Street I noticed there was only one in use; not ideal, but not unusual.  The lifts at James Street are large and aging and get a hell of a hammering - it's rare to see all four functioning.  Going back to the Wirral, I passed through the ticket barriers, and was waiting for the lift when a man appeared behind me and the small group waiting.  "Do you want to come this way instead?"

We were lead across the ticket hall and into the goods lift, a lift I had never before noticed even existed.  It was a little grimier than the usual ones, not quite so well kept, but larger, and comfortably took the dozen or so passengers and suitcases and pushchairs that squeezed in with it.  The Merseyrail man pulled the cage doors closed, pushed the button, and we descended.

Then, much like a theme park, we got the chat.  It seems the Merseyrail man had a spiel, a little monologue he'd prepped, and for the entire descent into the bowels of the earth he talked merrily.  They'd opened up this lift because three were out of action to accommodate the passengers, it's all perfectly safe, couple of little gags for the kids, a whole one man show.  Bless him, he loved his moment in the sun.  And he fell the right side of charming too - not one of those excruciating speeches that make you die inside.  I did video it, but then it occurred to me that it's kind of rude to post someone on the internet without their knowledge (plus there were a load of kids in the video and parents don't like that) so you'll have to take my word for it.

We got down to the concourse below, welcomed by another member of staff, and directed off to our platforms ("Wirral to the right of me, Liverpool to the left").  I tottered off to my platform, pleased to see a side to a station I'd never seen before.

The Same, But Different

This was going to be a blog post.

This was going to be a recollection of a Saturday spent with Phil and Paul and Rob.  Where we rode a charter train from Skipton to Carlisle with a full English breakfast inside us.  Where we worked our way back to the West Coast Main Line via the Cumbrian Coast Line.  It was going to be a blog post about food and views, about chats and laughs, about dropped toast and circular roofs and closed coffee shops.

Instead it's become an aide-mémoire.  I have a terrible memory for where I've been; I vaguely gesture at the Northern rail map and say, yeah, done it all, take your pick.  It's a load of ticks.  But travelling over these routes today I realised it was so much more.  Each station became a memory; every halt was a trigger.  I watched platforms appear and disappear and tiny moments of my life rose up before me.

This blog is simultaneously a record, and transient; it's incidents of my existence, burned into the internet for as long as Google wants it.  It's days in summer and winter and my past.  As I watched the stations pass by, fragments, pieces, rose up in my brain and pummelled me.  A week in Kirkby Stephen station house.  The green at Bootle.  The steps to the town at Appleby.  There was a minute where I saw Green Road as an upcoming halt and I thought I didn't remember it at all; then I saw it, and I realised it was square windows in the shelter, and a walk behind a school sports field, and a tea room.  It was a mish mash of times in my life that clashed and shouted and laughed.  There was a walk along a beach, round a quarry, through the most depressing village in the world.  There was a closed shop here, and a great pub there, and a bridge, and a footpath.

Every station clicked and shouted to me.  I might not have remembered the name, but I remembered the feelings, the cold of a stormy day, the rain, the sun, the happiness when I saw a platform, the anger when I realised I'd missed my train.  I saw days out, weeks out, travels all across the north.  They mingled with other trips I'd made - no, that was Middlesbrough, no, that was Barmouth, yes, that was Maryport.  My brain became a swirl of happiness.

Because every station being a memory means every station is unique to me.  It's hanging off the cliff at Nethertown or the amazing roof at Hellifield or the rescue instructions at Dent.  La'al Ratty at Ravenglass and the offices at Lazonby.  I watched them burn past and each platform, each sign, was a landmark.  Every time I smiled as I realised why that station was unique to me; why it was a place that belonged only to me.

I should write a post about my day out.  I should write about the travel.  Instead I'm wrapping myself in my memories, in the wonders of places visited.  You shouldn't dwell in the past, but every now and then, it's good to pay it a visit.

Return Trip

I was in West Kirby, paying a socially distant visit to a person in my bubble, because those are all phrases that make sense in 2021.  The BF had dropped me off earlier that day but now it was time to go home and, rather than calling him for a return trip, I did something wild.  I took the train.

It's over a year since I last took a train.  The pandemic ruled out any non-essential journeys, and "going to Birmingham to take pictures of stations" is the very definition of non-essential.  On top of that, the BF has a number of underlying conditions, so he's been shielding since about last February.  I've been shielding with him too, because I'm nice like that and I don't particularly want him to die, but it does mean I've barely left the house.  So here I was, on a train platform.

I was anxious, of course.  I was wearing a mask.  I didn't really know what to expect.  I boarded the train and found a seat.  My first surprise was that there weren't any taped off; I'd seen pictures on social media of other train companies' efforts to encourage a 2 metre gap.  Merseyrail doesn't bother with any of that.  I wedged myself in a corner.

The only other person on the train was a man reading a book.  Later in the journey he'd take advantage of the light passenger numbers to rest his feet on the seat in front; it's good to know the pandemic bringing the nation together hasn't stopped people from being massive arseholes.

Just before we departed a third person boarded, a young, tall man.  He was not wearing a mask.  Now it's possible he was under 16, even though he was about six foot seven.  It's also possible he was another of those massive arseholes.  He disembarked at Hoylake with a smirk, as though he'd beaten the system.

We took off.  The guard ran through her usual announcements, but now there was a new one about wearing masks "unless you are exempt."  I always love the grudging way announcements add that, a kind of yeah, we totally believe you're exempt, honest undercurrent.  In my limited experience out and about I've observed that an awful lot of people who are "exempt" are middle aged men with miserable faces, the kind of men who'd ask you what you was staring at in a pub.  Funny that.

The familiar stations rolled by - Hoylake, Manor Road, Meols, Moreton.  There was a cyclist at Manor Road, but that was it.  It was so soothing to be back on the trains.  To sit quietly and watch the view.  To think about nothing except the gentle grind of the wheels, the whirr of the engine, that clicking noise that I'm really going to miss when the 777s come in.

