Museum Piece

So to recap: Robert and I were in Manchester, killing time between the joys of Denton and the scorched Earth of Ardwick, and so we decided to head for Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry.  It's another of those places I'd always meant to visit, but never got around to it.

We started in the cafe, because I was dying for a drink (ginger beer, before you ask: I'm not a complete alcoholic).  MoSI made an immediate play for my affections with its condiment holders made out of Lego:

Although I should say, as a purist, that I'm not keen on orange bricks.

We headed into the museum itself.  It starts with a pretty overwhelming intro, all video screens, iPads and computers, teasing you with its futuristic modernity.

This was all, preamble, let's be honest: there was only one thing us geeks were here to see - the Power Hall.  Robert gleefully told me there were some old trains here, so we headed over there.

See that?  It's a pumping engine of some kind; I didn't note what type.  The reason I didn't note it was because I was SO BORED of engines.  The Power Hall traces the history of engines in tedious, mind-numbing detail, from water wheels to steam to diesel and everything in between.  And I'm sorry, but once you've seen one thrusting piston, you've seen them all.  It was just a load of bits of hissing pumps and grinding metal and I defy anyone with a sex life to find it interesting.  Good God.  I was close to sticking my head underneath one of the pounding arms by the end.

Perhaps the trains would be a bit more interesting?  The museum is, after all, built on the site of the old Liverpool Road station, terminus of the world's oldest railway line.  This is where the Duke of Wellington ended up after he opened the railway line in 1830; this is where William Huskisson was headed if he hadn't decided to take a dive under a train.

Half a dozen big, sturdy engines take up the back of the hall.  They were... trains.  Oh dear.  I've always said that I'm a stationspotter, not a trainspotter, and this exhibition underlined it for me.  While Robert snapped his photos, I was left staring at the trains and thinking how ugly they were.  Seriously. 

I quite liked this one because it had the NedRail symbol on the side.  That's where my interest started and finished.

It didn't help that we were being followed round the museum by a gang of Italian exchange students with no concept of personal space or decorum.  They bickered at one another while elbowing us out the way to take cameraphone shots.  Why do European teenagers look different to British ones?  These teens looked like they spent their evenings practicing disdainful pouts and trying out scarves.  They're big on scarves.  Perhaps it's to hide the love bites.

That's a steam train.

Outside was a little platform, where they operate steam train excursions from on busy days.  Not on a Friday afternoon in school term time, though.  Good benches though.

We wandered to the back of the site to the actual Liverpool Road station building, which forms the rear of the site.  The original Victorian building has been converted into museum space, and we started with an exhibition called Underground Manchester.  My hopes of an exhibition about the aborted Picc-Vic scheme were dashed when we got down there and saw this:

Worst Beatles tribute band ever.


As it turns out, Underground Manchester was actually a lengthy and detailed history of the city's sewage system.  There was a lovely smell piped in, plus a load of flushing toilets, urinals and privys for our delectation.  The undoubted highlight was the opportunity to walk down a genuine sewer:

The party never stops.

I'm being cruel.  I'm sure a lot of people would find this fascinating.  I was just feeling let down.  I'd wanted to visit this museum for a long time, and it was disappointing me.  I'd imagined it to be like the Northern Science Museum.  It was actually turning out to be something on a much smaller scale, a sadly parochial exhibition.

We finished admiring chamber pots and headed up into the main building of the railway station.  My spottery taste buds were moistened: here was where the real stuff was, the proper, world changing history.  And we found this:

An empty, roped off booking hall.  A sign told us that they were currently looking at better ways to display this historic space, as the previous exhibition had got tired.  In the meantime, there was nothing.  

I was ridiculously let down now.  There was a better preserved station at Hadlow Road, out in the wilds of Cheshire.  This was a place of truly momentous importance, one of those sites that changed the world.  The railways shrank societies, brought communities together, facilitated trade and war, and it all started with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.  Edge Hill is a sad little station which barely acknowledges its place in history - but it's still a working station with hundreds of trains passing through every day: we have to concede that there's only so much they can do.  Liverpool Road is there, empty, ready to be properly commemorated, and it's just rubbish.  Sorry, but it is.  It's astonishingly disappointing.

Worse still, the Italian students had caught up with us.

