Wet and Cold

I was heading further north than I'd ever been without crossing over into Scotland.  Winter is properly kicking in, and I won't be able to wander across moors and hillsides in the dark, so this was a bit of a last hurrah for 2012.  I picked somewhere I thought was sufficiently urban, sufficiently easy to get to, sufficiently do-able.  I picked Darlington.

I booked my tickets a week in advance, so I could get points on redspottedhanky.com, and waited for my day out.  Unfortunately, in the meantime, the Weather Gods decided to dump massive quantities of water on the North-East.  Floods.  Landslips.  Drownings.  Appalling catastrophes all over the place.  The East Coast Main Line was thrown into chaos.

I wasn't even sure if there'd be a train for me, but it was there, the 06:15 from Lime Street to Scarborough and Newcastle (splitting at York).  As instructed, I sat in the rear three coaches for the Darlington portion of the train.  The train started up, and as we hit Edge Hill, the camp conductor came over the intercom.  It seemed that it wasn't guaranteed that we'd get to Newcastle.  An embankment had collapsed onto the line between Darlington and Durham, but some trains were getting through on an alternative route; it was up in the air as to whether we'd be lucky.  The woman across the aisle sighed and busied herself with her knitting.

The morning slowly arrived as we headed east, first just a glow turning the black sky an inky blue, then streaks of pink and yellow light bursting out over hills and houses.  I wasn't hopeful.  The weather forecasters had seemed positive about today, saying there wouldn't be any rain, but that wasn't the problem: the problem was the after effects of all the previous downpours.  I had ambitions for the day, and my pessimistic soul assumed they'd be dashed.

After Leeds, the conductor made his announcement: we wouldn't be going to Newcastle.  His announcement was a little garbled, since he continually mixed up Darlington and Durham.  "Passengers for Durham... no, Darlington... can change at York.  Passengers for Durham... no, Darlington... no, Durham, sorry... should get a rail replacement coach service from York."  I opened the National Rail app: there was a train to Darlington leaving York about five minutes after we were due to arrive.  Not too shabby.

I'd never been to York station before, so that was an excitement in itself.  I didn't have time to look around though - I had to find my train, which was on platform 10.  There was a moment of panic when I realised I had gone in completely the wrong direction and was on platform 1, necessitating a mad dash back over the bridge I'd just used, but I made it in time and we headed onwards.

It meant I could finally see the effects of the flooding on the landscape.  New lakes had formed in fields; trees became islands.  A man in wellies was tentatively testing the depth with a stick in front of him.  We were only a foot or two above the new sea level.

After a pause at Northallerton we pulled into Darlington station.  Which was a delight.

A proper, old-fashioned iron and steel Victorian terminus.  I loved it.

I shouldn't have been surprised, of course.  Darlington is where the railways began, after all.  The Stockton & Darlington railway was opened in 1825, largely as a means of getting coal from County Durham out to the coast, but with a nice little sideline in passengers.  This was where George Stephenson trialled his steam engine - the Locomotive - and where ideas about transport were first formed.  The Liverpool & Manchester Railway may have been the first proper intercity link, but the Stockton & Darlington was where its seeds were sown.

It's been commemorated with a lengthy frieze across the ends of the bay platforms, commissioned, according to the plaque, to celebrate 150 years of the railway.  Local art teachers did the painting, and the text is all in that good old reliable railway font.

Less lovely are the customer facilities.  A travel centre and shops have been inelegantly inserted into the frame of the building, 1970s intrusions that have no regard for the rest of the building.

It's like they just didn't care, isn't it?  I don't have too much respect for the heritage lobby.  I don't see the point of preservation for the sake of it.  That doesn't mean that I support ugliness, though - it just means that I want buildings to be used properly.  Was this the only way they could insert a WH Smiths?  Really?

I couldn't work out how to get out of the station, at first: there seemed to be tracks blocking the way all over the place.  Finally I realised that the gloomy looking subway was actually the way out.

