Feeling the Force

You'll be shocked to learn that, every now and then, I do put a bit of effort into this load of old tut.  A bit of reading up.  A smidgen of research.  Not too much - I'm essentially lazy - but for my trip on the Ravenglass & Eskdale, I went to the effort of buying Alfred Wainwright's Walks from Ratty.

(The stains weren't down to me, by the way.  That was the work of the gentleman on eBay who sold it.  I'm trying not to dwell on them.)

Alfred Wainwright was deeply in love with the Lake District, and produced a number of books detailing its geography, its history, and giving the reader routes and walks.  Each one is joyous.  He hand illustrated them himself, detailed line drawings in black ink, and they're written in his own, meticulous hand.  They're miniature works of art.  To help raise funds for the Ravenglass & Eskdale, he published this tiny booklet, with ten walks from the line.

As it turned out, most of these walks were impractical for my purposes.  They were designed for lengthy rambles, for people who didn't have to match to a railway timetable.  One walk, though, 7: Dalegarth Force, caught my attention.  It was only a couple of miles and I could use it to fill the hour and a half between trains.

I struck out from Dalegarth station, heading away from the village on roads without pavements.  A little left hand turn and the road began to gently rise, narrowing, then turning from tarmac to gravel.  A bridge over the River Esk, ropeswings rocking in the morning breeze, then more upward trekking.

I was really pushing myself.  This was a detour away from the railway line, and so it carried with it a certain amount of anxiety.  If I'd been walking in the direction of Beckfoot station, I'd have at least had the comfort of knowing my train was close.  This was a mile long detour to the south though.  I walked fast, intent on reaching the Force without getting off timetable.

A gateway took me inside the woods of Stanley Ghyll.  It's a long gulley, twisting its way down to the Esk, with ancient trees lining the cascading stream.  The waters were full with February rain, and the path was damp.

Moss clung to every surface, cool and soft.  It was as though I was entering a secret world.  Each twist of the rocky path took me a little higher.  The trees leaned in and closed off the sky.

I was excited.  The thrill of exploration, the isolation, the knowledge that I was utterly alone.  This added an undercurrent of danger when I slipped a little, and I pictured myself tumbling into the stream and drowning.  My blue-faced corpse would be found by a pair of athletic walkers later that day, wedged up against a rock in an undignified fashion.  I walked a little more carefully after that.

Now the ghyll was a proper gully.  Dark rock rose above me.  I crossed one bridge over the water, then back, the path following wherever there was a patch of flat.  Except it wasn't a path now; it was steps, big chunks of rock wedged into the earth, taking me higher.  The drop down to the water was getting more vertiginous.  I tried not to think about it.

The noise had increased, too.  As the stream became more active and violent, so its cascades echoed more, crashing off the walls of the ghyll.  I climbed a bit more and spotted, through the trees, a waterfall.  It was sort of sideways, and concealed by branches.  I felt a moment of disappointment: was that it?  Was that the "force" that Wainwright had waxed about?  I turned over the a third bridge, climbing over a warning sign halfway that the path was steep and slippery, and onto another set of steps.

The sign wasn't lying.  These were tight against the wall.  With one hand on the rock face, I guided myself up and round the corner.  Then I gasped.

Stanley Ghyll Force is sixty feet of rushing, plunging water, pouring down into a still pool.  I stood on a square of flat land and watched it, open mouthed.  Something about it all - this quiet spot, the plunge, the loneliness - grabbed hold of me.  I couldn't move.  All I could do was stare at it.  Me and the waterfall.

If I was a braver man - or at least a man who could swim - there would have been no greater pleasure to me than to leap down into that pool and dunk my head under the water.  Instead I just stood and watched.  Finally, a little alarm at the back of my head reminded me that I had a train to catch, and I turned away.

I walked back down the canyon, idly wondering what punishment would be suitable for the idiots who'd spraypainted the rocks by the waterfall.  Was castration too harsh, or too lenient?  On the way, I encountered a couple of walkers on their way up, and I wanted to stop them and tell them it was fantastic.  That would have spoiled the surprise and the delight for them though, so instead I just smiled conspiratorially.