We passed up the opportunity to see an exhibition on "customised Harley-Davidson motorcycles", sponsored by Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and instead headed out into the street.  I couldn't even get up the energy to see the Air & Space Hall, and I'm a person who's been genuinely saddened by the end of the Space Shuttles.  

MoSI is just not what I wanted.  I thought it would be a real, magnificent Science Museum for the North.  It's just not in that league.

Trammelled

Last week I confessed to what is apparently the crime of the century: I'd never been on a Metrolink tram.  Seriously, the e-mails I got after that - a mix of bafflement and horror.  I had no idea it was such an issue.

Since I was in Manchester with Robert, I could right this cataclysmic wrong.  We headed for Piccadilly Gardens.  We were headed for the Museum of Science and Industry, so we decided to take a tram across the city centre rather than walk.

I stepped aboard the tram - one of the new yellow and grey ones, even better - and I was instantly in love.  Look at my smily face!

It was clean.  It was speedy.  It was attractive.

The gentle hum of the electric engine took me back to trips to Amsterdam, but without the rattling and clanging you get in the Dutch system.  We seemed to glide through the streets.  At least, until Robert realised he'd guided us onto the wrong tram, so we jumped off at Market Street.

The right tram to get, it turned out, was one of the old blue ones, which was ok but not the same.  Obviously it was battered around the edges, but it was still pretty good.  And in an especially exciting twist, the older trams have a seat in the hinge between carriages.  I immediately plonked myself on that seat.  I love riding in the hinge - whenever I've visited Paris I take the seat in the middle.  There's something slightly trippy about watching either end rotate around you.  Even better, I realised I could put one foot inside the carriage, away from the hinge, twisting away in a different direction.  Robert, quite rightly, looked at me like I had lost my mind.  The tram had turned me into an eight year old boy.

We got off at Deansgate-Castlefield, the clumsily retitled former G-MEX stop, and headed for the MoSI.  I'll cover that in a future post (ooh!  Suspense!).  After the museum, we had a bit of a look at Granadaland - the studio complex at Quay Street.

Because I grew up Darn Sarf, I don't have the same attachment to Granada that Robert did, (I had Thames, until that exciting moment every Friday night when they handed over to LWT and you got the Six O'Clock Show) but I am still appreciative of its legacy.  The italicised logo on the side of the building is up there with Television Centre, as far as I'm concerned.  I know what a shame it is this is all going to - urgh - MediaCity: UK, though a glance at the front door showed us that Granada isn't what it once was:

Any tv company that gives such prominence to The Jeremy Kyle Show is in trouble.  Still, it was nice to wander round a bit of British television history, even if we didn't see any Coronation Street actors nipping out for a fag.  I'd desperately hoped for an encounter with Jason Grimshaw.

Back into town, under all those mighty railway bridges that cross the canal basin and which are always turning up in Corrie.  There were some wonderful sweeping masses of ironwork, soaring above our heads and regularly shaking under the wheels of another train or tram.  I have a very romantic affection for these urban bridges, the way they divide up the city and create lonely islands.  Walking underneath them feels inherently dramatic.  Maybe I wouldn't want to walk under them on a dark rainy winter's night, but on a sun bleached July afternoon, the way we moved from shade to warmth was interesting and different.

After lunch we rode the tram out to St Werburgh's Road, where I'd visited the previous week when the extension wasn't open.  It was obviously one of the new trams, and was surprisingly full: it seems that the residents of Chorlton have embraced their new transport link wholeheartedly.

It was nice to stand on the gleaming, pristine platform, still litter-free, unscuffed.  No blobs of old chewing gum yet, or peeled off stickers on the glass of the shelter.  Still the shiny future of urban transportation.

"What shall we do now?" said Robert.  "Is there anything to see round here?"

"Not really.  It's just a little suburban street."

So we went back into the city on the same tram we came on, riding it all the way to Victoria.

As the tram pulled through Cornbrook, we got a great view of Manchester city centre.  It's a strangely anonymous panorama.  There are dozens of tall buildings, rising and falling on the skyline, but nothing grabs your attention, except the Beetham Tower and perhaps the top of the Palace Theatre.  The rest is just blocks.  They come in all shapes and sizes - triangular, square, curved; squat and tall - but none of them are particularly memorable.  I bet they were all described as "iconic" by the architect, but the net effect is an amorphous blob.