At Leasowe a girl in a natty green gingham jacket boarded.  She reached into her handbag and checked her make up with a small compact.  There was something surreal about her inspection, giving such attention to the two inch wide strip visible between her fringe and her mask.  She gently fluffed at her eyelashes, the only part of her visible, then pulled out a hairbrush and ran it through her blonde hair.

My anxiety had largely subsided.  The train was quiet and almost empty.  Everyone was civilised.  I didn't feel like someone was about to barrel on, hacking up virus all over the place, like the man at the start of The Thing.  It felt normal.

At Birkenhead North depot, there were a couple of Transport for Wales trains, those converted Tube trains destined for use on the Borderlands Line and which I'd never before seen in the flesh.  There was a pause at the station, enough time for me to watch British Transport Police officers on the bridge enforcing ticket and mask checks.

Birkenhead Park.  Home.  I got off the train, thrilled with the familiarity, the ordinariness of it.  I had worried that going so long without travelling would mean I would find the return stressful.  It wasn't.  It was normal.  I'm not sure when I'll get up the courage for a longer journey - maybe after my second dose - but it's been done.  That period of time without taking a train trip has finally ended.

You can't tell, but I'm smiling.

Swiss Movement

The train bursts out of the tunnel into monochrome.  The world is black and white.  Thick snow whirls against the windows.  The Stanley Dock buildings, normally a redbrick monolith, are just a grey blob in the distance.  The only colour is the bright green corporate branding of a BP garage, glowing through the weather.

I'm on my way to Southport for breakfast.  The wonderful Bob Stanley, Saint Etienne legend and lover of anything that can be given the description, "New Elizabethan", posted this on his twitter feed:

On the main road in Southport was the Swiss Chalet, a cafe straight out of a Cliff Richard film.  I knew I had to visit before it closed forever, so I grabbed a Day Saver and headed for the Northern Line.

The carriage smells of Doritos, thanks to a man working his way through a party sized bag of Chilli Heatwave flavour, and there's the occasional incursion of snowflakes through an open window.  I wasn't sure why the window was open on what seemed to be one of the coldest days of 2015 so far, but there was a woman sat right underneath it.  She clearly needed the air.

Sandhills seems deserted until the train came to a complete halt.  Then the doors on the waiting room slid open and bundled up humanoids shuffled on board, like the world's slowest zombie film.  Sandhills is aggressively chilly at the best of times; the wind whips across the Mersey and hammers at the viaduct, whisking at coats and umbrellas.  With snow too, it must be hell.

The seat across the aisle from me is taken by a teenage girl who is, at first glance, talking to herself.  Only when she shifts her head does her hair catch on her shoulder and reveal the slim microphone of a hands-free kit.  She begins what seems to be a monologue - I assume she's on the phone to someone; hopefully she's paying, because the other person isn't getting a single word in - that stops suddenly when two British Transport Policewomen push down the aisle and into the next carriage.

"Fuuuuuuuck" she hisses into the mic.  "The police are on the damn train."  I guess that the little chatterbox has declined to buy a ticket, and secretly pray that the police make their way back with an inspector.  We pass through Bank Hall, a white strip of platform against the black walls, and she bellows, "I just missed a call off Kevin 'cos I'm on the phone to you!"  A tap at her smartphone with her touchscreen enabled gloves and she switches to Kevin.  "Yeah, I know.  I'm getting off, like, now."  While I wonder if there's any call for a Scouse Catherine Tate, the rest of the carriage heaves a sigh of relief when she leaps off at Bootle Oriel Road.

Her replacement is a neat middle aged lady with enormous glasses, swaddled in a camel coat.  She immediately pulls out a 2015 diary from her sensible handbag and begins flicking through it.  Barely a month into the year and already the pages are defaced with squiggles and doodles.  She snaps through the weeks, sighing at all the jobs still to come.

The snow doesn't seem to be settling everywhere.  The roofs of Bootle are white, but the streets just look wet, and the playing fields of schools are streaked with green.  It tries to hide the heaps of rubbish abandoned trackside at Seaforth, but can't make it pretty; nor can it conceal the boarded up windows or the graffiti on the tower block.

A man, further down the carriage, seems to have a cold, or the early stages of one.  He coughs, hacks, sniffs, then clears his throat of a voluminous amount of phlegm.  I'm scared he's about to gob it onto the floor of the train and I'll have to stare at it for another half an hour, but he gets off at Waterloo and the spit goes with him.

Beyond Blundellsands the houses double in size.  Terraces are replaced by semis; there are gardens and driveways.  At Hall Road, the old engine shed has been demolished to leave what a sign advertises as a Development Opportunity; no-one is biting, and so there's just an expanse of concrete.  The coastal dunes appear, sandy heights, mixed with the sand traps of our first golf courses.  With no buildings or trees to stop it the wind barrels across Liverpool Bay and assaults our little train, hammering at it loudly, making me hunch up in my seat.

As we approach Hightown the woman across the way folds her diary back into her bag and clutches her head, suddenly panic stricken.  She closes her eyes for a while so she can think hard, then tips her head back and stares at the ceiling.  Her fingers play with the mittens in her lap.

Floodlights and high fences; the military firing range skulks between the line and the sea, red and white Keep Out signs every few metres.  The snow seems to be letting up.  Formby just looks damp, not frozen.  The platform is packed and a stream of pensioners board the train; one takes the seat opposite diary lady and pulls out a crumpled copy of The Times.  There's suddenly life on board.  Until now the passengers have been silent, but now there's a gang of old ladies gossiping at one end, and two workers in high vis jackets laughing boisterously at the other.

More golf courses, low rises among patches of flat, so artificial looking, with their tatty little flags hanging limply in the rain.  The woman with the diary gets off at Ainsdale, and then there are trees, high, regimented pine trees, dark and swaying and filling my window.  A pair of hardy walkers battle the winds with their tiny Jack Russell; he's wearing a little tartan coat.