At the foot of the hill I turned left again, arriving at Beckfoot sooner than I'd expected.  It's the first station after Dalegarth, barely a half a mile away, and I'd arrived way too soon.  I now had twenty minutes to kill, waiting for my train, twenty minutes I could have wasted staring at that waterfall.  I took a seat on the steps up to the platform and waited.

The quiet of the Lake District landscape was suddenly interrupted by a cacophony of braying voices.  Four people, two men and two women, wandered round the corner.  They were lost.  I knew this because they kept shouting "yeah, but WHERE IS IT?" at each other in thick Mancunian accents.  They were not dressed for the countryside.  None of them had coats.  The two women wore heels and had handbags wedged in the crook of their arms.

They wandered around for a bit, staring in the garden of the hotel across the way, poking their head over walls, looking at me with undisguised amusement.  Then they turned and went back the way they came, still looking for... something.  Still shouting at one another.

I suppose I could have helped.  Offered to check my OS Map for them.  Asked them where they were going.  But I didn't because, quite frankly, this is an overpopulated little planet, and letting those four idiots wander across a Fell and die of exposure would have been a service for all of humanity.

The steam train whistled as it rounded the corner.  I'd got a diesel up to the top, but I was going to be steaming back down again.  I asked the guard to stop at The Green.  "For the pub?" he said.  "That's the only reason people get off at The Green.  For the pub."

I didn't actually know there was a pub at The Green.  But now that I had the idea in my head...

Run To The Top

I knew it was going to be small.  I didn't know it was going to be that small.

The standard gauge, the distance between rails in the UK, is 4ft, 8 and a half inches (it's the half inch that I like best - that makes all the difference, clearly).  On the Ravenglass and Eskdale, the gauge is fifteen inches.  Not 4ft fifteen inches: fifteen inches total.  If Ken ever snaps and decides to tie Barbie to the tracks, the Ravenglass and Eskdale is the perfect size for the malodorous tart.

This wasn't just narrow gauge; it was miniscule gauge, a line for the tiniest of little people.  I wedged myself into one of the carriages, picking an enclosed one for my first trip.  Later I would realise that, even on a frosty February morning, the open carriages are the place to be.  I slid into the compact interior, lined with stripped pine like my mum's kitchen in the 1970s, my knees raised, my head barely skimming the roof.  I'm not a tall man but if I'd sat up straight my skull would have tapped the ceiling.

The only other people in the carriage were a couple of elderly ladies, apparently staff at the cafe in Dalegarth, getting a ride up for the day's work.  They were chatting about holidays; the older one said she liked Warner Hotels "because they don't allow kiddies".  A braying quartet of hikers debated loudly about where to sit, over excited and jolly, finally picking an open carriage to much hilarity.

All around me, grey-haired men checked clipboards as they attended to station duties.  The diesel engine clicked, sighed, then grumbled; a guard's whistle, and the train shuddered its way out of the platform.

Behind the station was a hinterland of workshops and engines, one decorated with a Happy 50th! banner for a lucky birthday boy later that day (of course it will be for a boy).  The Ravenglass and Eskdale - or La'al Ratty, as it's known to the locals - wasn't built as a tourist attraction; for decades it served a purpose, bringing iron ore and then granite down from the mountains to the proper railway line.  Its industrial uses ended, and in 1960 it became a preserved railway.

In its lower stretches, the line shadows the River Mite, and I looked down at it from the carriage, fast flowing.  The wheels kicked out a repetitive pattern, one-two-THREE, one-two-THREE, picking up speed on the flat land by the river.  Across fields of sheep the mountains curled into view, the highest ones white with snow, backdropped by the bluest of skies.  Skies like that don't seem to exist anywhere else.