There's a similar spot on the train in Liverpool, before you reach Edge Hill.  It doesn't the same quantity of tall apartment and office blocks as Manchester; the regeneration there hasn't been quite as successful yet.  What it does have is the soaring bulk of the Cathedrals, the slim but beautiful Radio City Tower, and the epic stretch of the Mersey beyond.  Somehow Manchester's managed to fill the horizon but it hasn't managed to produce a single building that takes your breath away like that view of Liverpool does.

Victoria, of course, is infamous for being the tatty sister to Piccadilly's efficiency and glow.  It's got so many great features, with its beautiful Victorian wood panelling and tiled map of the network, that it's a shame it's been neglected.  The MEN Arena has condemned half of the station to permanent darkness, while, thanks to the lack of a roof, the other half gets a bit too much daylight.  There are plans to sort it out, and the sooner the better.

There was an interesting poster, probably from the 1970s or 80s, advertising a rail hire service.  I'd love to know how much business they got.  "Hello?  Could I have a train to Glasgow please?  Just for me; I can't abide sharing a carriage."

A bit more coffee drinking and then we headed for Piccadilly so we could go to Robert's last Parliamentary station.  The Piccadilly Metrolink station is built in the undercroft of the station, so it's all brick and ironwork - quite appropriate for Manchester.  It's practical, down to earth, and yet attractive.  They could do with another escalator up from the tram platform, though.

I want some trams.  I want to ride a tram every day, into town, round the city centre, between Merseyrail stations.  I want Liverpool to benefit the way Manchester has.  There's long been a rumour that Merseytravel want to buy the heritage tramway in Birkenhead, and extend it into the town centre and to the park.  A great idea, but that's still for the tourists, not for the commuters and the shoppers like Metrolink.  The trams make the city centre seem so much more vibrant and exciting, and they're so convenient.  They also have a lovely system map:

I love the font, and the different colours for the different services; something that's going to be more and more important as each new extension opens.  I've sometimes wondered if maybe Merseyrail should have a similar look for its map, to differentiate between its branches; a map that showed the different routes, rather than just the lines, would make it clear you can't get a direct train from Ormskirk to Hunt's Cross, and might help Wirral Line users with their multitude of branches.  It's one to ponder.

We were early for our train, so we hunted around for a seat.  Unsurprisingly, unless you want to buy a drink or a sandwich, these are in short supply.  Network Rail has followed the example of the airports and decreed that if you want to sit down somewhere, you can at least buy a Coke.  We refused to cave into their craven demands and found some seats by the Pendolinos.

Finally we could board a little Northern Rail Pacer to head for Ardwick.  This station gets a peak-hours only service, despite it being not far from the city centre and having dozens of services pass through it every day.  It seemed strange to us... until we got there.

Ardwick is stuck in between a wide expanse of lines heading into Piccadilly, and a load of industry and rubbish on the other side.  It's got no platform buildings, no ticket office, and the only way to get to it is up and over a rusting brown staircase.  

To be frank, it was a dump.

Even the best part - a view of the City of Manchester stadium - was spoiled by the piles of waste in the foreground.

It got worse.  Access to the street was down a narrow alleyway, then some more steps.  It would be difficult to make a more unappealing public transport destination, short of having an abattoir empty its leftovers onto the platform to rot.  Finally we were outside the station, on the kind of back road under the railway arches which features in Guy Ritchie films.  

We didn't hang around.  We had a train back to Liverpool to catch, and besides, we didn't want to get shot in the face by a mockney gangster.  It was an interesting place to visit.  I shan't be going back.

Parliamentarians

She was walking a ferret.  I say walking; the slippery marble floor of Lime Street meant the ferret couldn't get any purchase with its claws, so it was basically being dragged across the concourse by its lead.  Its owner seemed unmoved by its writhing and yanked it onwards, while her husband offered it support - "Good lad.  Come on lad."

I have to say it's not the usual way to start your day - watching a rodent being propelled across a train station.  Given that it was barely seven a.m., I wondered if perhaps I was still asleep.  I hadn't been to Lime Street at this time for years, not since I gave up work.  Part of me almost went to the London Midland train to Birmingham out of habit.  Instead, I went to platform 8 and got on board a TransPennine Express service to Scarborough.

