capturing Britain's railways, one station at a time
I never want to hear Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" again. No, I'll rephrase that: I don't need to hear Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" again. I'm done. I've heard every single variation on it, every version, a different chord arrangement, done fast, done slow; I've heard it. I don't need to hear it again. And I certainly don't need to hear it played on an acoustic guitar on a train in Italy at nine in…
It's weird how hotel breakfasts cause you to eat the most random of foods. I started my travels round the M2 full of a combination of cocktail sausages, frittata, and fried peppers, a combination that I wouldn't eat under any circumstances back in the UK. Somehow if you put it in a breakfast buffet I work my way along the row of cloches and shove a heap of everything on my plate. (Although I did…
Spending the day up and down the M1 had exhausted me. I went back to my hotel and, after a shower, collapsed on the bed and napped. I'd wiped most of the red line away. The rest could wait for another time. Except... If I got up and went out, I could finish it off, and then the whole line was done in a single day. That'd be great, wouldn't it? I put on some clean clothes and went out into the…
I think of myself as a reasonable man of the world, one with a certain amount of cynicism and weariness about what goes on. Then something happens and I get a reminder that no, I am in fact a tiny naïf who probably shouldn't be allowed out on his own. I was on the M1 headed across the city, and a man was stood beside me with his suitcase. He had neat, trimmed nails, apart from the little finger on…
QT8 is a very strange name for a metro station. You don't get many stations that are abbreviations. You instinctively want to run it together to form words: cutie-eight. And now I'm thinking of when John Gardner introduced an assistant to Major Boothroyd in his Bond novels and nicknamed her Q'ute . Those early Gardner novels were weird. They uncomfortably straddled Ian Fleming seriousness with…
The Milan Metro has five lines named, understandably, the M1 , M2 , M3 , M4 and M5 . I decided to tackle them in order, because of course I did, so early on a Sunday morning I boarded an M1 train to its southwestern terminus: Bisceglie. That's the terminus for the time being. Milan has the habit of extending its metro in dribs and drabs, a couple of stations here, three more there, and as we'll…
For the past few years I've been lucky enough to travel to a large European city to visit all the stations on their metro. It started with Amsterdam, then there was Stockholm, and last year it was Helsinki. This year, I planned on it being Hamburg. I started reading about it, bought a book, and then I thought: isn't Hamburg a variation on Amsterdam/Stockholm/Helsinki? Another large Northern…
You might come to this blog for many reasons. The trains. The photos. My witty repartee. If you come here to admire the scenic beauty of England, then I'm afraid this post is not for you. Outside Birkenhead North station is a vast hinterland of abandoned docks and industrial units. This is the back streets, the abandoned parts, the leftovers of Britain. And here I was walking through it. For once,…
Opened: 2nd January 1888, though its name was Birkenhead Docks back then. It was renamed to Birkenhead North in 1926. Line electrified: 1938. Number of platforms: Three. One platform serves Liverpool trains, the second New Brighton and West Kirby trains. The third is technically a through platform but is mainly used for stabling and turnbacks these days. Points of interest: A planter commemorates…
Nostalgia is a terrible disease that runs right through the railways. "Oooh, it was better in the old days!" is a curse. There is always someone to point at steam trains, or third class tickets, or British Rail, or train doors you have to hang out the window to open, and say "that's so much better than what we have now". You can sit on an air-conditioned, electric train, almost silent as it glides…
With the new stations of the Wolverhampton-Walsall line behind me (the WolWal Line? Wolvall?) I shifted from one side of New Street to the other. It was in a state of low-level chaos; a problem with the lines going south had caused a huge backlog of delays and cancellations. Dejected passengers lined the platforms waiting for trains that wouldn't come. My own, tiny, local train was delayed by…
It's very easy, at this moment in British history, to allow yourself to become despondent about the state of the nation. About the inability of government, media and thought leaders to advocate for change. About the failure to deliver any world changing projects or schemes. About the general attitude of "will this do?" It's easy, in all of this, to miss when something good actually happens. When…
