Category Archives: Community rail

Rolling blog: community rail in the city.

15 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in ACoRP, Community rail, London, Rolling blogs, Uncategorized

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In a wonderful contrast to Railtex (which I’ll be back at tomorrow) I’m down in London to cover ‘community rail in the city’. This event showcases all the work various Community Rail Partnerships do around the country. There’s events on several main line stations in the capital, as well as Birmingham New St and Glasgow Central. I’ll update this blog with pictures throughout the day.

08:35. Kings Cross.

We’ve a huge stand on the concourse with several Scottish pipers giving out goody bags. They’re proving very popular with folks wanting pictures

09:28. Liverpool St.

There’s another impressive stand here where you’ll find an 18 foot replica of the ‘Mayflower’ along with goody bags and lots of useful information on the community rail lines in the Anglia region.

11:55.

There’s been plenty of hi-jinks at Kings Cross, where the Scots have been putting on a display of bagpipers and Scottish dancing.

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15:02.

Phew! It’s been a busy day. I managed to get round to all the London stations where events were held and even had time to see the very first (fare paying) passenger run of LNER’s new Azuma trains. 800113 made history working the 11:03 from London Kings Cross to Leeds.

At nearby St Pancras, members of Kent Community Rail partnerships and Sustrans had a stand on the Southeastern railway platforms. As well as giving out goodie bags and leaflets on places to visit on foot, train or bike they were also carrying out a survey into cyclists taking bikes on trains.

Meanwhile, over at Waterloo, staff and volunteers had turned a patch of the concourse into a rural oasis, complete with trees!

At Paddington, folk were advertising the South-West’s connection with the voyage of the Mayflower and the forthcoming 400th anniversary. To keep folk entertained, 25 members of the ‘Kingsmen’ choir sang on the hour.

Now, I’m on my way to Birmingham via Chiltern trains to see what volunteers from the Midlands are up to.

19:53.

Well, that was a whirlwind! I arrived in Birmingham just in time to catch the volunteers who’d been staffing a stall at Birmingham Moor St all day. They were very positive about the reactions they’d had from the public as they were promoting one of four new designated community rail lines (the Shakespeare line). Having caught them I hot-footed it over to New St where there were two very different stalls on the concourse. What was great was to see the way passengers took time out from rushing home to stop and engage, which isn’t always easy as many commuters are on a pre-programmed ‘mission’s & don’t want to be diverted from getting home or to work.

With the final pictures in the bag I decided to have a pint in an old haunt before checking into my hotel, only to find that the Shakespeare was full of old friends from the rail industry who’d had exactly the same idea as me after their day at Railtex! So, one pint turned into a bit more than that..

I was with five people ageing in range from early 50’s to mid 70’s All of them had worked for British Railways (BR) in the ‘good old days’. Some of them still have senior jobs in the rail industry now. So, no names, no pack- drill, but some of the stories they were swapping about that era were both hilarious and criminal in what went on in those days.

Bidding farewell I finally checked into my hotel and dumped several kilos of kit that I’d been lugging around all day. My ‘Fitbit’ tells me that I’ve walked over 10 miles today, so I feel I’d earned that beer!

Food was uppermost in my mind. Hot food at that, so I popped into one of the growing number of noodle bars that you can find in cities nowadays for a spicy fix of Udon noodles, chicken and veg leavened with a very respectable chilli sauce.

I’ve never been a burger fan. In fact I can’t think of the last time I ate one. This is the food for me, born of spending so much time in SE Asia.

22:02.

It’s time to draw this rolling blog to a close. I’m back at my hotel, looking through some if the hundreds of pictures I’ve taken today, but soon it’s going to be time to crash out. I’ve another busy day at Railtex ahead of me…

Rolling blog: Westward bound…

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Calder Valley, Community rail, Rail Investment, Railways, Travel

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I’m enjoying that desk-free day today and heading West over the Pennines to the Manchester area for the day to catch up with some of the changes to the rail network and grab some shots of the old BR Pacers in their natural habitat before they head off to the scrapyard.

As usual, I’m starting my day at Sowerby Bridge station, which is looking rather resplendent at the moment. Despite the baking hot summer the station friends group have managed to keep nearly all the plants alive – which has been no mean feat! I helped in a very minor way by bringing plastic bottles full of water from home when I was passing through and watering as I waited for my train. Now the recent rains have taken some of the pressure off the group. Here’s how it looks today.

There’s not just flowers to admire on the station, there’s local history to discover too! The friends commissioned dozens of information boards that line both platforms. They tell you about local celebrities or people of note, such as this one about Walter Robinson, a tram conductor who was killed in the Pye Nest tram disaster in 1907.

