Come to Metro-land

Oh, Tyne and Wear Metro!  I've loved you from afar for so long.  Ever since I spotted a map of your 1980s network in my Dad's AA Road Atlas I've yearned for you.  One of only three proper metro systems in the UK, along with the London Underground and the Glasgow Subway.  Yellow trains and stations and special fonts and... so exciting!

I was in Newcastle to collect regular, boring old Northern Rail stations (not really - I love you too Northern Rail, just in a different way).  Rather than take the fast train from Central to Sunderland I plunged into the underground, giddy with excitement at finally getting to ride the Metro after all these years.  I'm not kidding, either - this was my face for much of the journey:

The Tyne and Wear Metro was born out of a desire to upgrade the existing heavy rail network in the county and make it more useful for the late 20th Century.  As with Liverpool, the answer was to segregate the local lines from the national ones and to send them into tunnels under the city centre.  Merseyrail got the Link and the Loop; Newcastle got a cross formation, leading to the Metro's odd "pretzel" layout, which means a single train passes through Monument station twice on two different levels.

In many ways, the Metro was the precursor to London's Docklands Light Railway.  The electric trains were smaller and lighter, and ran to simple unstaffed halts with machines selling tickets.  When it opened in the early eighties, it brought a swift, exciting new form of transport to a region of the country suffering from unemployment and poverty.  I can still remember seeing it appear on Byker Grove, and feeling deeply envious of its bright yellow trains and quick services into the heart of the city.  The closest Luton ever got to its own underground was the system I plotted out on a street map in my spare afternoons.  Tyneside's network looked amazing.

Thankfully, experiencing the network for real wasn't a let down in any way.  The Tyne and Wear Metro really is a fast, efficient, sexy transport system.  Central Station was a little bit dated, a bit like the Merseyrail stations before their revamp, but it was still bright and cheerful: no brown plastic sucking the light away.

There was also that great corporate identity: the Calvert font, invented by the legendary Margaret Calvert and used throughout the system.  As is right and proper, the Calvert font has come to represent the city itself, just as Johnston does for London or Parisine does for Paris.  Nexus, the local transport executive, dropped it for a little while, but I'm pleased to see it's back in force.  Especially now that Tesco have stopped using something very similar and cheapened the brand.

The train clattered into the station, surprisingly noisy, and I found a seat.  It was on the hinge, the best place to sit on any train articulated in the middle, and I snuck a foot onto the circular floor plate so that I had one leg moving independently from the rest of my body.  We entered the tunnel, then for a few brief moments we were high above the Tyne on the QE II bridge.  I got a tantalisingly brief glimpse of the grey river and the arcs of the city's other bridges before we hit another tunnel on the Gateshead side.

The train felt oddly wide and spacious, like a European train instead of a British one.  I could have been in Prague or Berlin.  It was past the rush hour so the carriage was filling with students, pensioners, mums with buggies.  People using their cheap day tickets.

After Gateshead, we were back out in the open air, calling at little halts with curved metal roofs over the platforms.  Pelaw was the last station before we turned onto the Sunderland extension, opened in 2002.  Just when I thought that the Metro couldn't get any better, the man next to me broke out a copy of the latest James Bond book, Solo, proving that Tynesiders have excellent taste in reading as well as public transport.

SIDEBAR: I haven't actually read Solo.  I got it for Christmas, so it's on my shelf, but to be honest, there hasn't been a decent James Bond continuation novel since about halfway through John Gardner's Death is Forever.  After that, you could sense he was doing it just for the money (I'll just say "MicroGlobe One" and leave it there).  Raymond Benson couldn't write for toffee, though I bought his first three books in the hope they'd get better; they didn't.  Devil May Care was dreadful, and I still haven't managed to finish Carte Blanche; the glamourous location of an enormous recycling plant in East London was just too much for me.  I'll read Solo someday, even though a title ripped off Ian Fleming's original notes for The Man from UNCLE doesn't fill me with confidence.  The only good Bond books written since 1993 have been Charlie Higson's Young Bond series, which are superb adventures, tightly written and full of 007 lore - I can't recommend them enough.