I emerged in a car park.  The station's got a bay it doesn't need any more - which would be the perfect place for the ticket office and the shops, incidentally - and they've turned it into a pay and display area.  It feels a bit grubby.  At first I wasn't even sure if this was the proper exit.

The big impressive tower outside, complete with the double arrow logo, reassured me that I was in the right place.  Which was lucky, because there wasn't a single station sign.

Come ON, Darlington.  You're the birthplace of the railways!  You must do better.  No sign, a rubbish car park, a manky travel centre... no, if I'm honest, the lack of a sign was the thing that annoyed me the most.  That and the man on the tannoy whose Durham accent was so thick I couldn't understand a word he said.  It sounded like someone gulping down jelly on a loudspeaker.

I had to go back through the subway, back into the station, and settle for this as proof that I'd been there.  Bad show.

I walked down the hill and into the town.  The river was pouring through the culvert by the ring road, filthy brown from the floods, just managing to splash the brickwork on the bridges as it passed.

I realised that the footbridge, further on, was actually where the man from the BBC had stood the day before.  He'd started in the morning, excitedly pointing out that the water was just below the bridge deck, and then sounded more and more dejected as the day wore on and it didn't get any higher.  I think he was hoping for an exciting flood, and maybe an appearance on Auntie's Bloomers fleeing the deluge.

It's funny; that photo makes it look quite pretty.  What you can't see is the ring road on the right, and Darlington's astonishingly ugly Town Hall on the left.  I take that back.  Yes, the Town Hall is a massive lump of grey concrete, completely out of all proportion - but it's so hideous I quite liked it.  A bit like how a really ugly dog is actually quite endearing.  Even the large, windswept plaza outside couldn't dim its charms for me.

The town was far nicer.  It was humming with activity; busy shoppers clattering about trying to be good and finishing their Christmas shopping early.  The decorations were up - they always look a bit sad in the daytime, a bit run down.  It's almost as if they're sulking because they're turned off.  There was a fine market hall, with a clock tower.  I stopped to take a photo and got a smile from a passer by - not a "what an idiot" smirk, more a "it is a great building, isn't it?" sort of look.

I was cold by now, and tired and hungry.  Normally I'd have stopped for a cup of tea, but I had places to go, so I nipped into Cooplands Bakery for a pork and cranberry sausage roll.  Unfortunately, while Sayers are quite happy to throw baked goods at you that scald the roof of your mouth and give you bright red fingertips, Cooplands prefer to give you a tepid sausage.  Disappointing.

I found myself staring behind the counter - what the hell is a curd tart?

I thought maybe it was what they called an egg custard, but a bit of subsequent Googling reveals that it's a sort of cheesy tart with raisins in it.  It's a Yorkshire speciality apparently.  I think I'll stay on the western side of the Pennines when it comes to baked goods.

I was pleased by Darlington, but I didn't have time to hang around.  There's a railway museum in the town, next to North Road station, and I could get in a half an hour visit before my train arrived.  I wandered out of the town, after a bit of hassle crossing the ring road.  There were barriers circling a roundabout, herding pedestrians back and forth, but seemingly offering no way of actually crossing it.  Only after a bit of searching did I find the subway, leading to one of those pleasing roundabout islands where you're below the traffic in a little green oasis.  I love those, though there I do always wonder what would happen if someone blocked up the subways and trapped me down there.  I think I'd just go feral and make it my own private kingdom.  They'd find me, weeks later, shaggy of beard and stark naked, talking my own made up language and living off discarded chip wrappers that got blown down there.

Through a tremendous act of will, I managed to walk past the Art Deco Odeon without going in and watching Skyfall; I've only seen it three times, after all.  (I did check the showtimes as I passed though... just in case). Crossing the road by Sadie the Bra Lady (that's a shop, not a local woman with her baps out) I headed up Station Road towards the Darlington Railway Museum.  Sorry - Head of Steam.  Presumably extensive market research indicated that people were more likely to visit if it sounded like a pub, rather than a museum.