A turn into a forest slowed the engine, as an S bend held back our speed.  I spotted frosted leaves on the ground; despite the winter sun, it had been incredibly cold that morning.  A gradient sign rolled past - 1 in 51 - and I tried to remember back to GCSE Geography; was that high or low?  Imperial still rules La'al Ratty, as you'd expect on a railway frozen in time; none of this percentage nonsense here.  It's an interesting contrast with the occasional legally required sign, heritage trappings giving way to the stark 1960s frankness of Railway Alphabet.

The women behind me, who hadn't stopped for breath since Ravenglass, had progressed to the new woman in the bakery.  "I used to know her," said the older one, managing to convey that there's a very good reason she's using the past tense.  Her companion reassured her that while the new girl will be doing the cakes, Cathy will be taking on the sausage rolls.

The landscape became starker, emptier, bracken and brush scattered across hardy hill grasses.  Grey fleeced sheep tucked between trees, then the white of a village; more a run of houses, really, Land Rovers in the driveway ready for action.  Irton Road station passed by, and I realised I had missed the three previous halts.  They were so small I hadn't even noticed them.  The chugging diesel frightened a cow from her trackside grazing; she turned and fled, bashing into another cow in her panic.

At The Green, the engine came to a clanging halt, and the hikers disembarked. Still laughing, still jolly.  The guard (sat in one of the open cars) pulled his hat down over his chilly ears as the engine picked up speed again, only to suddenly brake down to walking speed.  A sheep had somehow got through the fence and onto the line; now it was panicked, looking for somewhere to run, and realising it was trapped on a very long very thin track.  The train shadowed the sheep as she looked for an escape, finally finding an embankment to climb away from us.  As we passed she seemed to give us a dirty look.

The train resumed its former speed, swinging through a narrow cutting of sharp rock, while the younger of my travelling companions talked about her husband's upcoming retirement ("God knows what I'm going to do with him.").  The driver tooted his horn as we pass through Beckfoot, no doubt thrilling the residents of the neighbouring B&B trying to get a Saturday lie in, and then the track curved round for the terminus.

I unfurled onto the platform, unfolding legs and arms to try and emerge from the tiny carriage with a semblance of dignity.  Other passengers stretched and yawned, idly debating whether to have breakfast in the cafe.  I dashed off.  I had a day of walking ahead, and there was one sight I really wanted to see before I got the train back.

Return To Ravenglass

It's not that the bed and breakfast was bad, because it wasn't.  It was a perfectly reasonable little place.  It just wasn't me.

I'm not one for tiny, intimate places where you're treated like one of the family.  I don't like being noticed, or observed.  It's why I'll favour a Travelodge or a bland Radisson over a dinky little place by the sea.  I want to be able to come and go without people noticing, to sneak a bag of snacks to my room without worrying the owners will judge my food choices, to be able to watch TV without fretting that it's too loud and everyone else will know I was laughing at Rude Tube.  The kind of place where the only contact you have with the staff is when you approach them at reception, and where no-one pops out of a side room to ask how your day has been.

Unfortunately, there isn't much choice for accommodation in Ravenglass,  It's a tiny village, barely more than a single street, located at the confluence of the Esk, Irt and Mite rivers.  It's adorable, of course.

But then, I thought it was adorable the last time I visited, back in 2013.  Why had I returned three years later, and furthermore, to stay?  One word: Dalegarth.

The last time I had visited Ravenglass it had been as part of a committed effort to visit every station on the Cumbrian Coast.  Over the course of a week I worked my way up the line, hopping off and on, enjoying tiny halts that clung to the edge of the Irish Sea.  It was lovely.  I really enjoyed it.  But I was happy to head home and never return.

Barely a month later, Northern Rail released a new, revised version of the map.  And they added a station.  Dalegarth.

Northern hadn't suddenly built a new extension.  Dalegarth is the terminus of the Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway, a small heritage line that runs from Ravenglass station, and for some reason, it was now on the map.  I still don't know why it's there, to be honest.  It was added along with Pickering, on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, but all the many other heritage lines across the North were ignored.