The purpose of today's trip out was to visit some of the least popular train stations in Britain.  It wasn't my idea.  Robert, long-standing friend of this blog, has come up with a plan.  He has a list of those obscure, barely serviced stations, and he wants to see them all.  These are stations that are only grudgingly visited by the train companies, because they have to.  Basically, they're the railway equivalent of that unpleasant aunt you only see at Christmas because she might leave you something when she finally pops off.

As you may have guessed, I'm a sucker for a pointless train themed project, so I asked him if I could tag along.  I hadn't realised at the time that it would involve rising at dawn.

Robert joined me at Liverpool South Parkway, along with about four thousand other people.  I think the days of LSP being a white elephant are long behind us - there were more passengers boarding than at Lime Street.  It only got worse as we got closer and closer to Manchester, with the people getting on at Birchwood having to force themselves into intimate situations with complete strangers to find room.

We finally got off at Manchester Piccadilly.  I say "we got off"; the doors opened and the sheer pressure of bodies ejected half the train out onto the platform.  I like Piccadilly.  It's a station of epic proportions.  Platforms in double figures, travelators, exits all over the place.  Lime Street's a lovely station but because it's a terminus, it's a bit underfed.  Piccadilly feels like all good railway stations should - it's an exciting, vibrant, crazy place.

Now it was time to get - yikes - a bus.  Robert's plan was for us to go between two stations, out in the Manchester suburbs, so we needed to get there without using a train.  I was disappointed, I can't pretend otherwise.  Not least because it turned out to be one Brian (spit) Souter's Stagecoach buses.  Still, it was clean, it was punctual, it wasn't full.  Shame it was a homophobe-mobile, really.

We were heading for Reddish South, a little halt next to a Morrisons in south east Manchester, and reportedly the quietest train station in Britain.  This is a station on a section of line between Stockport and Stalybridge, and which receives only a perfunctory service.  One train, once a week, in one direction.  That's your lot.  You'd best like where you're going because you're not coming back.

It's a Parliamentary service, existing only so that the rail companies don't have to go to the bother of getting the Government to close it.  It certainly feels like an unwanted, unloved bastard child of Northern Rail.  There was a quite unnecessary poster on the gate leading down to the station, warning you not to steal anything:

Unneccesary, because there was nothing to steal.

It's a single island platform with a railway line on one side only.  No station building, no seats, nothing.  Even the steps down from the road bridge look like they were shipped in from somewhere else and added afterwards.  Above us, traffic honked and squealed on the road, but down here it was silent and empty.  Strangely, Northern Rail had still seen fit to paint the information boards in its corporate purple.  I presume they had some left over from one of the proper stations.

When the train came, it was surprisingly busy for a such an obscure route.  We soon realised it was full of train geeks like us, who craned out the doors and windows to take pics of Reddish South.  It meant the train had a strangely joyful, happy vibe to it - you could feel the excitement of the men on board (and yes, it was mainly men; the women on board had the glazed look of a wife who didn't remember signing up for this on her wedding day).

Our ticket was £2.70.  "Blimey, that's expensive, isn't it?" said the conductor.  What are you meant to say to that?  "Yes, it bloody is.  I demand you charge me something more reasonable."  Or maybe launch into a tirade about the privatised railways.  We didn't do this, of course; we just smiled and handed him our money.

I was particularly excited about the next station.  I cued up its title song on my iPod:

I love Shock Treatment, which this song is taken from.  I think in many ways it's better than its predecessor, The Rocky Horror Picture Show; it's certainly got a better soundtrack.  Shock Treatment and Little Black Dress are ridiculously fun, and Bitchin' in the Kitchen is one of my favourite duets.

So the idea of finally visiting Denton was a quite weird little thrill for me.  Robert, it turns out, has never seen Shock Treatment, so he had no idea what I was on about.  He did tell me that Denton is where snore-worthy David Jason vehicle A Touch of Frost is set.  Not quite the same thing.  Does A Touch of Frost feature Ruby Wax and Charles "Blofeld" Gray singing about people who "do it for the money"?  No, it does not.  Shame.

Unsurprisingly we were the only people to get off, but surprisingly, someone was getting on: a bearded man with a "real ale" t-shirt on.  (Stalybridge Buffet Bar, at the end of the line, is a CAMRA approved mecca).  "Welcome to Denton!" he exclaimed cheerily as we got off.  "The station sign is over there."  Clearly, we weren't the first trainspottery geeks to claim this outpost.  I was pleased to find that "happy hearts and smiling faces" really could be found in Denton.