The museum's housed in the old North Road station, a lovely building that reminds us how good station architecture can be.  And that's all I can tell you about the station because, unfortunately, it was closed.  In the summer it opens at ten am, but after October it opens at eleven.  All I could look at was the car park, and a very nice replica of Stephenson's Locomotion in the forecourt.

I wished I'd read the opening times on the website more carefully; I could have had that cuppa in the town centre after all.  Now I had a half an hour wait at what's left of North Road station.

This must be the most dramatic fall from grace for any railway station on the network.  The main building and engine shed have been replaced by a purple shelter that doesn't even have any seats.  The old station was clearly visible through the bars, taunting me with its prettiness, while I stomped around on the sodden tarmac to try and keep warm.

Even the old station sign's prettier.  Not quite sure why a railway museum nowhere near the coast is doing a Titanic exhibition, mind.  Also, there's no way to get into the museum directly from the train, which seems odd; you have to go round the block to get in.  I know it only gets served by decrepit old Pacers these days, but railway fans are railway fans.

The track is covered at one end by the old shed, but passengers are barred from going that far.  This is presumably a Health and Safety precaution, as it's not in great shape.  The glass in the roof is broken, the supports look weak, and local graffiti artists have scrawled all over it.  It could be a decent waiting area for the poor souls sheltering from the Teeside winds, but obviously, that's just a pipe dream.

I rammed my hands in my pockets to keep them warm.  I was the only passenger waiting - it wasn't the kind of place you'd hang around if you didn't have to.  I missed that cup of tea.

Passing Through

Have you ever wanted to watch some blurry, slowed-down footage of building work shot through a train window?  NOW'S YOUR CHANCE.

That's James Street's platform 1, currently being transformed into a gleaming white paradise.  As you can see, all the brown plastic seating has gone, along with the yellow formica walls, and there are plenty of workmen milling about.  Meanwhile, if you look at platform 2, there are piles of new cladding waiting to be installed.

On a related note: poor James Street.  Central got a whole website devoted to its works, along with competitions and posters where the station talked to you.  James Street's just got an adjusted network map and that's about it.

Tracking the Past

It takes five minutes to get from Hooton to Capenhurst on the Wirral Line, one of the longest sections without a stop.  The funny thing is, there used to be a station in between, and today I went out and had a look at what's left.

Don't get excited - there's not much.  It was in existence for nearly 120 years, there's hardly any evidence that Ledsham station even existed.  Even the Station Hotel, which used to be right next door, has been renamed the Cheshire Yeoman (and painted a horrendous orange colour).

The station building itself, a mock-Tudor construction of the type favoured by the railway company (see also: Spital) was constructed on the road bridge.  The spot where the building used to be is now blocked off with railings, though the bridge wall is original.

The artistic curl of the stone work on top is a Victorian rebuke to the 1990s bridge a few yards up, with its dull metal walls.

The principal virtue of the newer bridge (apart from carrying Welsh-bound traffic far more efficiently) is that it lets you see the other side of the older one.  That reveals white tiled bricks, the last remnant of the footbridge to take passengers to the platforms.

You can see them even more clearly from the pub side of the road; the ticket office would have been on the left and then the footbridge and steps extending the length of the bridge.

For us looking at this quiet line in the 21st century, it's hard to believe that main-line trains to London passed over these tracks.  You get a hint of the size of the railway here from the double arch of the bridge: the one on the right is now almost completely obscured by undergrowth.  There used to be four tracks here.  And that hump in the middle?  The remains of an island platform.

Obviously, when they built the new bridge, there was no longer any need for the second arch.