There's a sudden smell of chimney smoke before Hillside, drifting in through that bafflingly still open window.  Fake flowers in tubs look ridiculous on the platform, the bitter darkness around them making their plastic blooms look cheap.  The computerised voice has started spluttering; her next station announcements are accompanied by a sharp crackle of static and feedback.  The heavy squeak of the brakes as we pull into Birkdale, wheels struggling with the wet and cold tracks, add to the feeling that this train is past its best.

The guard talks over the computerised voice to announce the end of the line, adding a "small reminder" for us to take all our goods with us.  The Times is folded away and the woman roots around in her handbag for her Concessionary Travel Pass - I must be one of the few people on the train with a paper ticket.

I barrel out of the station and straight down to Lord Street, not pausing, so that I could reach  the Swiss Chalet before it gets busy with lunch.  It's a tiny doorway with Grill Room above it, white on black, then a flight of steps upstairs.  I push up, nervously.  I have a prejudice against cafes on the first floor of buildings; totally irrational, but I'm always slightly afraid of what I'll find when I get up there.  By then it's too late, there's no turning back, and you have to partake.

Upstairs it's warm and clean and very, very empty.  I'm the only patron.  At the back, a little grey haired waitress in a very traditional black uniform is chatting to the chef.  His kitchen is fully open for us to see inside, and he leans on the counter, master of his domain.  I hesitantly slide into one of the banquettes at the side and the waitress spots me.  She hurries over with a menu, apologetic for not spotting me, and then leaves me to look down the page.

It's a feast of food you didn't realise restaurants still served.  There are six starters: soup of the day (mushroom, I've been told), grapefruit cocktail, prawn platter, tuna platter, egg mayonnaise and orange juice.  Just a glass of orange juice.  It's brilliant.  Further down there are lamb cutlets, gammon (with a choice of pineapple, egg or mushrooms), a mixed grill.  Omelettes, sandwiches - open and closed - and various things on toast.  I plump for a tea and a toasted sandwich.

"Do you want chips or salad with that?" she asks.  I go for salad.  "Aww, being good are you?  Well done."

The seats are leatherette, the place mats are decorated with herbs.  On the walls are pictures of French drinks (reproductions) and hefty pieces of tree bark to underline that Swiss Chalet feel.  I don't think it's been redecorated for at least thirty years, probably more.  Karen, the second waitress, bashes her way up the stairs and calls her hello across to her colleague.  Diane tells her it's been dead - "bit of snow, risk of slipping, they don't come."

I warm my cold hands on the stainless steel teapot as Diane offers the chef a drink.  He's Spanish, and he goes for "one of his Spanish hot chocolates"; she wanders behind the counter and busies herself with the steaming hot water.  She's barely served it up before my sandwich is brought over.  Toasted white bread and a pile of salad leaves and carrot shavings.  "Do you want any sauce with that?" she asks.  "Salad cream?"  I decline, and take up my knife and fork.

As I eat, a pair of pensioners stagger up the stairs, pausing at the top for breath.  They greet Diane by name and take a seat in the window.  She chats to them for a bit, then takes their order, two coffees and a toasted teacake each.  The wife snorts.  "I guess that means he's off his diet!"  In the background, Kate Garroway is taking hints for beating a cold on Heart FM.  "Chew a raw clove of garlic?  I don't think my husband would be happy about that!"

I'm suddenly sad this place is up for sale.  The owner is retiring and I doubt it'll be bought as a going concern.  It'll be ripped out and upgraded; the banquettes will be replaced by sofas and wooden chairs.  The grill hatch will be closed off.  They'll offer paninis and lattes and another piece of the past will quietly die.  I wonder where the pensioners will go for their teacakes.

I eat my sandwich - the salad is incredibly dry without any kind of vinaigrette; I should have taken her up on her offer of salad cream - then I wait by the till to pay.  There are postcards tucked into the top of it, from loyal customers no doubt.  Diane is busy talking to her regulars, but the Spanish chef spots me and calls out for her.  I over tipped, partly because I'm hopeless at that sort of thing, partly because I felt bad about her being put out of a job.

I went straight back to the station.  I'd been in Southport only the previous week, with my friend Jennie; we'd have gone to the Swiss Chalet then if she didn't have a pram with her adorable son Robin in it.  My train is waiting for me at platform 3 and I realise that it's the one I came in on.  The skies have now turned bright blue, a fact that had annoyed Diane in her chat with the old folks - "I'm covered in layers!"  I'm the only one in the front carriage until just before departure, when a distinguished man with a walking stick and a Metro under his arm clatters aboard.

The guard on this train is far more refined than the one on the journey in.  His voice is only slightly accented, as though he went to public school and had the Scouse forced out of him.  "I'll be making my way through the train as we work our way down to Liverpool; if you have any questions feel free to ask."

The sun's refracted off the water on the parked cars at Birkdale; it shatters into pieces and fills the carriage.  We pause a little longer because there's a teenager with a broken leg struggling to board.  The tannoy has been fixed - turned off and on.  Through a series of level crossings to Hillside, where a woman in an elaborate furry hat boards.  Behind her is a tiny brown spaniel.  I would never feel comfortable taking my dog on a train - what if it needs to pee?  She goes to the front of the carriage and the dog settles in at her feet, used to the trip.

At Ainsdale another swarm of pensioners board; their Reactolite glasses have turned black in the sun, making them look like the cast of Oceans 80.  They're talking about someone who's about to go in for heart surgery in frankly disturbing detail - "is it open or keyhole?" - and we're nearly at Freshfield before I realise they're talking about a dog.  In the seats opposite is a smart-looking man in a buttoned up wool coat; at his feet is a University of Liverpool bag.  He's bashing at his smart phone, tapping out a series of messages, until an expanse of golf course kills his signal.  He tucks the phone back into his pocket, but at the next station it's out again.  Across from him an old man reads the Racing Post.