So I was basically being forced to shlep all the way back up to Cumbria - a journey that, if you're very lucky, takes about five hours - to collect a single station on a railway line with a very limited timetable, then go home.  Nope, I thought, and for three years I refused to go anywhere near it.

Finally I gave in, but I decided to get my money's worth.  Instead of just collecting Dalegarth, I'd collect all the Ravenglass and Eskdale's stations.  There are nine of them in total.

The timetable was limited, it being a February weekend, so I had to spread the trip out over two days to be sure I could visit every station.  None the less, I had a plan.

That was why I was sat in my B&B's breakfast room, trying to quietly chomp on a chipolata while Radio 2 played Sounds of the Sixties.  It was the start of an Epic Journey With Even Less Purpose Than Usual, another grab of stations I didn't need to visit.  It was another of those trips where I was just visiting them all because they were there.

The Elizabeth Line Is A Terrible Name

Right now, under London, a railway is coming together.  Huge, state of the art stations are connected by vast tunnels formed by colossal boring machines.  Fast, powerful electric trains will one day connect modern stations with glass platform doors and air conditioning and full disabled access.  It's a railway that crosses London, a route suitable for the 21st century.

So why the flipping heck are we renaming Crossrail the Elizabeth Line?  The Elizabeth Line is a terrible name.

I mean, let's just start with the fact that it's not a line.  A line is a subdivision of a larger network.  The Bakerloo Line is a route of the Underground.  The Wirral Line is a route of Merseyrail.  The Elizabeth Line is a route of... what?  It's not the Underground, it's not the Overground, it's a route all on its own.  That's why they called it Crossrail and gave it its own roundel and everything.  The Elizabeth Line is a terrible name.

And Elizabeth is a clunky word anyway, too many syllables*.  It's even got a Z in it, a letter only suitable for use in alien planets in Doctor Who.  For hundreds of years we've invented nicknames for Elizabeths, Liz and Betty and Beth and Liza, precisely because it's such a misshapen word.  There's a reason why "QE2" is a far more popular name for ships and hospitals and bridges named after the Queen.  QE2 also includes the fact that, yes, there are actually two Queen Elizabeths, and is specifying that it is named after the second one.  It's already being shortened to the Liz Line by internet "wags", which shows how badly it fits in the mouth: by contrast, no-one shortens the Metropolitan Line, because Metropolitan is a good, nice word.  The Elizabeth Line is a terrible name.

To return to my earlier point, though: Crossrail (as was) represented a rare moment of large scale investment in this country.  An actual piece of forward thinking, built at great expense, to make life better for the residents of our capital city.  It's exactly the future we should be looking towards.  And now it's saddled with a name that drips with feudal obedience, with a thousand years of monarchy and privilege.  People from other countries are going to come to London and giggle behind their hands at us.  Having a Queen is bad enough, but you know, we're just too nice to ask her to leave; an actual revolution would be a bit common and not-British.  But to still be naming stuff after this woman, to continue to pay homage to a little old lady just because one of her great-great-great(x30)-grandparents killed another man on a battlefield and said that God did it?  That's just embarrassing.  It's taking everything that said "Britain is modern", chucking it in the skip, and replacing it with "weren't the old days great?".  You may as well have done the stations out with mock Tudor beams, or run steam trains on the tracks.  The Elizabeth Line is a terrible name.

But the thing that makes me angriest about it, and the real reason I've been festering over it all day, is it represents how rubbish the United Kingdom has become over the last few years, and how awful its future looks.  Important pieces of public infrastructure are subject to the whims of idiots with ridiculous ideas.  Concepts that have taken workers and designers and engineers thousands of hours to craft and construct have been overridden by politicians desperate to leave a tribute to their own ego.  Ideas that worked are being tinkered with or destroyed for random ideologies - not because they're failing, but because people in power  just don't like them.  It's the NHS, it's Network Rail, it's local councils, it's parks and libraries and buses.  It's all the little things you liked about this country being ground into the dirt because some of some shithead in London.  It's Crap Britain, and every day it gets worse, and every day it makes me more and more depressed.  The Elizabeth Line is a terrible name.