It’s just as well there’s things like this to read as the train service is a bit of a shambles today. I’ve been here since 09:45 as I was planning to catch the 10:08 to Manchester. Initially it was shown on the station info screens as running a minute late. Then the time came and went and it mysteriously ceased to exist and was replaced by the 10:22 (runing 5 late due to making extra stops as another train was cancelled). At 10:22 the 10:08 rolled in, seemingly from nowhere, much to the confusion of waiting passengers! This is where the information screens both confuse and let down passengers. The information’s neither real-time nor accurate.

I’m now on a busy 2-car (150205) which is heading for the seaside at Southport. As it’s the school holidays we’re jam-packed with families.

10:42

I bailed out of the Southport train at Hebden Bridge to grab some shots of the platform extensions which are really coming along. They’ve been given their tarmac topping and aren’t far from completion.

Once again, the passenger information caused more confusion than anything. As the late running Manchester train approached it was shown on the info screens, yet “Digital Doris” (the automated voice on the PA) announced “the next train will be the 10:41 to Preston”. Grrrr!

It was the Manchester train, and I’m now sat on it!

11:06.

It’s going to be one of those days. We’re currently stuck at Littleborough as the section ahead is occupied by the train I got off! We’re getting later and later cut there’s been no announcements about what’s going on. At 12:08 we finally started moving but we’re going to be crawling from signal to signal now due to the train in front.

12:11

We finally crawled into Victoria at 11:41. I’m still none the wiser as to what the problem was. TPE also have services cancelled due to the meaningless and insulting phrase I hate – “operational reasons”.

The weather forecast hasn’t been up to much today either and the sunny periods it promised have failed to materialise this side of the Pennines. I’m making my way to the East side of the city, hoping for better.

12:46

Here we go, the 12:49 to Sheffield from Manchester Piccadilly, which is about to bounce its way back across the Pennines.

14:17.

I’m deep in ‘Pacer’ territory now, at the attractive station and town of Romily, which is where two different lines from Manchester meet before diverging again. One’s the truncated branch to Rose Hill Marple, the other is the old Midland main line to the South via Chinley. Nowadays all the local services have been strengthened to run a pairs of Pacers like this. Here’s 2S19, the 13:32 from New Mills Central to Manchester Piccadilly via Reddish North with Romily station in the background. The line to the left is the route via Hyde and Guide Bridge

DG305742. 142033. 142057. Romily. 21.8.18

16:53.

I’ve wifi so I’m quickly adding a couple of pictures whilst I can. Here’s the old Midland Railway signalbox at Romily Junction. It’s boarded up now and appears closed, yet the local signals still carry RJ plates, which is rather confusing. The box doesn’t have a straight line to it as it appears to be slipping backwards down the embankment.

DG305760After Romily I moved on to New Mills central, which is the boundary for many services from Manchester as it has a useful turn-back siding controlled from the local signalbox. here’s a pair of Pacers coming out of the siding before working back to Piccadilly.

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One more. Having come out of the sidings, 057 and 033 sit in the platform at New Mills Central before working back to Manchester Piccadilly

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Caveat. (18:33)

I’d update this blog more often but I’ve found WordPress struggles with me doing so from both a laptop via wifi and also my Android phone. I’ll try and add more shortly, but there may be troubles ahead…

21:40.

The final update for the day. Sadly WordPress has let me down today and I’ve struggled to update this blog whilst on the move. I’m intending to work from home tomorrow so I’ll add part two to this blog then.

Rolling blog: To Hull – and back…

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in ACoRP, Community rail, I love my job, Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

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Day 3 on the rails but today I’m off somewhere in a different quadrant of the country. I have a station to judge on the line between Hull and Scarborough so I’m currently on a Northern Rail service from Sowerby Bridge to Leeds on the first leg of the trip.

As I’m travelling post-peak i’ve managed to bag a table. I need to get some work done on the way as (surprise, surprise) there’s a lot of pictures from the past few days travel to edit and get onto my Zenfolio website.

Admittedly, the world outside the carriage window can be a bit of a distraction, especially on a lovely day like today but this leg of the trip is more like a commute rather than an adventure.

10:38.

Having caught a late-running train to Leeds I had nearly an hour to wait for my connection and explore. Leeds is yet another station that’s changed out of all recognition since my childhood days. It’s undergone a series of redevelopments over tge years and is set for more with the arrival of the new High Speed 2 (HS2) railway in 2033. Here’s a couple of images, the first shows a great bit of artwork on the side of the old BR offices many passengers never even notice.

Here’s the old concourse that was added by the LMS railway.

Despite the torrid time Northern Rail passengers have been having with delays and cancellations, the picture does seem to be improving, as this indicator board shows

Unfortunately, one of the few late trains is mine! The 10:48 to Hull run by Trans-Pennine Express keeps slipping, and slipping and slipping. It’s gone from 3, to 5 to 10 minutes late – which screws up my next connection, leaving me an hour late!