The guard appears in the carriage, and it turns out he's something of a silver fox; a little chubby, but with a lovely smile.  He leans in the doorway and watches the scenery spin past.  Behind me, the old people are now talking about someone called Elsie.  They've lowered their voices and I can tell from the murmurs that Elsie is not getting a glowing report.

"Tickets and passes please."  To my surprise, the smart man looks suddenly shifty.  He looks up at the guard pleadingly.  "The man at Ainsdale told me to pay at my destination."  The guard doesn't seem convinced, but he tells him he'll have to pay in Liverpool and moves on.

Two women have clearly got chatting on the platform at Formby, and are now in full flow.  "I'm going to the Adelphi.  Three courses for six pounds."  They both oooh approvingly.  "There's usually a roast," the woman continues, "or a beef thing in gravy, but the veggies never alter.  Still, six pounds!"  They both seem blown away by this, even the one who goes there regularly.  It suddenly becomes clear why the Adelphi - once the jewel in Liverpool's hotel crown - will never stop being crappy and down at heel.  With a constant stream of pensioners filling its dining rooms, why change?

Another dog gets on at Hall Road; its owner keeps it well away from the furry hat lady's spaniel.  At Blundellsands, a Britpop refugee sits down across from me.  He's got huge sideburns and a tight leather jacket and looks very Paul Weller circa "Stanley Road".  He balls one hand into a fist over and over while across the way the smart man is talking loudly on his phone.  The entire carriage is horrified to learn that the Bristol office is DEFINITELY closing.  Britpop pulls out an iPod shuffle, and I choose to believe he's listening to a mix of Menswear, Kula Shaker and Elastica.

Racing Post gets off at Bootle New Strand, and is replaced by another Metro reader.  I don't like the Metro because it's taken one of the lovely parts of rail travel - people neatly folding their read newspaper and leaving it on the seat for someone else to pick up - and turned it into an irritation.  Now the train is flooded with copies of that day's paper with its wraparound cover advertising the newest drama on Sky Atlantic.

The train is really getting warm now; I suddenly understand why the woman on the journey up had the window open.  It's stuffy, filled with people who've overdressed for the weather, noses poking out of hoods.  There's a canal at Sandhills, struggling to look pretty in the midday sun, but too industrial to pass.  The wrecked viaducts on Pall Mall, the old lines into Exchange Station, beg to be put to some use, but I can't think what, then we disappear into the tunnel under the Echo building.  Britpop gets off at Moorfields, but we are joined by half a dozen other passengers.

I've decided to go to the end of the line.  While most of the train gets up and shuffles off at Liverpool Central, I stay seated, the same place I've sat for three quarters of an hour.  Someone smelling of chips gets on board - not chips, fries; they smell wet in a way that chips don't - and a woman with leggings printed with the sky holds an expensive looking carrier bag between her legs.  Behind me, someone is talking about their daughter - "Catherine was very overweight so they took her to Slimming World and she lost four stone!"  I wonder who 'they' are; I imagine some kind of intervention, with Catherine being bundled into the back of a van and driven to a church hall to be re-educated.

I look up for the gap in the tunnel that signifies the old St James station, as I always do when I come this way, and briefly fantasise about a day when there will actually be a Baltic station there.  A sudden deceleration and we drift into Brunswick beneath high sandstone walls.  The woman with sky-painted leggings gets off, and I see that her expensive looking bag is from Swarovski.  The train is silent again.  No excitable pensioners, no groups.  A girl stares at her phone as though willing it to come to life, then drops it into her lap, exasperated, halfway through the tunnel to St Michaels.  When daylight appears she snatches it up again eagerly.

St Michaels station needs an ALF, maybe two; one for the Festival Gardens, one for Lark Lane and Sefton Park.  As we continue onwards, the computer voice tells us the next station will be St Michaels; she gets stuck on that station for the rest of the journey.  Clearly her reboot didn't take.  Aigburth obviously makes me think of Robert, who lives within spitting distance of its platforms, and Cressington is as charming as ever.  A workman is painting the woodwork in corporate grey.  I'm surprised his tin of paint is from Dulux and doesn't have Colour Tsar Approved stamped all over it.

Furry hat woman gets off at Liverpool South Parkway; I'd forgotten she was still there.  Her dog was so well-behaved throughout.  I also forgot to look out for any remnants of the old Garston station, though I don't think there are any.  It's now a slow creep to Hunts Cross, a kind of extended sigh at having to go this far.  There are men on the tracks by the Northern depot and I try to remember the last time I came this way.  I've certainly never gone end to end on the Northern Line before, top to bottom and back again.

I head out of the station for a bottle of water, and return in the midst of a sudden, violent hailstorm.  I'm behind two Community Police ladies, knocking off their shift for the day, chatting about where they're going to go tomorrow morning.  We huddle in the warm waiting room - there used to be a coffee bar in here, but it seems long gone - while the hail batters at the windows.  A new train comes in and we hustle aboard along with a member of the "Train Presentation Team".  He whisks down the aisle with a black bin bag, completely missing the Nature Valley wrapper under the seat in front of me.  I am momentarily anxious that future passengers will think it's my litter.

There are already people on board; I suppose they just grab the first train they see, rather than wait at the station in the cold, and go to the end of the line and back.  The new guard is a woman, and she tells us in enthusiastic Scouse to change at Liverpool South Parkway for mainline services.  Ones like the fast East Midlands train that we're forced to let by at the flat junction outside the station.  We cross over to the local lines and sink down to LSP's Northern Line platform.  The computer voice tells us to change for long distance services, but she says "Birmingham" with a slight question in her voice - "Birmingham?".  A kind of, why would you want to go there?

A couple get on, already bickering.  "Don't shout at me, I'm not stupid," she snarls at him when he calls her over to an empty seat.  He lays out a cushion on the seat next to him and their tiny dog leaps up and makes himself comfortable.  She pulls off her scarf furiously and they sit in angry silence; I'm so busy watching them I miss Garston again.  My neighbour is a man with an upside down head - bald on top, beard on the bottom - who taps at a game on his phone.  His high forehead wrinkles with concentration.