Ledsham was closed in 1959, done for by its distance from any sizeable settlement.  Ironically, in the years since, Ellesmere Port has stretched and expanded, and now a large housing estate known as Ledsham Park lies to the east of the station site.  It's not enough to cause Ledsham to be reopened (Little Sutton station is on the other side of the new houses) but it does make you wonder what could have been.  If it had managed to hang on another twenty years or so we might have a big park and ride facility here.

As it is, there's just a nice pub.  That'll do.

Ruins

Thanks to an afternoon with Robert, I believe I now know what it's like to be a parent to a toddler.  "Are we there yet?"  "Do you know where we're going?"  "We've walked miles."  "Not more walking."  On and on, the bleating of a whining infant in my ear, as we headed out of Oldham town centre and towards Mills Hill station.  Ian, for his part, may have had just as many complaints, but he had the good grace to keep quiet about them.

To be fair to Robert, Middleton Road is really rather dull.  A minor rain shower piddled on us as we progressed down its long, utterly straight length, passing less-than-ideal housing and the occasional shop.  There wasn't much to surprise or intrigue as at first, but a gap in the buildings gave us our first architectural ruin: a silhouetted mill, long closed.

As we would soon find out, the ruins were the beauties on this road.  We'd passed into Chadderton, a mill town now swallowed up by Oldham, and its former wealth kept popping up in ever more parlous states.  The town hall clung on, reborn as a registry office, with dull municipal-font signs pointing the way for "ceremonies" and plenty of room for the Rolls to drop the bride off outside.

It was the start of a run of fine civic buildings, but sadly in a much more depressing state.  A beautiful ironwork sign proclaimed Chadderton Library, a Carnegie library at that, but the building was empty.  The actual books were now in the "Chadderton Wellness Centre", which is a place I'd quite like to burn to the ground just for that bloody awful name.

At least that building has a future, albeit as glorified offices.  The wonderful Art Deco swimming baths next door are marked for demolition, after repairs were declared too expensive.  People do still swim, don't they?  It's not something we've all forgotten how to do, is it?  It seems that it's regarded as a frivolity, a luxury in our days of ever decreasing Council budgets and ever larger cuts.  At a time when Wirral Council is proposing getting rid of lollipop ladies and refusing to cut the grass in parks, a swimming pool seems like an indulgence. No matter how useful, how healthy, how necessary it is.  It makes me incredibly depressed.

Never mind, there's a big Asda just over the road, so at least we can eat shit food on our way into hell.

We pressed on, a little down hearted.  Fortunately Robert was almost caught staring into someone's front room, so that cheered us up.  We'd all agreed that staring in people's windows as you passed was fair game - if they haven't put nets up, what do they expect? - and we'd seen some truly spectacular pieces of tat on windowsills en route.  Robert had taken it a bit too far, though, and actually stopped in his tracks to read a sign on a house - not noticing the burly man admiring the hustle and bustle of the passing scene from inside.  Our footsteps were just a little bit quicker then in case he decided to object to our nosing in person.

Still, it got us to Mills Hill that little bit quicker.  We shared the platform with a gang of rowdy men who were clearly preparing for a night out in Leeds.  They had carrier bags full of beer to sustain them on the long arduous journey, which would normally irritate me, but one of them was quite fit so I just had a bit of a perv and then we went to a different carriage.

At least it had a decent sign.  Our next station, Castleton, just had a bit of board on the bridge over the tracks.  Not very impressive at all.

When you get round to replacing this with a TfGM sign, Manchester, I expect something more impressive.

Castleton might be the most wonderful town on earth.  It might be filled with buildings made of ivory and gold and all the residents are supermodels.  I wouldn't know, because I spent the whole time staring at the pavement, avoiding the mountains of dog faeces that were freely distributed across the place.  There were piles of the stuff.  Are there no plastic bags in Castleton?