*with apologies to my mum, whose middle name is Elizabeth.

Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts

The BF and I celebrated the anniversary of the day we met last week.  Yes, nineteen years ago, I got drunk and talked to some random in a pub.  Memories.

Anyway, to commemorate this momentous occasion, I made a suggestion.  "Why don't we celebrate?" I suggested.  "Let's go away for a mini break, a few days in a four star hotel near a historic English city?  Let's indulge ourselves."

...Nope, sorry, that's a lie.  What I actually said was, "I've got to get Durham and Chester-le-Street stations.  Do you want to come or do you want to stay at home?  Up to you."

Romance.

He picked the "may as well come with" option and we made our way across England to Durham.  Trainspotters will be disappointed to hear we went by car.  I did float the railway option, but after roughly eight milliseconds of thought, the BF said "no."  He loves to drive, always has, and the thought of a trip across chilly hills excited him far more than three hours aboard a Class 185.  I'm not bothered; either way I get to sit back and do nothing while someone else does all the actual work.

After a night's rest in a Durham hotel ("yes, we do only need one room, and yes, we do know it's a double, we've already said actually, thank you") we headed into the city centre for a look round.  I'd been saving Durham because I wanted to do it justice.  I'd passed through it on the train many times, and spotted the colossal edifice of the cathedral perched on top of a rocky outcrop - a stunning view, and part of the World Heritage area of the city.

We got the park and ride into the city centre, alighting opposite the blank brick face of the Gates Shopping Centre.  The narrow streets seemed like any other town, lined with Boots and a second hand video game shop and an ugly Starbucks.  Round a corner, though, the Framwellgate Bridge took you over a wide river, a weir churning wildly downstream.

From there the road rose steeply, cobbled and slippery, clambering up the hill.  Durham's historic centre is surrounded on three sides by water.  A tongue of hard rock forced the river to flow round it, creating an almost-island that was a perfect, easily defended spot for a city.  The Normans built both the castle and the cathedral in the 11th Century, and for hundreds of years Durham existed as a city-state within England.

The Market Square provided a moment of rest, then we climbed another hill, pausing now and then so the BF could have a wheeze.  He has both asthma and dodgy knees (a result of years of football playing, and evidence for my theory that no good can come from sport) so steep climbs are an agony for him.  When we visited San Francisco I basically had to load him on a sledge and drag him round behind me.

Passing a branch of my nemesis, the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, and not one but two Waterstone's, we finally reached the Palace Green.  At one end, Durham Castle, and at the other, the Cathedral, with the ancient university library sandwiched in between.  It was undeniably impressive, so long as you ignored all the plant vehicles doing some kind of work on the grass in the middle.

Like the eager little tourists we are, we gamboled up to the Castle to get our fix of Norman fortifications.  We were immediately struck by our first disappointment.  The Castle is in use as a college of Durham University, and about a hundred students actually live there; as a result, the only way to look round is by guided tour.  As unabashed cheapskates we declined the tour and instead turned our attention to the Cathedral.  At least that was free to get in.

This where I should write dozens of paragraphs about the awe-inspiring beauty of Durham Cathedral.  About its huge, calming space, its intricate stained glass, the history dripping out of every piece of stone.  The giant columns holding up the roof, the feeling of dizziness when you stand under the tower and look up.

I'm not going to do that because I spent my whole visit seething.  Photography is banned in the cathedral.  Anywhere.  There's no reason for this, of course, other than they want to flog you postcards.  The website is pretty unabashed about this:

That's shameless gouging, and very disappointing.  I would've loved to have shown you some of the delights of the cathedral, enough to intrigue you and make you plan your own visit, but instead, I'm just going to tell you it was pretty and a bit cold.  There you go.