Aigburth again, and a gaggle of nice ladies with handbags in the crook of their arms get on board.  My ears pop in the tunnel after St Michaels.  The angry wife now pulls her coat off, but she seems to have calmed down, perhaps taking her cue from her dog who is utterly unruffled.  A harassed looking woman whose hair has escaped her pony tail boards; she jabs at her phone so hard I can hear the crack of stylus on glass across the aisle.

At Brunswick, a rough looking woman with a tooth missing is fascinated by the dog on the cushion.  She starts talking to it then, when it unsurprisingly fails to respond, she turns to the owner and starts yammering to them.  We learn that the dog is called Filo, which immediately makes me think of pastry, and the woman starts calling his name.  Filo looks terrified.  She calls out "seeya!" as though the angry couple were old pals and jumps off at Central.  I'm not surprised that the wife says "seeya!" back before following it up with a roll of her eyes and a whisper to her husband.

I thought about getting off at Central, but the OCD part of me knew I'd have to cover that last little bit of line so I ended up back where I started from.  A fabulous looking old lady takes a seat with her leopard skin suitcase and an enormous handbag; she looks like a Lancashire Elaine Stritch,  I get up, my knees protesting now that I'm 38, and wait by the doors as we pull into Moorfields.  There and back.

Midlander

Waiting at Bedford station for my train north, a thought occurred.  I'd only been along this route once before in my life, on a trip to Keele as a green sixteen year old.  I was checking out my first choice university though, in all truth, there was no need for the trip: I'd already made my mind up where I wanted to go.  It was Keele or bust.  It just appealed.  The trip involved a train to Derby, then another to Stoke, then a bus; the only things I can really remember about the journey now was the cobbled streets outside Derby station and the railway bookshop at the side of the entrance to Stoke-on-Trent.  Even then my imagination was caught by stations and books and not much else.

The Midland Main Line is still run by diesel trains, unlike its electrified brothers to the East and West.  It's dirty and old fashioned.  It delighted the trainspotting teenager and his dad on the island platform though, the boy pumping his arm up and down in a vain attempt to get the driver to blow his horn.  Unfortunately we'd all heard him blow it as he crossed the river, and he didn't want to push his luck by honking twice in quick succession.  The boy shrugged philosophically, and folded up his camcorder and tripod to move to a different spot for a different video.

I bagged a seat by the luggage rack, luckily; my bag was laden with presents after my Christmas at my mum's.  She got me alcohol and my brother got me Blu-rays - they know me so well.  It was a chilly train, the old InterCity 125s not blessed with the same level of comfortable air heating as the Pendolinos (but not cursed with their frequent faults either).  Across the way was a tired mother and son, him watching a DVD on a tiny player, her leaning back and trying to rest despite his frequent interruptions.

Bedfordshire quietly went by.  Flat and unexciting, the land dotted with ponds made from gravel and clay pits.  A dual carriageway appeared alongside and raced us for a while.  Small towns went by, places that probably used to have a local train service until Beeching, leaving behind only the occasional mossed over platform or a sudden widening of the gap between the tracks to accommodate a long-gone building.  The change to Northamptonshire was unmarked and unnoticeable.

Wellingborough was a surprisingly tiny station.  It looked like a little country halt, with preserved lamps and a field on one side.  We discharged a load of passengers then carried on again, to Kettering next, then onto Market Harborough.  They were towns I recognised - names from a distant map - but I couldn't tell you a single fact about them.  Was Kettering Wicksteed Park?  And Market Harborough... nope, nothing.

Snow began to appear on distant fields.  We'd only had rain in Luton over Christmas so it came as something of a novelty.  The snow crept in, first on flat roofs, and far off hills, then the fields became dusted at their tips.  It got thicker and deeper.  Untouched expanses of white that I wanted to break with footsteps.

Leicester - finally somewhere I'd heard of.  Ugly though.  Big blocky buildings and a station that was in need of refurbishment.  We loitered for a while, even though we were already late, and I watched another gaggle of trainspotters at the end of the platform.  Half a dozen of them, drinking Pumpkin cups of coffee; one had a Tupperware of sandwiches.  They were laughing and jocular, and a member of the station staff kept giving them sideways looks.  I wondered if he was going to ask them to move on.  Tell them to take their tripods and their powerful cameras and leave because of, oh, I don't know, "security concerns".  That's as good a reason as any.

Pushing on, and the local stations reappeared, little halts in little towns for commuters to Leicester.  We barrelled past without stopping, not even at Loughborough.  The mother across the way started packing up the crisp packets and bottles of coke she'd accumulated since London.  A man came down the carriage with a bin bag and her son stood up excitedly on the seat.  "Us!  We've got rubbish!"

I nipped to the toilet, clicking the lock and making the "engaged" sign light up (all lower case Rail alphabet, the last bit of Seventies style to cling on in the privatised train).  Those twee, "Please do not flush nappies, sanitary towels, your ex's jumper, hopes..." stickers have migrated to the Midland Main Line.  I expect that kind of crap from Virgin, a train company that probably has EPIC BANTZ on its logo, but I thought East Midlands would be above it.  I pumped with my foot to get the water to wash my hands and went back to my seat.

I thought East Midlands Parkway was the place where HS2 would stop, but it turns out that's East Midlands Hub, about 5 miles away.  Parkway was built to try and act as a midway point for Leicester, Nottingham and Derby commuters, only for it to be astonishingly unpopular.  I can never fully get on board with a station called "Parkway" - it's a made up word that only developers like.  It didn't help that it was built alongside Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, cowering under its cooling towers and lending the station a bleak dystopian air.  You wouldn't want to come here unless you had to.