This is the most frustrating thing about the passenger information screens, the information is less than accurate. Logging on to the ‘realtime trains’ website I can see my train has lost time at every station stop and is now showing as over 15m late!

19:21

A very frustrating day. I’ve updated this blog several times during the day and added a load of pictures (via laptop and mobile), but nothing’s ‘stuck’. Will this?

20:00

I’m now on the final leg from Leeds to Halifax aboard yet another ex GWR Class 150. The cascade of trains from other TOCs to Northern is very noticeable right now because most are still in their former liveries. From a photographer’s perspective it’s great. Passengers see it differently. They care about the fact their conmuter train’s doubled in size. They’d be even more impressed if all the extra services promised arrived too and punctuality wasn’t so dire.

Home. 21:57

I’m hoping having my home broadband connection will allow me to update this blog as I’ve had a really interesting day. A problem with traveling by Trans-Pennine Express is that their internet connection has the heebie-jeebies when it comes to logging into WordPress, so I have to use my phone to blog from, which is frustrating.

Anyways, back to the narrative. Yes, I missed my connection in Hull. The bright side? The group I was visiting were very understanding and I got to explore. Even though I was only in Hull last year the station’s undergone another change. This time many of the old buildings at the back of the buffer-stops have been swept away and replaced with new. Here’s an example. The newish waiting room’s been replaced by a Starbuck’s. The adjoining buildings are yet to be let.

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I first visited Hull in 2004 when I started writing my bi-annual round Britain trips for RAIL magazine. In those days the front of the station was disfigured by a monstrous 1960s office block built by BR. That’s gone now and the grade 2 listed station hotel it hid has undergone a bit of a renaissance. It’s now owned by Britannia hotels and the downstairs lobby and bar is really rather classy. Here’s the entrance from the station concourse.

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Here’s what it looks like on the inside. Style is returning to railway station hotels…

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Moving on from Hull I did my visit, then pitched up in Bridlington to check out an old institution, the station bar. Sadly, it’s not what it was. The extravagant floral displays have disappeared and the quality of the beer was disappointing. After a number of years the present owners have decided to call it a day and sell up. I wish them both well and hope that whoever buys it keeps the special feel of the place.

Heading back South I stopped off at Beverley, a place that I’d never explored beyond the environs of the wonderful overall roofed station. Today I put that right and I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a lovely little market town with a very impressive cathedral

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Meanwhile, in the Market Square..

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Of course, the railway station which opened in 1846 is rather nice too. It’s a grade 2 listed building and one of only a handful which retain overall roofs.

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Judgement day.

29 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in ACoRP, Community rail, I love my job, Photography

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Today’s been another busy day but one where I’ve remained mostly static! I’ve been at the ACoRP office in Huddersfield judging tbe shortlist for the annual ACoRP awards photographic competition along with fellow judges Paul Abell (ex Editor of Today’s Railways) and Nik Slocombe of ACoRP. It’s been a tough morning as we whittled down some excellent entries to a shortlist of just 10. The standard’s been very high this year, which means we’ve got a fantastic shortlist, but some pictures that would normally be a shoo-in had to be rejected. The shortlisted pictures will be put on SurveyMonkey on Monday for people to vote on. I’ll add a link when I have it.

Afterwards I put my other judges hat on and sifted the entries for the ‘It’s your station’ category of the awards. Now the hard work begins as Paul Cook and I have 25 stations up and down the land to visit and interview the groups involved. What’s lovely to see is we’ve a mix of long-standing groups, some returnees – and some who’ve never entered before. Groups who’ve been shortlisted will start hearing from me over the weekend as I arrange the schedule of visits.

Now it’s time to take a break and enjoy the sunshine outside ACoRP towers!

DG138747. ACoRP Office. Huddersfield. 17.2.13.

Rolling blog: Sunny days and Mondays…

25 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Community rail, Northern Rail, Pacers, Rail electrification, Rail Investment, Railways, Travel

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I’m taking advantage of the glorious sunshine to get some rail pictures for a client today – I had planned to visit a line I’ve not been on for some time – the South Fylde line to Blackpool South. It’s a shadow of its former self compared to the glory days of the Edwardian era when tens of thousands would travel to the seaside town by train. Then mills across the North would shut down for the annual Wakes week with people travelling en-masse on excusion trains dispatched from stations across Lancashire and Yorkshire. Now it’s a glorified siding that branches off the main line to Blackpool North at Kirkham and Wesham, but it’s still a useful line used by a Pacer train shuttle service from Colne (another much truncated line). Sadly, due to problems with delayed electrification and a shortage of rolling stock, the service isn’t operated by trains today – only buses. So I’ve opted for plan B. I’m heading for the Windermere branch!