Much like its predecessor, Denton isn't going to win any Best Kept Station awards.  Another cracked concrete platform, another road bridge, though at least there was a bench here.  There would have to be - if you missed your train, you'd have to wait a week for the next one.  Robert was gleeful at finally reaching Denton:

though not as much as me:

There wasn't much to keep us hanging around.  A board outside had been claimed by the Friends of Denton Station, which seems like a thankless job.  Bless them.  They'd put up some old black and white photos of the station when it was actually being used regularly, and a couple of campaigning posters, including one that said Our children will lead the future.  Give them a good train service!  It's the lyric Whitney Houston forgot to write.

We headed under the M67, hoping to find a rambling rose and a picket fence.  Instead we encountered a big Sainsbury's and an industrial estate.  There was a trendy looking teenager wearing a pair of low-slung jeans that showed off his Cookie Monster underwear.  I don't understand (a) why you'd want to walk around with your trousers hitched around your upper thigh and (b) why you wouldn't wear a decent pair of boxers if you was going to flash them on a regular basis.  Invest in some AussieBums!  Of course, that's probably why I'm 34 and he's not.

We did come across a fairly pretty church, but since it was next to the motorway, it'll never be on a postcard.  We decided to call it a day on Denton.  There was a bus stop that could take us back to Manchester, and besides, the hot sun was beating down on us: my enormous Tefal head and Robert's pasty ginger skin were starting to gently fry.  

The bus journey into town also disproved another of Denton, USA's lyrics: Denton girls are not full of beauty.  Judging by the two on the top deck behind us, they are in fact fat slags who have no problem with discussing their boyfriends in loud, profanity filled voices.  I feel like Richard O'Brien has lied to me somehow.

P.S.  You can read Robert's write up of the trip at http://thestationmaster.wordpress.com/.  Just remember: my account is the definitive one...

Kiddiewinks

Another day, another Merseyrail freebie from Jamie and Chris.  This time it comes in the form of a new idea for the younger travellers on the network.

I didn't realise this but under fives don't have to pay for travel on the trains.  That makes me sound a bit thick, but when am I ever going to have found this out?  I don't carry infants around with me.  Anyway, the point is that adorable toddlers don't get given tickets, which can cause them to get distressed.  Who knew this was a problem?  Who knew that all over Merseyside there were blubbing four year olds, distraught because they couldn't wave a bit of orange card about?  (Mind you, I remember having a roll of blank bus tickets from my Granddad, who was a driver on the Green Line in Hertford, and loving playing with them.  Simple pleasures, etc). 

Anyway Martin at Moreton station came up with this idea:

A ticket sized card for those kids to hold and play with on the train.  It's a lovely, simple gimmick which has been rolled out across Merseyrail, and I thoroughly approve.  Not least because after an absence of about thirty years, it sees the return of the smily Merseyrail train:

He's gone all trendy with that baseball cap, and obviously he's had some work done, but still: nice to see him back.  Well done Martin.

It also raises an interesting thought for me - why are kids so fascinated with trains?  I've often seen very young children waving enthusiastically at them as they pass, or bouncing around on the platform with glee as they come in.  I was once in a lift at James Street with a gorgeous little boy who was telling his granddad all about the trip and how exciting it was.  There's something strangely primeval about it - it's not just to do with Thomas the Tank Engine and Underground Ernie, but something to do with the whole experience of the train.  I don't think they'd get half as interested in a passing Ford Escort.   

The Pro-Rail Bus

While I was in Manchester I saw this double decker pass by:

I approve of this message.  It's nice to see someone trying to bait Northerners into making their voices heard over the bray of the Home Counties.  No, it won't be very nice having hundred mile an hour trains whizzing past your back garden; tough.  Making the country a smaller, more manageable place, improving services and reducing air travel are all worth paying for.  Especially since this is the kind of thing the rest of Europe was doing decades ago.

If you haven't passed on your opinion yet in the High Speed 2 consultation, you can do so here.  Go on - take a couple of minutes to change the country.

Incidentally, has anyone seen anything similar on Merseyside?

The Mancunian Way

For reasons far too dull to go into here, I found myself in Chorlton-cum-Hardy with time on my hands.  I decided not to celebrate the 4th of July in the tempting-sounding Kansas Fried Chicken and instead I went in search of tram stations.