Through Attenborough and Beeston, names that rang bells for Dickie and Cheshire reasons rather than anything to do with the stations themselves, and then the outskirts of Nottingham.  I metaphorically closed my eyes.  Nottingham's on the Northern Rail map, so I'll have to come here and visit it properly.  I didn't have time today.  I had a connection to the Liverpool train to get, and I was antsy about getting a seat.  I didn't fancy standing for three hours.

The Midland Main Line is no beauty.  It's the B-team.  The West Coast and East Coast Main Lines, and probably the Great Western as well, connect up properly important places.  They get the big hitters and the big names.  The Midland goes to Conference towns - only Sheffield, as its grand finale, scrapes into the Premiership.  It does the job, but I couldn't see Michael Palin turning up with a camera crew for a Great Railway Journey any time soon.

A First Class Story

My suave, sophisticated exterior, my je ne sais quoi and general elegance, may have convinced you that I am a man used to the finer things in life.  And while it's certainly true that I carry myself with the air of one of the 1%, at heart, I'm a cheapskate.  No, that's not true; I'm not cheap, I'm just careful.  I didn't have much money growing up so I learnt to be cautious with my money; I saved for things I really wanted, rather than frittering my meagre funds on pointless indulgences.

First class travel comes under this category of "why bother?".  I very rarely travel first class by train because it's an awful lot more money to spend for very little payback.  The only time it's sort of worth it is travelling to and from London; usually the train is so rammed that the free wi-fi and tables at the front of the Pendolino are a welcome change.  Even then I'm more of a "£15 Weekend upgrade" person, rather than paying in advance.

However, I was on the TransPennine Express website, booking my seat for a trip to York, and I noticed that there was only a few pounds difference between standard and first class.  Why not?  I wondered.  I'd never done it before, and I was curious to see what I got for the extra cash.

Short answer: antimacassars.  Antimacassars as far as the eye could see.  It was a glorious sight.  I love antimacassars or rather, I love the word antimacassar.  It's right up there with pianoforte and portmanteau and heliotrope; elaborate Victorian words that have too many syllables and are a bugger to spell.  Each seat came with its own antimacassar, made out of some kind of woven paper, and ostentatiously labelled to remind you that you was in the top tier of travellers.

The seats also had a recliner button.  This sounds great, but in reality it shifted your spine into a colossally uncomfortable position.  It was like an osteopath's table, if the osteopath gave up on getting you horizontal and just decided to do what he could with you.

I didn't have a table.  My assigned seat was facing backwards, rammed down the end of the coach on the row of "priority" seating, so I was left with a fold down tray that could barely hold my many accoutrements.

(From left to right: my battery to charge my i-devices, my Kindle, my iPod, my journal, a pen, and a cup of tea from home).

Still, at least I didn't have anyone sitting next to me.  There were only two other people in the compartment, both in suits, one of them already barking into his iPhone.  The other one, a younger man, sucked on his Caffe Nero as though it were a life-giving elixir, eyes staring dully ahead.  Fierce air-conditioning chilled the glass walled section so well I was tempted to burst into Let It Go.

The diesel engines coughed into life and started carrying us out of Lime Street.  It didn't seem right, a first class compartment on a noisy diesel, like an MP3 player in the dashboard of a Robin Reliant.  The rumble beneath us didn't scream "high life".  Michelle, our conductor, appeared to check our tickets.  I say check; she scribbled something on them and completely failed to spot that the man with the coffee had a standard ticket and wanted to pay for an upgrade.  "I haven't done one of these in ages," she said, swinging her little ticket machine under her bosom.  I guessed that he couldn't face the cram of standard in his fragile state.  They went into hushed tones to discuss the cost, so the rest of us wouldn't be disturbed by talk of something as common as money, but it sounded a bit like fifty two quid.

Michelle looked at my ticket through her Su Pollard glasses, saw my destination and said, "York.  There's where I'm getting off too."  My social awkwardness struck; I wasn't sure how I was meant to react.  "I don't care," seemed a bit harsh, but that was how I basically felt; the alternative seemed to be suggesting we go for a drink, which I really didn't want to do.  In the end I went with half-hearted gurgle laugh, a kind of "a haha", which pleased nobody.

At Liverpool South Parkway, she did the full, "on behalf of the train crew, thank you for travelling with First TransPennine Express" speech, which seemed a bit over the top for a station on the Northern Line.  We gained a couple more passengers in First, but the real onslaught came at Warrington, when suddenly the section was half full.  Meanwhile, in Standard, it was standing room only, and I felt a pang of guilt for sitting there while faces were pressed against the glass dividers staring in.  A man tried standing in the vacant trolley space, but Michelle wouldn't have it.  "These people have paid extra to travel in this section."

"I know.  That's why I'm not sitting down.  I'm not taking a seat."

"I'm sorry, you'll have to leave.  These people have paid for First Class," she repeated, and I cringed again.  She may as well have stamped UNCLEAN on his forehead and thrown him on the tracks.  How long is it before you start feeling a sense of entitlement about your seat?  No-one else seemed bothered.

We swept past Deansgate-Castlefield Metrolink station, which seemed impossibly glamorous with its modern trams and its LCD advertising screens and the Beetham Tower looming over it all (then Whitworth Street destroys the illusion with its snooker hall and ugly nightclubs).  Platforms 13 and 14 at Piccadilly continue to be a blight on the network; overcrowded, breezy and oversubscribed.  People swarmed on and off, and my companions all left and were replaced by new faces.  They're still mostly wearing suits.

Also joining us at Piccadilly was the refreshment trolley and, with it, the Trolley Boy.  That might seem like a patronising term for a member of the train crew but I suspect that he'd embrace the phrase himself.  Whippet thin, nut brown from a tanning salon or four, and with diamond studs in each ear, he locked his cart into position then appeared at my elbow.  "Can I get you a hot drink?"