SECOND SIDEBAR: I wonder why he took the dust jacket off?

The route out to Sunderland is far more rural, like the Northern Line to Southport; lots of fields and country lanes with the occasional station and level crossing.  I could see why the Sunderland extension hasn't been as successful as they'd hoped - the levels of population just aren't there, and it's far quicker to get a proper train from one city to the other than the stop-start Metro.  Meanwhile, I commemorated this important occasion by putting some superlative pop music on my iPod, because I'm just that predictable.

The extravagantly named Stadium of Light heralded our arrival on Wearside, then we were passing round the back of Monkwearmouth Station Museum to St Peter's.  It's a shame they couldn't bring the old station back into use - the platforms are still there - but then we were over the Wearmouth Railway Bridge, like a low-budget version of the Tyne crossing, and into Sunderland station.

I only had about 20 minutes until my next train south, so I didn't really get to see the best of Sunderland city centre.  What I did see reminded me of Birkenhead; a shopping centre that's really doing its best to carry on and ignore the enormous gravitational pull of a much larger city nearby.  There were pedestrianised streets and a couple of malls, but there were a lot of pawnbrokers and pound shops.

I really only had time to see one of Sunderland's major tourist attractions.  I passed up the opportunity to visit the local museum, or take in a river view, and instead I hunted down a local off licence.

Come on: how could I not go to Amy's Winehouse?  It's so incredibly tasteless it should be a listed building.

After that, I went back to the station.  It's a squat building, chucked up in the 1960s by British Rail as a way of getting as much money out of the city centre spot as possible.  Because the tracks were below street level, there was plenty of potential for retail developments, and they built a perfunctory railway station and a larger shopping precinct.

No-one will ever call that our nation's finest architectural hour.  Worse, the shops have mostly been colonised by greasy fast food restaurants and cheap cafes, driving the place even further downmarket.  Inside, the ticket hall got a bit of a revamp for the arrival of the Metro, but it's still not exactly St Pancras International.

Not until you get downstairs, anyway.  Uniquely, Sunderland station has both Metro and heavy rail trains using the same platforms; it's a single wide island with southbound trains on one side and northbound on the other.  To distract you from the sparse rock walls, Nexus commissioned artists to fill the space.  On the southbound platform Julian Germain's Found depicts real items lost on the Metro, but the northbound platform has the real treat.

What looks like a wall of glass blocks is actually a series of LED lights which are home to ghostly figures, wandering back and forth, a secret world of passengers.  Called Platform 5, and the work of Jason Bruges Studios, it's the kind of random, captivating piece of art that can completely change your perception of a place.  Without it, Sunderland station would be a bit of a mess.  With it, there's magic.

After a few minutes of watching the ghosts walk back and forth I found a seat to wait for my Northern Rail Pacer.  Another Metro train passed through first, and I had to resist every urge in my body to jump aboard it and scoot around the network.

Perhaps I should start Round the Metro We Go as my next itemised photo-based travel escapade when I've finished Northern Rail?  Perhaps I should start it now?  I'm very tempted.

Pointless

I feel let down.

For a couple of years now I've been praising redspottedhanky.com, the train booking website.  I've used it to book the majority of the trips on this blog for one simple reason - loyalty points.  Every time I booked a trip I got points that could then be turned into money off vouchers for further railway journeys.

Since I don't get paid to hie myself across the country, this was a nifty little bonus, and I happily said so.  I mentioned them in blog post after blog post.  I recommended them to friends.  I even booked through them rather than other, cheaper sites so that I could get my points.  That's what loyalty points do - they breed devotion.

Over Christmas, I booked three more trips, quite expensive ones.  One for the BF, who had to go to London for meeting, and two station collecting trips in January for me.  The points were duly added to my account in that last week of 2013.

I logged into my account on Monday, just to double check the details of my journey on Tuesday, and I thought I'd check my points balance as well.  I got this:

"Points correction"?  The 573 points I'd earned in the previous week - nearly six quid of train travel to me - had all been erased.

Apparently, you have to use all your points by the end of the year, or they're erased.  Even points awarded on the 31st of December.  It doesn't matter how many you have, how frequently you use the site, how soon you convert your points into loyalty purchases.  Come the 1st of January, anything on your account is wiped out.