This may shock you, but I've never been on a Metrolink tram.  Speaking as an urban transport geek, even I find this shocking.  I'm not sure how it's happened.  In fact, the only tram I've ever been on in the UK is the heritage one in Birkenhead.  I've also been on the trams in Amsterdam, those rickety but charming death machines that regularly send cyclists to their doom.  And the San Francisco tram was fun too, though that was mainly because I was imagining a fire truck driven by a bimbo could come swinging past dangerously like in A View to a Kill.

I like trams.  In my hierarchy of favourite public transportation methods, they're probably right behind underground trains (and are certainly way above buses).  They're clean and efficient and quick.  They're reliable and attractive.  And they encourage people onto public transport in a way that new buses never will.

The South Manchester extension should be open by now, but it's had to be delayed by a few days; as a result Chorlton station was fenced off.  The only person in sight was an orange suited worker eating his lunch in the platform shelter.  The extension is part of Metrolink's Big Bang, which was supposed to be paid for by a congestion charge; when the city's residents rejected that idea, the government gave in and gave Metrolink the money anyway, which made it all a complete waste of time.

Chorlton's on the initial three stop section to St Werburgh's Road; the line will be extended even further to East Didsbury by 2013.  That the line was built in two sections just underlines how daft the funding delays were, though not quite as daft as building a route through Oldham that's going to then be taken out of action when the next phase is opened.

The platforms are clean and pretty and, as you may have noticed, yellow and grey.  Manchester's abandoned the former turquoise colour scheme in favour of something that's rather more, erm, Liverpool-flavoured.  I like to imagine that the Colour Tsars realised they'd painted everything they possibly could on Merseyside and came flooding over the border into Greater Manchester, beseiging the Town Hall until they gave into their demands.  First Liverpool, then Manchester, next - West Yorkshire!  Every PTE will be theirs in the end!

It works though.  The turquoise was always a bit naff, and since Arriva Trains Wales turned up, completely devalued.  And the M in a circle logo was horribly dated even when it opened.  Grey dots in a sort of arrowhead - much nicer.  I'm also taken with the font.  Merseyrail's stuck with the boring old Rail Alphabet font for its signs, which is a classic of course, but is still a bit dull.  Every other franchise in the UK spends a fortune changing the signs to something allied to their brand - I wonder why Merseyrail never bothered?  Imagine Bromborough in something classy like Trebuchet.

I followed a footpath down the side of the tracks to St Werburgh's Road station, the line's temporary terminus.  While Chorlton's station was in the middle of a busy shopping area, next to a Morrison's, St Werburgh's Road is on a quiet suburban street, showing another advantage of the Metrolink - the way it can really link different communities together.

The station is heralded by this yellow arch over the entrance, which I love and I think Merseyrail should steal for its own unmanned stations.  They stole the colour scheme - we can take this in exchange:

Of course, the sadness was I couldn't ride on a tram.  I had to turn round and walk back to Chorlton.  I can't pretend I wasn't jealous, and a little bit sad.  If all had gone to plan, Liverpool would have at least one, probably two, tram lines of its own by now.  Instead the government got us all excited and then refused to put out.

Liverpool's got Merseyrail, which Manchester hasn't.  An underground train line through the city centre is infinitely preferable - it's quicker, has higher capacity, and so on.  Manchester would kill for Merseyrail.  But I can't see why we can't live in a country where transport schemes stop being either/or.  Saying, "Liverpool's got Merseyrail - it doesn't need trams" isn't good enough.  Liverpool was built for trams - there are dozens of miles of wide roads with space for the tracks.  We should have a city centre loop heading to the tourist attractions.  We should have a tram connecting with the universities and the cathedrals.  We should have a fast, efficient public transport system taking people from the suburbs into town.  (And while we're at it, Manchester should have an underground of its own - it's an urban area of over a million people; it should have had one decades ago.  Have you all the buses clogging up Oxford Road?  Imagine a train line underneath all that).

It seems Merseytram is dead, though the council still valiantly tries its best to keep the planning permissions alive where it can.  It's a shame.  Seeing how Manchester is benefitting makes me wish we could spread its effects beyond TfGM's borders.

In the meantime, I'll have to head back sometime to actually ride one of the damn things.

ALF-icionado

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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