Finally!  Freebies!  I drank my tea somewhere around Widnes, so I opted for a coffee with milk.  It's delivered to my seat, giving me a good chance to admire his diamanté studded Swatch and the small diamond piercing in the flesh between his thumb and forefinger.  Then he continued to dole out the hot beverages, before returning to me with a basket full of baked goods.  "Would you like something from the basket, sir?" he says, and perhaps it was just my over-sensitive ears, but I interpreted it as meaning "just ONE, you fat bastard."  I grabbed a mini pain au raisin; the alternatives seemed to be some kind of snack bar for people who want to attend meetings with a poppy seed jammed in their front teeth and what may have once been a shortbread.

I took one bite and paused: was this a practical joke?  Was it a test to see if you really belonged in First Class?  Because I was sure I was eating packing materials.  It was cloyingly thick and packed with so many artificial flavourings, in lab conditions it may actually have achieved sentience.  Obviously I ate it (see above re: cheapskate) but I was glad I had the hard coffee to get rid of the taste.

Beyond Stalybridge, the woman across the way kicked off her heels to rest her feet on the seat in front.  I was outraged.  You expect that kind of behaviour from louts on a Merseyrail train, but not people in First Class.  So there's your answer: you acquire a sense of entitlement somewhere in East Manchester.  Note it on the map.

We passed through tunnel after tunnel, the diesel engines working their hardest to lift us up over the Pennines.  Beyond Batley we stopped completely; the driver apologised that a late running stopping train has held us up.  It's a reminder of just how crammed the network is, how precise the train movements are, how easily they can become dislodged.  One tiny fleck of dirt in the gears and the machine stops.

Soon we were speeding again, and most people got off at Leeds.  There's only half an hour left of travel for me.  My new companions were an elderly lady in a bright fuschia jacket, making her look like the oldest Pink Lady at Rydell High, an Asian businessman who immediately whips out his laptop and begins banging away furiously, and a man with two newspapers.  One was the Daily Mail and one was The Times; he read the Mail first, but all I could notice was his nostril hairs, which were silhouetted against the light from the window and seemed to be about eight feet long.  I had a strong urge to lean across and yank them out.

I took advantage of the long uninterrupted section to use the toilet.  There's a disabled toilet at the end of the train, behind the driver's cabin, which you can only access through First Class; it's not officially the Top Toilet, for our exclusive use, but it may as well be.  When I left there was a woman waiting to use it, leaving me feeling anxious about her judging what state I left it in (I only had a pee, but that's not the point).  When she returned I studiously looked down at my Kindle.

Michelle announced that we were approaching York, "where there will be a change of crew", and most of us stretched.  Beyond York, the train heads to Scarborough before turning round; no-one in the compartment seems to be the type for a day out by the sea.  Except for me in a short sleeved shirt, and possibly the Pink Lady, but she was up and rushing to the exit in a show of speed I hadn't expected.

A couple of hours after leaving Lime Street and I'm at my destination.  Is it worth the extra cash?  For me, no.  As I board the train at Liverpool - the start of the journey - I can pretty much always get a seat.  If I was getting on at Warrington or Oxford Road the extra cash to be guaranteed somewhere to sit down might be worth it but for me it was just a bonus.  The coffee and pastry really didn't sell it either.

Still, I have booked a first class trip to Grimsby in June.  Again, it's more of a security blanket to guarantee a seat when I change at Manchester.  I'll try to remain grounded, readers.  I'll try not to become a diva.

An Appeal For Calm

On Tuesday, I went out for the day with Ian.  Our day was pretty much as it always is when we meet up: a lot of trains, a lot of cooing over brutalist architecture, a lot of cups of tea (look out for our forthcoming book, Carriages, Concrete and Caffeine: A Spotter's Guide).  His company was of course excellent, and the experience was a delight.

There were, however, a series of minor incidents that cast a slight shadow over the day.  In increasing order of unpleasantness:

• a drunk homeless man invited the entire carriage to snuggle with him under his duvet, before necking vodka from the bottle
• two men collided slightly in the crush between people getting off and on the train; this resulted in a bellowing, furious row
• a woman pushed a blind lady out of the way so that she could board more quickly; it was spotted by the ticket inspector and, after he remonstrated with her, she shouted angrily at him, leading to her being barred from getting on altogether
• a bunch of teenage lads piled on a smaller boy, making him cry; when fellow passengers intervened, they turned on them, leading to one of the Good Samaritans getting bitten on the hand  

It was a weird, discombobulating series of events that seeped into us.  It caused us to become a little bit anxious, a bit subdued.  It made things unpleasant.

It's stuff like this - and the recent controversy over "Women Who Eat On Tubes" - that makes public transport a nightmare.  It knocks you out of sorts.  

When we all board a train together, we become a community.  I'm not saying we should all immediately join hands and make a caring circle; that would upset me just as much.  We are British after all.  But we're all trapped together inside a little tin tube for five, fifteen, five hundred minutes, and everyone wants that experience to be as painless as possible.  Read your book.  Have a chat with your friends.  Listen to music on your headphones.  But always keep one mantra in mind: is this polite?

The incidents above weren't polite.  They invaded the community of passengers, and sent a little shudder down the train.  People's moods shifted.  That incident made ripples, expanded in the tight space, raised blood pressures and tensions.  We were all trapped together - we could reach up and touch the ceiling, reach out and touch the walls, and none of us could leave until we reached another station.  The people who disembarked had a slightly higher heart rate and a slightly frazzled brain and went and spread that around a bit more.

Just be polite on trains.  If there's a delay, remember that everyone else is delayed as well; your appointment is not necessarily the most important one on the train.  If you missed your breakfast, and need to eat en route, perhaps consider a granola bar or a sandwich rather than a Big N Tasty Fried Breakfast Smorgasbord that'll stink out the carriage and make everyone else's stomach rumble.  If you need to text someone, make sure you have the keyboard sounds switched off.  If you have to beat someone up, have the decency to take it out onto the street, instead of clattering around a train.  Little things.  Think about other people.

