Robert Hampton

United Utilities sent a letter to our home recently enclosing a notice about our sewers, presumably to comply with some legal niceties.

It’s fairly mundane stuff, until you get halfway down the page and find this little nugget (click to enlarge):-

The phrase “railway undertaker” conjures up an image of a funeral director who loads coffins into the 0821 to Southport. I suspect however, it means undertaker in the sense of “an undertaking” – i.e. a railway company. Presumably there is some arcane law which requires specific reference to be made to “railway undertakers”.

It’s yet another legacy of how important the railways were in the good old days – I suspect there are thousands of these laws still on the statute books.

I found it amusing, but maybe I should be worried about the staff at Aigburth station going to the toilet – if the sewers are not maintained by United Utilities, where does the waste go?

I already blogged about my visit to Metrolink yesterday, but that was really only a sidebar to the real reason for my trip to Manchester. I wanted to ride the once a week service from Reddish South to Denton and visit both stations, surely the least used on the British railway network.

It’s such a special occasion that it warrants a whole new blog, so I proudly present: The Station Master! This is a new project of mine, aiming to visit the obscure and forgotten nooks and crannies of the UK rail network. It will either blossom and grow into something special, or I will update it twice and forget about it. Still, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. My first proper post (about Reddish South and Denton) is up now.

Comments here are closed – please head over to The Station Master blog and comment there.

While visiting Manchester with Scott to bag some Parliamentary railway stations (of which more later) I had a chance to ride the new Chorlton line of Metrolink.

The line opened only eight days ago and still has that new (tram)car smell – the trams are spotlessly clean. The trams were already busy, although some passengers just appeared to be riding the line for its novelty value. Even so, this bodes well for the future.

The Chorlton line is just the first of several new tram lines which will be opening in Greater Manchester over the next few years. Meanwhile, the number of tram routes in Liverpool remains firmly fixed at zero. It’s a shame that Merseytravel failed to get its network off the ground. I love Merseyrail, but there are big parts of the city which are not served and a tram system could have gone some way to filling in the gaps.

Will I ever get to ride a tram around the Liverpool City Centre Loop, which should have been up and running by 2008? Probably not for the foreseeable future, sadly.

“…Appledore and Chasewater and Saffron Walden,
Midsomer Norton, Berry Brow, Swanbourne, Waterfoot, Templecombe,
Flax Bourton and Egremont and Adlestrop and Ashton-under-Wychwood,
Starcross and Sturminster Newton and Sampford Courtenay…”

The BBC Archive project has turned up a lot of gems, but this has to be one of the best so far, as Derek Hart reads a lyrical tribute to the stations axed by Beeching.

It’s not quite as depressing as this list makes out: a few of the stations named were actually reprieved and survive to this day. Bonus points if you can spot the two which are now part of Merseyrail.

A candidate for news story of the year: a man turned up at Wrexham General station and attempted to board a train… with a pony.

Arriva Trains have helpfully released stills from the CCTV footage, one of which I have stolen to reproduce below. Click through to the BBC News report for a slideshow which includes such lovely images as Horse in Lift, Horse on Footbridge and Horse at Ticket Office.

I’m willing to bet that nobody would have batted an eyelid on Merseyrail.

This is either terrible or brilliant, depending on your point of view. I think it just about makes it into the latter category, despite a dodgy rap about halfway through. The woman at 2:15 is my favourite part of the whole thing. Bonus points for using the Calvert font for the titles and credits.

Hat tip to @TwopTwips on Twitter for alerting a grateful nation. Now, who’s up for Merseyrail: The Opera?

Following on from the announcement of North West Electrification and the development of High Speed 2, the Government has confirmed that The Great Western Main Line is getting wired up as well.

This is great news – electric trains are more efficient, more reliable and better for the environment. But in the same announcement it is also confirmed that we will be saying goodbye to the InterCity 125.

The Government announced today it has decided to resume the IEP procurement and proceed with the Agility Trains (Hitachi and John Laing) consortium’s plans for replacement for the nation’s fleet of ageing intercity high speed trains. … The Programme seeks to replace the distinctive “Intercity 125″ High Speed Train (HST) diesel fleet procured by British Rail during the 1970s and 1980s with a new, higher capacity, more environmentally friendly train.

The new trains will be introduced from 2016, so one of the best trains ever produced will be consigned to the scrapyard in favour of a glorified Voyager. It’s “progress”, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. A railway without the HST will be a quieter, blander place.

On Friday, the UK rail industry said goodbye to the Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railway Company, which was killed off after its parent company concluded that it would never turn a profit.

I never experienced the joys of this company’s trains, although I’d hoped to try and arrange a ride sometime this year (procrastination FAIL).

The new Wrexham-Marylebone service was launched in 2008, restoring direct trains to London from Wrexham, forty years after they were withdrawn. For passengers, WSMR promised a railway experience akin to that of yesteryear, using refurbished ex-BR coaches with a spacious, roomy layout. Cooked meals, freshly prepared on board (no microwaved bacon baps here) were served at your seat. All this for far less than the fares of rival operator, Virgin Trains.

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July brought big changes to the newspaper industry, as The Times started charging for access to its web site. This was supposed to ensure a steady income stream for the newspaper, putting it on a secure financial footing for the future. However, it also resulted in the Times being completely removed from the online chatter of the blogosphere, as its news coverage and columnists were no longer accessible to the internet hoi-polloi. Still, I’m sure this decision made sense to someone somewhere.

The Supreme Court ruled that gay people facing persecution are entitled to claim asylum in the UK. I welcomed the decision, although my blog post is curiously vague about precisely why I welcomed it. Hmm…

In other gay-related news, I reviewed, with sadness, a booklet from the US Military discussing its anti-gay don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

Elsewhere, health and safety went mad as one person suggested banning rugby scrums. I felt uncomfortable on a train full of Orange Lodge marchers and I defended the traditional sitcom from an onslaught of criticism from trendy TV reviewers.

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What a year 2010 was! It had twelve months, each consisting of at least 28 days. On some of those days I made blog entries. Here are the highlights.

I began the year in January fretting about an alleged Crystal Maze remake starring Amanda Holden. This story fortunately turned out to be utter bollocks. Ginger people again proved that (yours truly excepted) they have no sense of humour or perspective. Britain experienced a deluge of snow, and Merseyrail impressed everyone by soldiering on throughout, a feat which they would surely repeat next time we experienced awful weather… right?

I finally joined the Wii owners’ club, just as the console stopped being cool. My rekindled love for video games did not result in me getting rickets. I also celebrated my first Twitterversary and cautiously welcomed the iPad.

I also took time to blog at length about a US comedian no-one has heard of over here, illustrating my post with YouTube clips which have now been removed for copyright infringement.

In more serious matters, the Haiti earthquake occupied people’s thoughts as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the devastated country.

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