We wandered out of the undercroft of the Cathedral, declining to spend any money in the huge gift shop, and into South Bailey, a road that snakes its way down to the river. There was a plaque on one of the buildings commemorating the home of Revd. William Greenwell; he was described as a "Minor Canon", which I'm sure is a theological term, but just sounds like the historical society was calling him insignificant.

The main University campus is to the south of the river, so as we walked downhill we encountered a lot of fresh faced students coming uphill.  For a while, as a teen, I fancied going to Durham University.  I wasn't brave enough to try and get into Oxford or Cambridge, so I thought Durham was an acceptable compromise - kind of like I was aiming for bronze.  As it was, when I filled in my UCAS form, I wasn't even brave enough to put it down.  I failed my A-levels anyway, so I would've gone through a rigorous application process for no reason.  (My cousin Lucy eventually went to Durham, because it is the destiny of younger family members to make you feel inadequate).

Walking back round the peninsula at riverside level, the BF and I agreed that Durham was... alright.  It was a bit of a let down.  In our heads, we'd imagined it to be like York or Chester - a non-stop parade of history and heritage.  It turned out it was an island of staggering beauty in amidst a very ordinary town.

Returning to the town centre only reaffirmed our view.  The buildings built across the river were almost aggressively ordinary, no doubt the result of successive planning committees refusing anything slightly interesting so it wouldn't "detract".  After a couple more circuits, we decided we'd had enough, and got the Park and Ride bus back to the car.

After a brief visit to some statue or other...

...we went to Chester-le-Street.  I had two stations to collect in this part of the world, and, unless I took a train, it didn't count.  The idea was that the BF would drop me off in Chester-le-Street, I'd get the train south, and then he'd pick me up at Durham station.

Before that, we thought we'd have a look round.  As its name implies, Chester-le-Street is threaded along a main thoroughfare, and we wandered up and down it, looking in shop windows.

It was not great.  The shops were small and grim.  The pubs were "boozers".  The regenerated market square at the southern end of the town, all new brick and stone, ended up looking like a bare windswept expanse without any stalls.

After a moment of horror where I misread a shop called Nelglo as Negro (a misread that probably says more about me) we turned and walked back up the main road.  There was an "arts space" called Willy Nilly, and a closed nightclub called Soda still advertising its New Year's party ("comedy drag show/male stripper/karaoke" - surprisingly queer for a town in mining country), and an e-cigs shop with banners outside and posters in the window calling for free parking in the high street:

I do love a shop with an axe to grind, and the BF and I stood outside and read the entire rant until the owner appeared in the window and stared at us.

The highlight of Chester-le-Street was the post office.  Make of that what you will.  It was a clean, 1930s brick building, nicely styled:

The real highlight was in the corner window:

A rare Edward VIII insignia, showing that the post office was opened during that brief period between him becoming king and abdicating.  I found that far too exciting, to be honest, which probably shows you what a disappointing day it was turning into.  It was time to draw and end to the visit.  I waved the BF off and headed for the station.

Chester-le-Street has a booking office and a waiting room, but they're not run by Northern Rail.  Instead, the responsibility for the facilities lies with Chester-le-Track, a private organisation.  It's a weird set up (they also run Eaglescliffe station).  It's hard to shake the idea that it's a lot of boys playing trains, an impression not helped by the staff in the ticket office both looking like teenagers.

It's all missing the polish and the professionalism you get from a proper train company.  Bless them for trying and everything, and let's be honest, if they weren't running the booking office here there wouldn't be one at all, but it was a couple of degrees off what you expect from a 21st century railway.  It was all a bit 1980s British Rail.

I'm not 100% sure why Chester-le-Street is a Northern Rail station at all.  Both it and Durham are mainly served by a combination of TransPennine Express and trains, with the odd service from CrossCountry and Virgin East Coast.  Northern trains are restricted to the odd stopper in the morning rush hour.  They seem to have been given responsibility for the station because no-one else wanted it.

