Robert Hampton

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25th August 2014

Bridal Train
Posted by at 8.29pm | Liverpool, Trains | No responses

Merseyrail pulled out all the stops on Sunday to get bride Leanne Cole to her big day.

Leanne said: “We didn’t want to pay for a flashy car when we’ve got a perfectly good service on our doorstep and we’re on a budget.

“There is an Italian tradition where they walk to the church. I really liked it and thought I would walk to catch the train.”

After her family spoke to station staff at Fazakerley station, Merseyrail provided a special train to Liverpool Central on Sunday morning and decorated it for the occasion. For pictures and video of the big day, see the Liverpool Echo web site.

This train is also available for birthdays, office parties and bar-mitzvahs, folks (NB this probably isn’t true).

11th May 2013

Razing the roof
Posted by at 9.15pm | Trains | No responses

Aigburth station canopy partly removedRemember a month or so ago, when Network Rail started work on Aigburth station? The works were either a much-needed refurbishment or – if you’re the people behind the Save Aigburth Station campaign – an act of shameless corporate vandalism on the most beautiful station in the world. Here’s my blog on the subject, should you wish to refresh your memory.

Anyway, EXCITING new developments have occurred. Network Rail has sent another letter to local residents, advising that it has bowed to local pressure and gone back to the drawing board.

I’m sure Network Rail’s change of mind is entirely due to grassroots community activism and is nothing to do with the fact that our local MP, Louise Ellman, is also chair of the Transport Select Committee.

The letter is reproduced in full below:

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2nd April 2013

Gimme Shelter
Posted by at 8.06pm | Trains | 1 response

I never thought that Aigburth station – a small, genteel station towards the southern end of Merseyrail’s Northern Line – would be at the centre of controversy.

I have used the station on a near-daily basis for the past nine years and during that time I have seen several welcome improvements, including the installation of a new toilet, the provision of automatic doors and the introduction of an electronic customer information system.

At the beginning of March I was pleased to see a notice appear in the booking hall (click to embiggen), promising another upgrade:

Aigburth Station Customer Information

It’s true – Network Rail have decided that Aigburth station is worthy of further investment, and we are getting some lovely new facilities. The waiting room on the Liverpool-bound platform (which has been boarded up with weeds growing out of the roof for as long as I can remember) is being brought back into use and fitted with new heating and lighting. Lovely stuff, especially if next winter brings weather conditions as harsh as those we’ve experienced in the past few weeks.

Imagine the HORROR, therefore, when people turned up to catch their train to work a couple of weeks ago and saw this:

Aigburth station canopy partly removed

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23rd March 2013

Train of thought

Virgin Train at Liverpool South ParkwayOddly enough, despite being obsessed with railways, I don’t really mention trains much for the first year or so of the blog. I suspect I may have been trying to project an image of coolness, and I imagined railways would not fit in with that. One of the earliest train posts, in fact, is a fairly grim one – a brief mention of the Ufton Nervet derailment.

Railway safety (or the alleged lack thereof) is a common complaint in the media. Actually Britain’s railway is one of the safest in the world, but that tends to make the fatal accidents, such as the Greyrigg derailment, more newsworthy.

Subsequently, however, I’ve got over any lingering problems with coolness and I now blog about trains to the point of being boring. One development that excited me near the start of the blog’s life was the Liverpool South Parkway interchange, which was developed just a few stations down the line from where I live. I wrote about it in September 2005, when it was nearing completion, then a few months later in June 2006, when it opened. As was my habit at the time, the write-up of the day appeared on a separate page, rather than the blog itself. At first, the station’s usefulness was limited by the refusal of the regional operators to stop their trains there, but over the years more and more destinations have been served. The station is now a useful facility, and has been the starting point for many of my recent rail adventures.

lsp-certificateThe fractured nature of Britain’s passenger railway, with its multitude of franchises, means that every few years a new company will take over from the old. In practice this generally means that the trains are painted a different colour, staff get new uniforms and little actually changes on the ground. Such was the case with the Merseyrail network, when Arriva Trains handed over to the Serco/NedRailways consortium. Quite a few people were happy to see the end of Arriva, although subsequent events – including a damaging strike on Grand National Day in 2005 and a mysterious problem with the wheel lathe which led to days of disruption in 2007 – have dented the Dutch operator’s reputation somewhat in my eyes.