Soon we were approaching Rochdale itself, and the turd count plummeted.  Our relatively quiet main road turned into a storming dual carriageway, so we took a side road towards the station.  It was exactly what you'd imagine if someone said "Rochdale": shiny red terraced houses stretching away from the eye in straight lines.  A couple of kids passed us, their delicate Asian features seeming unlikely hosts for outrageously strong Northern accents.

I'm not entirely sure what Dunsterville was, but they seemed keen for us to find it; there was another sign on the next street corner.  They hadn't cleaned that one either.

The glass minaret of a mosque rose up over the terraces as the light began to fade.  We turned back under the railway at a row of shops, passing up the opportunity to eat at Cheeky Chicken (Love chicken?  Love Cheeky Chicken!) or Chill-Grill (Grill of a Lifetime!).

The tentacles of the Metrolink were stretching out here, too.  A stop for the Rochdale extension looked pretty well-formed to me, even though it's still a couple of years away from being used.  I was surprised that the stop was outside the station though.  The route from Oldham to Rochdale is another former railway line, and I didn't understand why they weren't just using the same old facilities.  It's actually to stop the trams from having to cross the mainline railway which seems, you know, sensible.

From the outside, the station's drab and uninspiring, but it's subtly lovely inside, with a polished wooden roof and glass-walled waiting facilities.  The loveliest thing of all is a clock commemorating the Rochdale Pioneers, fathers of the co-operative movement and the first people to be "gud with fud".

We had a bit of a wait for our train; there was one that headed straight for Manchester, but we wanted a stopping service so we could cram in one last station before the light faded completely.  We took up spots on the bench on the platform, shivering a little at the cold.

I got excited for a moment, thinking Rochdale at least had an ALF, but no, it had one of those crappy corporate signs.  I shall have to come up with an acronym for them.  I don't think it will be a polite one.

With the sun dying rapidly, we raced south, past Castleton and Mills Hill and back into Chadderton to alight at Moston station.  There was a pleasing mural welcoming us.  All very nice, but painting a picture of a gleaming Eurostar when you've just climbed off a rattling Pacer is kind of rude.

That wasn't the true delight of the station.  Moston had not one, but two signs outside.  I know.  Too much.  I couldn't contain myself.

And that was it: four stations safely tucked away.  I feel a bit bad about not really experiencing the full joy of Rochdale town centre, but there are still a couple of stations beyond I haven't got yet, so I've got to come back.  Plus, of course, the tram will be here soon enough, so that'll be fun.

We trudged back to the Metrolink line at Hollingwood, gawping at the enormous televisions some of Chadderton's residents had on the wall (they must all have the worst eye strain).

There was more to the evening of course; Ian had schlepped all the way from London, so we fully intended getting our money's worth out of his company.  There was food, and beer, and jokes, and some fairly rude comments about the people at the next table in the restaurant, but I'll draw a veil over it to protect the innocent.  I'll just leave you with this photo and let you imagine the rest by yourself.

Catching Mumps

TRAMS!

Trams are great, aren't they?  Everyone loves trams.  Even the most miserable, Thatcherite, Clarkson-worshipping imbecile gets a little smile on their face when a tram comes tootling round the corner.  Especially if they blow their little whistle as they do so.

TRAMS!

Manchester is, of course, the capital of British trams (sorry Blackpool), and its lovely Metrolink system has recently opened a new extension to Oldham.  As Ian was up from That London, he and Robert and I headed over to Victoria so we could ride the new line.  We avoided the gentleman enjoying the men's toilets a little too much and clambered aboard a bright yellow tram.

The noise of the new trams is a wonderful thing: an electric whoosh, a slipping, sliding hum that flows through you.  It's second only to the noise of the Jubilee line trains in the list of "unexpectedly lovely noises on public transport", and certainly beats the wailing of unattended children and rap music played through a mobile phone speaker.  Sadly, we couldn't get seats on the hinge - the best place to be on a tram: FACT - and instead settled for one end.