I e-mailed their customer services.  The points had only been there a few days - surely they could be restored to my account?  I got a reply the next day, so I suppose I should give them credit for their rapid response:

Management have been consulted on this matter and a decision has been made that all points will not be reinstated as we do not have the facilities to accomodate this request.

All points expiration dates and full details are within the terms and conditions once agreed to when entering our loyalty scheme.

We apologise for all inconvenience caused.

Firstly, why bother consulting with management if you do not have the facilities?  If you can't do it, you can't do it.  If you can consult with managers about whether to do it or not, that kind of implies you could if you wanted to. 

Secondly, thanks.  Thanks for nothing.

I mentioned this on Twitter and got a bunch of replies from people who'd had the same problem - points just vanishing in 2014.  No-one was very happy about it.

We understand that you don't want points hanging around for years, unspent, redspottedhanky.  Or people building up hundreds of pounds worth of points and then getting free first class travel on the Caledonian Sleeper or something.  We're not naive.  If you look at that statement above, you'll see that I had just converted my points to a rail voucher: I was on top of things.  Incidentally, that rail voucher doesn't expire until the 31st of December 2020, so you're clearly fine with an expiration date in the distant future for some things. 

If the points expired after, say, a year, that would be fine.  You buy a ticket on the 1st March 2013; you've got until the 1st March 2014 to do something with it.  That's fair enough.  Or perhaps something similar to the slightly successful Tesco Clubcard scheme - if the account is unused for two years, the points are cancelled off. 

But an arbitrary cut-off date does no-one any favours - especially one right in the middle of the holiday period, where people have other things on their mind.  I know a fair few regular rail travelers who are deeply irritated that their little bonus has been lost.  Their little payback for being loyal has been thrown away.

It's left a nasty taste in my mouth.  I don't feel like a valued customer - the exact opposite of what a loyalty scheme should do.  I'm embarrassed that I recommended them to friends and readers.  I have a £4.92 e-voucher on my redspottedhanky account that I will have to spend.  You don't have to bother giving me the points; I shan't be returning to your website to spend them.

Better Living Through Railway Stations

There are times when I can be in amongst lovely people, wonderful people, people who care about me and who I care about, and I end up feeling more anxious and stressed than if I were in a room full of strangers.  Amongst a busy throng of people who know me I feel under pressure to talk and be funny and be clever.  My mind goes blank; no, worse, that little voice inside of me starts shouting.  You can't think of anything to say?  Not one word?  You're just going to hide at the back like you're six years old all over again?

It was New Year's Day, and I could feel the panic and anxiety building up.  I began to sweat.  My breath became short.  My fingers and toes twitched.  I needed to get away.

I snatched up my coat, mumbled an excuse, and went out into the rain.  The cooling drops helped, and a march around the block helped too, but there was still that anger with myself, the loathing, the fury, the disappointment.

Then I saw the sign for the railway station, so I went there.

It was deserted of course.  Unstaffed.  Cold white sodium lights bore down on the little concourse.  The ticket machine flicked through its cycle of sleep screens.  The wind whipped in through one porte cochere at the side and out the one at the front, past the taxi office with the silhouetted controller.  A single train was sat at one of the two platforms.

I felt myself began to unravel again, but in a good way this time.  My tightly knotted psyche began to uncurl.  My pounding heart settled into a calmer rhythm.

I think it's the anonymity.  I hate being a centre of attention; hate getting compliments; even hate it when people use my name.  In a railway station, I'm just a traveler.  Not a customer - not eyed up for my financial worth.  Hang around Marks and Spencer's for too long and people will think you're a shoplifter.  On a station I'm just a person passing through.  I can hang around it, sit to one side, breathe, and I'm anonymous.  Just a face amongst others.

Go to any railway station, big or small, and you're just a body in the mass.  You're a man who is only a silhouette.  It's why they're so beloved of spies and hookers and drug dealers, of course; why so many assignations begin beneath huge station clocks, where you can loiter and not attract attention.  Even the tiniest halt, a single platform beside the sea, encourages you to dwell and wait. 