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9th January 2013

Hells bells, it’s Helsby
Posted by at 8.48pm | Trains | No responses

Sort-of exciting news reported by the Chester Chronicle:-

A NEW specialised rail link service could be introduced between Ellesmere Port and Helsby.

Cheshire West and Chester Council has commissioned a report looking into the feasibility of a new shuttle-type service called a Parry People Mover, which would make use of one of the existing railway lines between the two locations.

For the uninitiated, the Ellesmere Port to Helsby line is a short branch line linking the aforementioned Cheshire towns. At Ellesmere Port, connections are made with the Merseyrail service to Liverpool. At Helsby, services to North Wales, Warrington and Manchester are available. En route, the train calls at Stanlow & Thornton, situated inside the huge Stanlow Oil Refinery complex, and Ince & Elton, serving two small commuter villages.

For further background, you might want to read my friend Scott’s blog, all about the time he and I visited the line and got accosted by a security guard at Stanlow.

Ellesmere Port to Helsby

For many years, the line was effectively treated as part of the Merseyrail network, with system maps showing it in the same green colour as the electric routes. Until 1985, the railway electrification only reached the edge of Birkenhead, so at Rock Ferry passengers from Liverpool were decanted into a diesel train to continue onwards to either Chester or Helsby. Not an ideal set-up, but a fairly slick cross-platform connection meant that it was not too inconvenient.

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23rd April 2012

Bare E-Central-s
Posted by at 11.59pm | Liverpool, Trains | No responses

Extract from Merseyrail map showing Central station crossed outSince moving to Aigburth, with its attendant Merseyrail station, in 2003, I’ve become quite accustomed to being whisked off into the centre of town in just 9 minutes. A total of 15 minutes door-to-door commute time? That’ll do nicely.

I think it’s the hallmark of a good service that you only notice when its not there. Over the nine years that I’ve been using the service, the problems have been rare but disruptive: a strike, a blizzard, a misbehaving sewer and, most significantly, a six week shutdown to work on the tunnel. By and large however, Merseyrail get on with it with quiet efficiency, taking me to work, the shops, days and nights out, or just delivering me to Lime Street to start a longer journey.

It’s fair to say that Merseyrail is almost as essential to me as oxygen or photos of Gareth Bale with no shirt. Now Liverpool Central has closed for six months, I feel like one of my legs has been chopped off – sure, I can still get about, but it’s not as easy as it was. I mean, come on: Moorfields is at least a five minute walk from Liverpool ONE!

At least Central went out in a blaze of glory at the weekend, with more people passing through its doors than it has ever had to cope with at any time in its existence.

Crowds at Liverpool Central station

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22nd April 2012

On y va!
Posted by at 7.43pm | Liverpool | 1 response

Photo of Sea Odyssey Banner at St George's HallWhen I first read of the plans for the Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular, I was sceptical. These big set-piece events cost a lot of money and effort, but do they have any lasting impact?

My cynicism was increased further when Merseytravel published a list of bus diversions which ran to 12 pages, but could have been succinctly summarised as, “if you use a bus, you’re in trouble”. Was it worth causing this level of disruption to the normal life of the city?

As it turned out, yes it was.

For the uninitiated, The Sea Odyssey is a show based on the story of three giants: a little girl, her dog, and her uncle (a diver) who end up roaming the city in search of each other before finally being reunited. The giants are extremely sophisticated marionettes, animated by a squad of talented French performance artists who operate numerous ropes and pulleys to make the giants move. The show has been developed and designed specifically for Liverpool’s streets, and is a one-time-only event.

What set Sea Odyssey aside was the sheer scale of it. The Guardian previewed the event and noted that “Sea Odyssey will be – the Olympics aside – the largest outdoor event staged in the country this year.”