The line to Oldham used to be a railway line, and it shows.  The tram doesn't go through busy streets, but instead rises above them on viaducts, or beneath them past grassy embankments.  We were separate from regular traffic, allowing us to get some decent speed, before we finally terminated at Oldham Mumps.

My favourite thing about Oldham Mumps is that everyone calls it Oldham Mumps, as though that's a perfectly normal name for a station.  It's in the Mumps area of Oldham, which, according to Wikipedia, comes from an old name for beggar but... come on.  It's mumps.  It's big swollen necks and only being able to eat ice cream and soup and getting a couple of days off where you get to watch The Sullivans and school's telly (which suddenly becomes fascinating when you're watching it through choice).  If I was Metrolink, I'd have taken the opportunity to rename the stop - Oldham Prettyplace, or Oldham Gorgeous, or something more positive.

Not that it's that nice at the moment.  This is just a temporary halt.  The plan is for the line to eventually pass through the town centre, into a bus/tram interchange being built over the road, and then on to Rochdale.  Until then, there's a load of gravel acting as the terminus for the line.

We walked into the town centre proper, along a road that was flatlining.  Oldham Mumps railway station was demolished in 2009, and then it took three years of construction before the line reopened.  The effect of that closure was stark.  Yorkshire Street was full of those businesses you get on the way to stations - the chippies, the kebab shops, the down-at-heel bars.  Head to Lime Street in Liverpool or Brook Street in Chester and you'll see the same mix.  Places you only wander into after dark, probably with a skin full of ale, for just a quick doner for the trip home.  Without the station acting as a magnet, that trade had collapsed, and now there were shuttered businesses everywhere.  It had also killed the daytime trade, those odd shops that manage to exist on the periphery of town centres where the Business Rates are a little bit lower - independent bed shops, sari stores, Polish supermarkets.  Yorkshire Street had effectively fallen off the map.

Sadly, the reopening of Mumps is just going to be a temporary fillip to the area.  The Oldham town centre route will go via Union Street, parallel to Yorkshire Street, and then people won't need to come this way at all; there will be four new tram stops in the centre which people could use instead of walking.

We paused on an elevated square outside the parish church.  Across the way, the Old Town Hall was still going on about Oldham's Olympic legacy; I'm not quite sure what the legacy is, given the town's somewhat peripheral involvement in the Games.  They haven't even got a gold postbox.

There was something going on.  Crowds were gathering behind tape, leaving the road free.  A parade of some sort.  We debated what kind - perhaps it was a Remembrance Day march, or even Oldham Pride - before Ian's Googling came up with the answer: Santa was coming to town.  Not the proper one, obviously, because Father Christmas doesn't exist (sorry kids) but a man in a big red suit pulled by real reindeer (emphasis theirs).

We hung around to welcome "Santa's Reindeer Army", which involved bagpipers, for some reason.  There is never a reason for bagpipers.  Giant puppet characters and "the stars of the Oldham Coliseum's panto" paraded past, cheering the kids in the front row and handing out sweets.  We didn't get any, dammit.

Santa arrived, in his sleigh pulled, as promised, by real reindeer.  The best part of that was the horsey Claire Balding-type who was leading the animals, and who looked distinctly unamused throughout.  Santa waved, the kids waved back and cheered, then an Oldham Borough Council streetsweeper picked up the reindeer poo, and it was all over.

We paused for a coffee and a panini, then walked out the other side of the town centre.  It wasn't going to be all trams.  Since we were in the area, I'd persuaded Robert and Ian to help me collect some Northern Rail stations, and so we had a walk ahead of us to get to the first one.  After nearly being mown down on a pedestrian crossing by an idiot who jumped a red light to turn, we walked down Middleton Road, where we came across the nascent form of a future tram stop.

Come 2014, this will be Westwood tram stop, and the entry point into the town centre for Metrolink.  For now, it's just a couple of (surprisingly large) slabs of concrete.

TRAMS!

They're great.