I relaxed on that station concourse.  I became me again.  Because I wasn't expected to be me.

The State We're In

TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS ON THE 2012 NORTHERN RAIL MAP: 524
TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS ON THE 2013 NORTHERN RAIL MAP: 532

TOTAL STATIONS COLLECTED AS OF 31/12/2012: 158

TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS COLLECTED IN 2013: 136

TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS THAT WERE ADDED TO THE MAP AND I COUNTED WITHOUT THINKING BECAUSE I COLLECTED THEM AGES AGO, ONLY TO HAVE THEM REALLY MUCK UP MY SPREADSHEET AND HAVE ME SCRATCHING MY HEAD WHEN I LOOKED AT MY FIGURES JUST NOW: 1 (Liverpool Central)

TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS COLLECTED: 295
TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS STILL TO COLLECT: 237

PERCENTAGE COMPLETE: 55%

The map above shows all the stations on the map, with those highlighted yellow already crossed off.  There's a big patch in the top left that's uncollected.  Staffordshire and Derbyshire still have some holes.  The North East is also very patchy, and the Grimsby line is completely untouched: partly the fault of a landslip blocking the line for ages, partly due to the fact it's miles away.

In terms of the Passenger Transport Executives (the coloured areas) - well, I've completed Merseytravel, obviously.  West Yorkshire is the most tarted of the other PTEs, with 64% of its stations under my belt; next is Greater Manchester with 56%, South Yorkshire with 52%, and Tyne & Wear with 33%.  That last one sounds impressive, but there are actually only 6 stations in the orange area.

Other essential stats, for those of you who like that sort of thing:

MOST POPULAR POST OF 2013: This rather sniffy one about Northern Rail's Movember, which makes me think I must turn up on some Google hit somewhere. 

MOST POPULAR POST WHICH IS ACTUALLY ABOUT ME: The tally of all the stations I visited on the Cumbrian Coast Line, which makes me think you people only come here for the bullet points, and my carefully crafted prose is distinctly unimportant. 

MUSICAL ACTS WHO HAD THEIR WORKS APPROPRIATED FOR BLOG POST TITLES: The Zutons, Steeleye Span, Kylie Minogue, Blur, Oasis, Status Quo, T-Rex, Lady Gaga, Doris Day, Girls Aloud.

NUMBER OF DESPERATE REFERENCES TO RUSSELL TOVEY IN THE HOPE THAT HE GOOGLES HIMSELF AND REALISES WE ARE MADE FOR EACH OTHER: I'd rather not say.

BAFFLING GOOGLE SEARCH WHICH KEEPS RESULTING IN BLOG HITS: "Penelope Keith's tits".  While I am a great admirer of the former Margot Leadbetter, I'm sorry, you're not going to get anything of that sort round here.

NUMBER OF CORPORATE FREEBIES AND/OR INVITES TO CHRISTMAS PARTIES I'VE RECEIVED FROM NORTHERN RAIL: None.  Not a sausage.  Not so much as a single purple flip flop.  Obviously I'm not in it for the gifts, but come on guys, how about chucking a Northern Rail biro my way or something?  Look at all the free publicity I give you!  I'm almost always nice.

SUGGESTIONS RECEIVED FOR WHERE I SHOULD VISIT NEXT: Antwerp station, Ireland, Wales, every station in the United Kingdom.

NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO'VE OFFERED TO PAY ME TO VISIT THESE PLACES: Zero.

BEST STATION OF 2013: Redcar British Steel, obviously.

WORST STATION OF 2013: Pickering - not because it was particularly awful, but because it was on the map when it shouldn't have been there (it's a heritage station!) and so I object to it on principle. 

NUMBER OF BLOG POSTS IN 2013: 100.

Which seems like an appropriate place to stop.

Narcissism (Part Two)

I'm back for more ramblings about myself.  Like a tramp muttering about everyone who's wronged him under a motorway overpass.

JULY

Obviously the big news as the Summer got in full swing was that I went abroad.  Only to Belgium, but it counts.  I had a slightly disappointing trip on the Eurostar then got all goose bumpy at the Brussels Metro (its logo is still rubbish).