It started on Friday with events centred around Stanley Park in the north of the city, but I was in work so missed out. I took advantage of my lunch break, however, to stroll down to the Albert Dock, where one of the giants – the Diver Uncle – sat in the water, waiting…

Photo of Diver Giant waiting in Dock

He was due to wake up at 2pm, but I was expected back at the office by then, and to miss even a second at my desk would violate my strong work ethic (stop laughing, you).

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28th December 2011

Central Perk
Posted by at 1.37pm | Trains | No responses

Today was my first visit to the gym since Christmas. I’ve consumed rather a lot of mince pies in the six days since I last ventured there, and I paid for it today. On the treadmill today, I was a real Christmas sweater! (I thought of that joke four days ago, but had to wait until now to use it)

Going to the gym meant going into town, and going into town meant getting the train. Fortunately, the line and station near my house are not affected by the engineering works which have closed a big chunk of Merseyrail’s Northern Line, so I was able to get into Liverpool city centre without hassle.

I arrived at Liverpool Central for my return journey having just missed a train. This didn’t worry me – there was not long to wait until the next one and it gave me a chance to appreciate the very atypical atmosphere in the station.

Photo of near-empty Liverpool Central station

Shorn of all its trains except a shuttle to Hunts Cross, the Northern Line platform was a very different place. No crowds, no pushing and shoving, no jostling at the base of the escalators. It was quiet, peaceful, serene – like the Evergreen Forest before Bert Raccoon wakes up.

The commuter part of me almost wishes it could be like this every day. But railway stations, especially major ones in the centre of town, are not supposed to be this quiet. Seeing Central like this, almost deserted on a busy shopping day, actually made me quite sad.

15th December 2011

Driving Home For Christmas (well, there’s no trains, after all)
Posted by at 9.43pm | In the News, Trains | 2 responses

Good old Metro, inviting its hard-pressed commuter audience to indulge in some collective gnashing of teeth:-

Britain faces a Christmas holiday railway shutdown with virtually no trains for almost 60 hours from 5pm on Christmas Eve.

Leaving aside the blatant lie (most services don’t start winding down until after 8pm on Christmas Eve), this isn’t really news, is it? The Christmas shutdown is a tradition going back many years, all the way back to the days of British Rail. And why is Metro making a big deal out of it now when the Christmas trains info has been published on National Rail’s web site for weeks?

There is a prober debate to be had about public transport provision over the Christmas period (the lack of Merseyrail on Boxing Day is often an inconvenience for me) but Metro – like its stable-mate the Daily Mail – is more interested in unconstructive whining.

Incidentally, the rail network doesn’t shut down entirely for two days: there will be teams of engineering staff out and about, taking advantage of two days without trains to do some serious work. For example, on 25th and 26th December 2004 the new footbridge over the West Coast Main Line at Liverpool South Parkway was craned into position, while this year Network Rail are replacing a bridge at Sandhills (although the work is too much for two days, so there are rail replacement buses a-plenty for Northern Line passengers on the 27th and 28th).

1st December 2011

Retain the Train
Posted by at 11.46pm | Trains | No responses

Oh hello. Apologies for the gap in blogging. I could offer excuses but the simple fact is that I have been somewhat distracted over the past few weeks. I want to rectify this and get back into writing on this web site, and I hope that December will be a fruitful month.

Unfortunately, my return to blogging today is motivated by some bad news I received from the Friends of the 502 Group, a society I have been involved with since its inception.

We are a group of railway enthusiasts who have custody of two vintage electric train carriages. These two vehicles represent the the last surviving example of the Class 502 trains which ran on what is now Merseyrail’s Northern Line for the best part of 40 years. The 502s were built between 1939 and 1941 and were an early pioneer of features such as automatic sliding doors and the seating layout which became the de facto standard for suburban trains in the UK for the next 50 years. As such they are an important piece of British railway history and need to be saved for posterity.

Unfortunately we now find ourselves without a home as we have been asked to vacate the premises by our current landlords. The full story is over at the Friends of the 502 Group blog, but to summarise: we need money (a lot of it), and soon. We have just twelve weeks to raise £4,000.

We have an online donation page. Any amount, no matter how small, would be appreciated.

Here endeth the begging.