When I disembarked at Blundellsands & Crosby, there was a girl ahead of me. She was about seventeen or eighteen, wearing a loose thin shirt over a crop top and tiny white shorts. In the crook of her right arm was a cooler. She peered into the window of the waiting room and then, when she couldn't see whoever she was meeting, she pulled out her phone and began hastily tapping. I guessed that she…
Opened: 24th July 1848 as Crosby. Renamed Blundellsands for Crosby in 1865, then Blundellsands & Crosby in November that year. Line electrified: 1904 Number of platforms: Two, with a waiting room on each. Points of interest: Quite a few, actually. On the northbound platform is a blue bench, built by a local schoolboy , and dedicated to Brian Boggild. He was the ticket man at Crosby for many years…
Patchway looks a lot more modern than it actually is. A station first opened in the 19th century, it has upgraded lifts and a footbridge, as though someone actually cares about it as a destination. The reason for all this up to date tech is simple: electrification. The Great Western Main Line got wired in the 2010s, meaning that the footbridge here had to be rebuilt higher up, and inadvertently…
For reasons far too dull to go into here, I found myself in Bristol with some hours to kill. How many hours? I didn't really know. It could be two, it could be four, it all depended on when I got a phone call. I needed something to keep me busy but not an extreme voyage of discovery. Readers with long memories might remember that I've been to Bristol before, back in 2016, when I was thinking of…
The first thing you see when you step out of Walton station is a wall. Five metres high, with a rounded top. The distinctive exterior of a prison. This is Liverpool Prison, or, as it was known before the modern world decided to suck all charm out of everything, Walton Gaol. The main prison for the Merseyside region, famous and infamous, home to 1300 people and not somewhere I ever hope to see the…
Opened: 2nd April 1849 as Walton Junction ; this is the first station after the split between the Ormskirk and Kirkby lines . This was renamed to Walton in 1970 but they have to add (Merseyside) in official references so it's not confused for Walton-on-the-Naze or Walton-on-Thames. Line electrified: 1913 Number of platforms: Two Points of interest: There's one road into the station. About halfway…
I'd been to Kirkby exactly twice before in my life. The first time was at the turn of the Millennium, when I came here for a job interview at Knowsley Borough Council; I didn't get the job, and my main memory of the place is the bus exchange, where I loitered while I waited for my appointment. The other time was when I collected the station, and back then I walked out, took a photo, and walked…
Opened: 1848. (Weirdly, despite owning half a dozen books about Merseyside's railways, I've not found a more precise date than that. Kirkby was a tiny hamlet then so maybe nobody really cared.) EDITED TO ADD: per a tip from Anonymous in the comments, the opening date was apparently the 20th November 1848, making Kirkby station a Scorpio. Line electrified: 2nd May 1977 Number of platforms: One.…
When you turn out of Leasowe station, north of the level crossing, you pass between two large industrial concerns. To your right is BristolMyersSquibb, the multinational pharmaceutical company, where employees are working on medicines to cure and alleviate any number of ailments. To your left, is Premier Foods, which, as large lettering on the front of the building clearly informs you, is the Home…
Opened: 5th May 1894 (there was a halt here for a couple of years in the 1870s called Leasowe Crossing but that was closed) Line electrified: 13th March 1938 Number of platforms: Two Points of interest: Leasowe was rebuilt ahead of electrification and given elegant Art Deco stylings in concrete. This means two waiting rooms with flat roofs jutting out over the platform, plus a footbridge…
There's only one place to go from Hooton station. That's not true; there's a Network Rail depot, and a furniture shop, and an engineering works. And there's the village of Hooton itself, a mile or so away, straddling the New Chester Road. For the purposes of this blog, however, there's only one place to go, and that's the former railway line turned country park. I descended the ramps down to the…
I asked my glamorous assistant, the BF, to pick the first station out of the lunch box. (Obviously I also made him wear a spangly catsuit for this purpose). He managed to grab Hooton which, of course, isn't in Merseyside, so that was a great start. None the less, I got on the train and went out there. Each station I visit from now on will get two posts. The first will be like this one: a bare…
You spoke, and I listened. That's democracy. I wrote a woolly end of year post about where the blog might go in 2026 and you replied in your thousands [ed: pls chk] to say that you would actually read about me fannying around in the back end of Merseyside. So it's back to where we started, back to Round The Merseyrail We Go. (I will not be changing the header again ). There are sixty-nine stations…