In fact, it was a surprisingly busy month all round, as I also visited a village fair, was a gooseberry in Dewsbury, and splurged all over West Yorkshire.  Not like that.

AUGUST

If I'm honest, I think the heat got to me in August.  How else do you explain blogs about my favourite Northern Rail tweeters?   About me seeing naked women where they didn't belong?  Or posting pictures of myself at 19?   Frankly, I was teetering on the edge of sanity, and going off to Humberside clearly didn't help.  I quite liked Hull though.  Is that further evidence of madness?

Clearly I needed a break, so at the end of the month I took myself off to Middlesbrough for another Epic Journey With Little Purpose.  I got to follow in the footsteps of Dame Victoria Wood at Battersby Junction, I romped over moors, and I was singularly unimpressed by a trip back in time.  The biggest, most important event however was a visit to Redcar British Steel, which I'm still pleased by four months later.  Some people want to visit the Taj Mahal or Machu Picchu: I get all excited by an underused halt in the middle of a steelworks.

SEPTEMBER

This was the month I came over all Halle Berry, as I was shortlisted for the Blog North Awards.  It provoked a mild panic as I realised I'd have to actually do some stuff for the blog, so I ran round Cheshire like an idiot.  I was basically whoring for votes.

OCTOBER

Fat lot of good it did me.  I ended up in second place in my category.  I'm going to let Ron Swanson speak for me, because he is always correct.

Incidentally, did I mention I'm up for another one?  There's a subtle link in the top right corner.  I don't have very high expectations for this one, because it's a national award and this blog is pretty niche, but all support is much appreciated. 

Still, it got me in the Guardian (or rather, a suggestion from the lovely Carrie did) next to a bunch of other weirdos.  Plus Jamie got me in the Wirral Globe.  I don't think I got many blog hits from my sudden media fame, but it was all very exciting.  And I got to go to Stalybridge with Ian and Manchester United Football Ground (just the station, mind) with Robert.  Definitely a high point for the year.

NOVEMBER

I purged a few demons in November, on a trip into Cheshire and the back end of Greater Manchester.  I also saw TV Funnyman Les Dennis on the platform at Wilmslow station, briefly giving the blog an aura of showbiz glamour it sadly couldn't maintain.   

DECEMBER

This just happened.  In fact, this month is still happening.  Do you need me to go over it again?  Mormons in Chorley,  pigeons in Sheffield, public toilets in suburbs.  I've yet to hear from Merseyrail about my proposals for the new trains, but I assume it's just a matter of time. 


And that was that.  Twelve fairly exciting months.  I'll do one more blog post with all the number crunching for this year, stations visited, tea drunk, that sort of thing, and then it'll be 2014 and we can forget all about it.  Hurrah!

Narcissism (Part One)

I had thought that my end of year post would be in the form of a thoroughly hilarious parody of those old Clive James New Year's Eve shows.  There would be puns, out of context photos, a glamorous assistant, "Miss Yasmin Arafat!", all the best kind of jokes that would mean nothing to anyone born after about 1989.

The thing is, there's a very good reason why Clive James is a genius and a legend, and I am not.  Clive can write complex, clever, funny sentences that are filled with truth and accuracy without breaking into a sweat.  He is a hero.  After a couple of attempts at opening paragraphs that were hollow, cold, and worst of all, not funny, I abandoned the plan and settled on a straight down the line, recap of the year.  It's a recap that I'm going to divide in two, with a little numbers post at the end, for the simple reason that I've written 97 blog posts in 2013 (my most productive year ever!) (well, if you call this "productive") so if I write three more it'll be a nice round 100.  That's the kind of quality you can expect round here - stuff padded out to breaking point just to fill a slot.  Think of me as a blogging version of ITV.

JANUARY

I headed down south because it was my Mum's - well, let's just say it was a significant birthday, shall we?  It meant I got to experience the joys of Milton Keynes Central, a great glass slab of a building in the middle of a great big slab of a town.  I overcame the misery of the City without a Soul by spending my birthday at the National Railway Museum, rubbing up against the Mallard and buying a metal tally counter which has since mysteriously disappeared.  I suspect the BF may have had a hand in this after I began clicking it absent-mindedly while watching telly.  I also got to go to Weatherfield, the Quay Street set which has just been decommissioned, where I was given one of Norris's lollipops.  That's not a euphemism.