In an ideal world, of course, we'd all have individual pods that swept us to our destination, like those tiny trains they have at Heathrow Airport, and we wouldn't have to deal with other people at all.  It won't happen though.  We live on a small, busy island and we're just getting closer to each other all the time.  Why not make life better for everyone?  Before you discuss your faulty uterus across the carriage, or cut your toenails, or see what every ringtone on your phone sounds like (and yes, I have witnessed all these things) ask, is this polite?  And then tuck your clippers away and take out a book and start reading.

Just a tiny thought.  Just enough to make everyone feel a little better.

A Gallic Shrug

I'd been on the Eurostar once before, but it was a bit of a mess.  We'd booked the tickets ages in advance but the week before we travelled, there was a fire in the Channel Tunnel.  It looked touch and go whether we'd even be able to travel, but finally we were at St Pancras, ready to go.  Seat reservations were abandoned.  Eurotunnel simply wanted as many full trains as possible going through as quick as they could.  We were pushed onto a train which headed to Folkestone and waited.  One of the tubes was closed, so the trains were being sent through in batches; a few trains towards France, then a few trains in the other direction.

The train was rammed, people were fractious and a bit nervous, the staff professional but clearly distracted.  It wasn't a great way to travel and it was a relief when we reached Gare du Nord.  We flew back.

This time was different.  This time I had a good ticket, on a clear service, with a reserved seat all the way to Brussels.  There were no disasters and no tragedies.  I was finally going to enjoy the Eurostar.

I've waxed lyrical about St Pancras International many, many times before, so I won't bother you again.  Suffice to say that it's a holy temple of the railways, and should be put in the same category as Westminster Abbey or Mecca.  I practically genuflected as I rose up the escalator onto the platform, that wonderful blue ceiling above me, the long Eurostar trains reaching into the distance.  Coming back, it's even better; you get a burst of British pride as you come into that wonderful, wonderful building.  It makes you want to grab the nearest foreigner and shout "Now that's how you build a railway station!" in their ear.

(Full disclosure: I wish the Olympic rings were still up there.  London's hosted the Games more times than anyone else - I see no reason why they can't be a permanent feature.  But there are so many things from the Olympics I wish were still around).

I was in Standard Premier, which is the middle of Eurostar's three classes of travel.  There's Standard, for people who are just nipping under the Channel and aren't bothered about fripperies.  There's Business Premier, for people on expense accounts.  Standard Premier gives you more seat room, more tables, and a complimentary meal.  On the early trip to Brussels, it was a Continental breakfast - croissant, roll, yoghurt, juice.  Coming back there was a shrimp salad, with an individual bottle of wine and more bread rolls.  There was also a chocolate mousse which unfortunately resembled something recently scraped off a Wellington boot.  It was airline food, basically, but I willingly accept any slight luxury.

Stratford International whizzed past - a station that, despite its name, gets as many international trains as Birkenhead North - then another tunnel and we were out on the fringe of London.  It is an astonishingly fast train.  From the centre of the city to its outskirts in ten minutes, to the Medway in twenty, and to the White Cliffs of Dover in thirty; it's the future and it's almost incomprehensible.  You can't help noticing all those cars on the M2 being left for dust as you pass, but inside the cabin everything was cool and unflustered.  It didn't feel especially fast.  When you board a plane, you get those g-forces as it takes off, the engines shouting, seatbelts pressed into your stomach; it all says you'd better believe we're going fast.  The Eurostar is unhurried, quiet and polite, just calmly breaking speed records every day.  It's metaphorically yawning as it does another 150mph turn.

I was disappointed by the lack of fanfare as we entered the Channel Tunnel itself.  I wanted an announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen..."  I actually wanted the carriage to clap.  It's funny how quickly we've become blasé about this.  It's a TUNNEL under the ENGLISH CHANNEL.  It connects Britain and France for the first time in TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS.  There are BOATS RIGHT ABOVE YOUR HEAD.  And yet people were just reading the paper or listening to their iPod or dozing, a carriage full of "whatevs".

Once you're in there, nothing much happens, just a lot of blackness.  Before you know it, you're back out again, in the French countryside, which looks disappointingly like England.  The only sign you're in a different country is that the train crew now make their announcements in French first.

It's nice enough, Eurostar, but it's a little bit... tatty.  A bit old fashioned.  I went to the toilet, and you have to pump the tap with your foot to get any water out of it.  A nip to the buffet for a can of Coke (€2,20!) revealed a sad little shop, with bored staff members lazing around and tables with no chairs.

My purple and grey seat was comfy enough, but that colour scheme just seemed a bit Eighties.  All that grey.  The Eurostar felt like it was still operating in 1989, carrying Yuppy twats across the Channel for dirty weekends.

It's not on.  Concorde's been mothballed, and the QEII is in a dry dock somewhere.  The opportunities for glamorous travel out of the UK are limited.  Airports are bland spaces filled with boredom, ferry terminals are the home of the drab and the dispossessed.  St Pancras promises luxury and excitement - it has a champagne bar.  It's an exciting place and the Eurostar should be an exciting journey.  Instead we've allowed it to become just another train journey.

The train crossed the border into Belgium and again, there was no announcement, just another language shift, as Flemish went to the head of the queue.  The Schengen agreement has taken away all the wonders of a frontier crossing.  I wanted the train to be stopped and leather jacketed Belgians to move down the carriage checking our passports.

I guess I want a 21st century railway to have a bit of 1930s glamour about it.  I couldn't imagine Agatha Christie or Ian Fleming setting a thrilling adventure aboard the Eurostar.  John Gardner had a bash at putting Bond in the Channel Tunnel in Death is Forever, but as with most of his late period novels, his heart wasn't in it.  It's been conquered by the businessmen and the managers, and there aren't enough travellers.

That's not to say it wasn't amazing when we arrived at Brussels' Gare du Midi only a couple of hours after we left the UK.  It was a fantastic, exhilarating ride.  I just wish it had been more of an experience.

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?