Right now I’m on a Northern service from Halifax to Preston. The Blackpool lines only recently reopened after being electrified. My train would normally run through to Blackpool but a combination of factors mean many services are replaced by buses from Preston, including this one.

Plan B meant changing to a Virgin Trains Pendolino to Lancaster. Then picking up a Trans-Pennine service to Oxenholme. Icould have caught the TPE srvice at Preston but those 4 car trains are always rammed, whilst the VT service was a 9 car Pendolino, giving me a bit more space. Here it is pulling in. A repainted 390047…

True enough, when I caught the TPE at Lancaster,I ended up sitting on the vestibule floor!

20:19.

I’m retracing my steps towards Halifax after an enjoyable day exploring a railway I’ve rarely visited. It’s been a trip made even more fun by fab weather and old-fashioned loco-hauled trains.

My first surprise was when the TPE guard annouced “change at Oxenholme for the West Coast Railways service to Windermere”. I wadn’t expecting that, but good on them for recognising it was something unusual. As we were late I had to sprint across the platform to make the train, which was made up of 3 old Mk2 coaches in WCR livery topped and tailed by a pair of ex-Virgin Trains “Thunderbirds” (57314 and 57316 for the number crunchers). The train was packed so I ended up stood in a vestibule -right next to someone I knew from the rail industry who was having a ‘jolly’!

We had a real catch-up about mutual friends and what they were all up to nowadays as we made our way to Staveley where I decamped to look for a suitable lineside location to get pictures. Sadly, like many lines, vegetation has encroached to choke off many opportunities. This is the problem when you don’t know a line well and haven’t had time to do much research!

In the end I decided to spend more time exploring than photographing and headed back as far as Burneside where I found the remains of a freight branch that used to serve 3 local paper mills. Only a short section of track is intact but it’s a suprising survivor in this day and age. I never even knew it existed, but a few minutes on the internet threw up this Wikipedia page.

The track is still in situ at this point but it’s gradually disappearing beneath the gravel. The old BRB sign’s a bit of a giveaway! The old goods yard is in front of the camera. Behind me the line crosses a yard then ends in a stone wall.

Looking towards the old goods yard. The road here leads to Burnside railway station on the left.

After an amble around the area & noting locations for a future visit I had a run down to Windermere before heading back to Kendal to get a few more pictures like this one.

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57316 (with 57314 on the rear) pulls away from Kendal station as it heads towards Windermere. I took this picture from a lattice footbridge which crosses the line at this point. The land to the right was once a large goods yard which is long gone.

 

 

Mytholmroyd. A suitable case for treatment.

06 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in Community rail, Mytholmroyd, Travel

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Passengers speeding through Mytholmroyd on non-stop Calder Valley service might notice the abandoned and boarded up station building on the Leeds bound platform and be could be forgiven for mistaking it as a small building of little consequence. If they saw it from the street below they’d be left with an entirely different impression, because there’s another two floors below platform level!

DG211559. Old station building. Mytholmroyd. 18.4.15

The view of the station building rail travellers see. What they don’t realise is there’s two more floors below!

The grade 2 listed building was constructed in 1874 but it’s been derelict since the BR era. It’s a lucky survivor as cost-cutting BR had a policy of flattening as many redundant station building as possible. The interior is original, but in a very poor state. Despite this, the station friends group has spent over a decade trying to get the building resurrected, to be used by the community. Finally, after many years, their efforts are beginning to bear fruit.

Last night Dawn and I attended a meeting in the church next to the station with the friends group, local residents and the local train company – Arriva Northern. The meeting was to discuss a consultants report on possible uses for the building and hear about progress on bringing it back to life. Earlier that day Network Rail had arrived to begin work on making the building safe before beginning restoration. It looks like it could be a long job!

The friends group have been keen to see that whoever commercial activities take place in the building, they don’t abstract trade from existing businesses in the village. The consultants work took this on board and the discussions they had with the wider community reflected it. Their report came up with three options and the one which seems to have the greatest support is for the building to become a ‘landscape hub’ To quote from the report:

” This would involve the development of a range of uses working in a mutually supportive way, drawing on key aspects of the landscape offer and brand in the area to make the building an inspiring facility for both local people and visitors”

So, what would this mean in practice? There would be a mixture of tenants and uses that would include a restaurant/café, art studios for rent and a cycle/walking hub and gallery. Northern are committed to providing a new waiting room on the station and are looking at using part (but not all) of the top floor.

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At the meeting the consultants provided us with a breakdown of their work and the favoured options.

Needless to say, it’s early days yet and plans always have a habit of changing!  What’s not in doubt is that these are exciting times as the building’s finally returning to life after lying dormant for so many years. Now money is being made available through Network Rail, Northern and a £110,000 grant from the Railway Heritage Trust.

I’ll keep you posted on progress.

You can learn a lot more about the project from the groups weblog, which can be found here.