I did do some proper tarting though, trudging through the snow to find the Poppleton station garden and the epic grandeur of York station.  I haven't been back to that pub yet.  Yet.

FEBRUARY

I went off-piste this month, failing to collect any proper Northern Rail stations and instead heading to Birmingham.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  And while Moor Street was a delight, New Street was a hole and the trams were terrible, so I shan't be rushing back (or getting a job with the West Midlands Tourist Board).  

MARCH

Back on track (do you see what I did there?) this month with a jaunt to West Yorkshire for the World Heritage site at Saltaire and the more down to earth charms of Bingley's canal system.  I also threw in a trip to Buxton, though I sadly missed a performance of Little Voice at the Opera House with Beverley "Liz McDonald" Callard (on the plus side, I met La Callard in the flesh later that year).  I also got quite angry about some works at Aigburth station, which turned out to be a load of fuss about nothing, which will teach me for believing everything I read on the internet. 

APRIL

In April I did a bit of wandering round the fringes of Greater Manchester, but the big news was the first of this year's two Epic Journeys With Little Purpose: the Cumbrian Coast Line.  Some of the quietest and most isolated stations in England, squeezed between the hills and the Irish Sea.  I lost a little part of my heart to Barrow-on-Furness, went in search of radiation-twisted freaks, got quite depressed in a field, and sang a hymn of joy to the station tea room at Millom.  Then Northern Rail went and added Dalegarth to the map, meaning I'm going to have to go back to Ravenglass some day. 

MAY

I went all map obsessed again in May.  Firstly, Merseyrail issued a new map that somehow managed to forget to show Liverpool Central, the busiest station on the entire network.  Secondly, Northern Rail reissued their map, adding six new stations to it for seemingly no other reason than to annoy me.  They probably have someone beavering away in the graphic design department trying to find others to add just to wind me up ("would adding Penzance be too cruel?").

In actual travel news, I got to visit Tyneside for the first time ever.  I didn't get to go on the Metro - I've got that penciled in for 2014 - but I did visit George Stephenson's home village and Hadrian's Wall Country. 

JUNE

An extended complaint about Victorian inefficiencies heralded my visit to Bradford, quickly followed by me getting lost on a moor and ending up baht hat in Ilkley.  Far more pleasant times were had when I went to the end of the Metrolink with Ian and Robert, and we ended up walking around South Manchester talking about the noise trains make before an announcement.  In case you were wondering, yes, they are both single, and yes, the BF occasionally wishes he was too. 

That's enough navel gazing for the time being, I think.  Another six months to come in a day or two.  I mean, another six months' work of linking to come; I haven't found a way to compress time.

All Good Things...

Nothing lasts forever.  This is a basic fact.  Everything must die.

I accept this, but I don't like it.  Some things should go on and on and never stop.  Like Bond films.  And Bernard Cribbins.  I sort of know they're going to finish eventually, but I'm happy not knowing where or when it'll happen.

When there's a finite limit, I become anxious.  I get sad.  I get moody.  It's the difference between knowing you're going to die and knowing when you're going to die.

I bring this up because Ian is at number 149 in his countdown of 150 Great Things About The Underground.  One more to go.  One more wonderful, carefully written, thoughtful piece about something I love.  

Ian and I have become friends over the last couple of years, entirely through the power of blogging and the internet.  You could say that I'm biased, but our friendship is based on the fact that I love his writing.  It was only later that I found out he's a top bloke as well.  I'm still annoyed that he abandoned his Twenty Five Years Ago blog.  His music is also fantastic - he has a whole album of great, soulful songs you can listen to here.  

Ian told me that he knows what number 150 is going to be, but he won't tell me what it is.  I don't want to know.  Part of me never wants to read entry number 150.  While it's incomplete, it never ends.

Read the whole of the tribute to a transport titan here - http://150greatthingsabouttheunderground.com