Pleasingly, the train that arrived to take me one stop to Durham was the Liverpool train.  It was odd getting on board a train headed for my home city and not slumping, exhausted, into a seat with a three hour journey ahead of me.  Instead, in a matter of minutes, I was hopping off again.

Durham station has been conspicuously smartened up, with ticket barriers and plenty of staff.  It's at the top of a ridge on the edge of the city centre, so glass walls have been installed to minimise the winds, and also to give you a perfect view of the cathedral:

All very nice, I'm sure you'll agree, but absolutely nothing as far as I'm concerned because it doesn't have a station sign.  Not a one.  There are signs saying "station" on them, and a big British Rail logo on a staircase -

- but nothing that actually said Durham on it.  I ran around in a slight panic - the BF was double parked, waiting for me to get in the car so we could go back to the hotel - looking for anything that would pass my strict station sign criteria.  In the end I headed back inside.  The ticket barriers meant I couldn't go onto the platform, so I ended up squatting on the concourse, capturing a platform sign through the glass wall.

A bit of a let down.  Not quite as good as it promised on first glance.  Underwhelming.  It seemed an appropriate way to finish my Durham visit, somehow.

The Almost Station

I quite like walking.  You might have realised that from the last eight years of blogs.  It's a soothing, calming way to get a bit of exercise and fresh air.  Certainly better than jogging.  My particular part of town seems to be some kind of jogger's hub, and I see them every evening, pounding the pavements in lurid leisurewear and sweating, occasionally pausing to lean up against a wall and hoik up part of their lower intestine.

Nope, a nice brisk stroll: that'll do me.  I went for a walk the other day and, because I'm always thinking about content for this blog, I headed out towards Moreton.  You see what I do to bring you valuable, interesting prose?  I'm a martyr, I really am.  I was going in search of a station that has been on the Merseyrail "to do" list for a long time, but still hasn't appeared - Town Meadow.

Between Moreton and Meols there's a long stretch without any stops at all.  When the line was built, this was because it was mostly empty fields and marshland, so there was no need for a station, and that's how things remained for the best part of the century.

Come the 1980s, however, new developments were springing up everywhere, and the space was finally colonised by housebuilders.  There's now a large, thriving estate either side of the Arrow Brooke, so a new station - called Town Meadow - was proposed.

Trouble is, the need for a station isn't that desperate.  Moreton and Meols have plenty of capacity for more passengers, and have coped well over the last few decades with this influx.  Most of the residents have cars - this is a pretty affluent area - so the number of people changing methods isn't high.  There are far more deserving cases on Merseyside, places where a new station could actually make a difference.  The station was first proposed in the mid-eighties, and since then, Merseyrail has got Bromborough Rake, Eastham Rake, Brunswick and Conway Park.  They were all deemed a better use of Merseytravel's money than Town Meadow.

Wandering out there I could see why it was still unbuilt.  I walked the length of Millhouse Lane to the railway and I saw at most half a dozen people in the street.  It was a quiet suburb.  Town Meadow station might see action during the rush hour and at weekends but for the rest of the day... not so much.

There's a bus stop and a layby right up against the railway fence, probably planned as an interchange point by Merseytravel, but it was deserted and it gets only one service.

And there's the other side of the line, too.  The railway is a demarcation point between civilisation and nature.  Across from the houses, there's only soggy marshland, and dunes, and then the sea.  I saw the distant hulk of Leasowe Lighthouse, and no other sign of human intervention.  The land there will never be built on, so the market for Town Meadow won't grow.

Reports of the station being built turn up now and then in the local press, with a local councillor standing hopefully by the tracks.  My copy of Merseyrail Electrics: The Inside Story (published 2001) even says that the timetables in the eighties were designed to accommodate the station when it was built.  No-one says it's a bad idea.  It's just not enough of a good one.

A train burned by me, the driver enjoying the chance to put his foot down without having to keep pausing.  I turned back and continued my stroll.  It was a two mile walk from there to Meols station, but it was ok for me.  I like that sort of thing.