Photo-a-Day  (Thursday, 2nd January, 2020)

There's been a few cancellations lately, let's hope things get back to normal after the New Year. ( always in the holiday periods!) There's nothing more tedious than going for the train to find it cancelled and leaving the station to get a bus.

All aboard for Southport! The excitement as a child waiting to see the steam train coming through that tunnel.

Ah, the memories. I remember standing on that very spot as a child, waiting for the train to Southport.

It didn't look like that though...a big lumbering black thing, belching smoke and steam...wonderful.

Very good pic, Brian.

I dont catch trains but what a grotty sight for passengers,A dirty wall and some weeds and scrub land

I remember when it was double track either side of the platform with a bay facing east.
Little painting or maintenance had been done on the buildings from pre war to the mid 60s. Same at WNW.
I am aware of Northern Rail and its alleged service.
Bolton has been appallingly served for quite some time.
Good photo, Brian.

Well, I think that if Northern are going to run a Heritage Railway with all its aged rolling stock, and its 'don't you know there's a war on' timetabling, the least they could have done was to put on some steam-hauled Santa Specials.

Fred, Am I right in thinking that the train I once caught to Blackpool, or Southport, from this very spot in the mid-fifties, had come in from the right? I can see and hear it now as it blew its 'hooter' - scared the living daylights out of me it did. I'm afraid that I know next to nothing about our steam trains, but I do like watching them on the old b/w films.

Philip G.

Memories fade but I thought that the Southport train came under Wallgate from Manchester and went on to Southport. Anyone remember for sure?

I remember buying a sixpenny bar of Cadbury's chocolate from a machine on the wall to the left.

Think of the opening scene of Brief Encounter, Philip G.....magic! (And Veronica and I are experts on that film, aren't we, Dolly dear?!). xx

I used to call this station the 'Southport station' and the other station was the Blackpool one. Those were the only places I went to as a child of the fifties, apart from once going to New Brighton, I was really excited if we were going to Blackpool because it was further to travel! As a 14 year old I remember a crowd of us going to Southport for 3s. Return. Thankfully I have made up for the lack of travel in those cash strapped days of post war Britain! I still look back with joy - I often wonder why, especially seeing posters advertising the Cornish Riviera, it might well have been another country for all it meant to me.

Gary, I think that the bay was facing WEST not East!

Reminds me Irene, I must look on Ytube at Victoria Wood's spoof on 'Brief Encounter' not seen it for a while - hilarious! A brilliant post war film, just ripe for mockery though.

This video explains all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cAGR6q8z84

Hope we get a better service ( can't be much worse ) than we have now. Irene, did you see the news feature this evening about the ancient toffee shop in North Yorkshire coming up for sale. All shelves and jars with old style scales, weighed out in quarters in paper bags. Queuing up to get in. Thought of you straight away :)

WN1 Standisher, I have no idea who you are but thankyou so much for thinking of me. I love old shops and scales and paper bags. I didn't see it as I don't watch the news but I will look it up. I love North Yorkshire and have probably been in the shop at some point! I used to work in Standish many years ago when I was just a young girl and have a very soft spot for it. xx

Looks like from the news bulletins that Northern is likely to be stripped of the franchise. Don't use trains much myself, but from talking to acquaintances who rely on them to go to and from work (if rely is the right word) Northern losing the franchise can't come soon enough. They have been full of empty promises since first gaining it.

Fred,
Many thanks for your kind response. Your mention of the chocolate machine also reminds me of an old workmate who once gave a rum impersonation of the Deryck Guyler TV ad in which was said "You can't buy chocolate for sixpence, lad".
Irene,
It seems to me that Brief Encounter continues to enjoy a lofty status in the cinema world … No1 all-over the shop. BFI decks it with - along with other lovelies - "Turbulent passion and middle-class restraint". Take care.

Priscus - correct. It did face west, toward Southport.

A Childs View, Wigan Station 1967.

Waiting for the train that took me on the family holiday, had the same unbearable tension as waiting for Christmas morning.
I would run to the platform edge neck twisted , peering up the track beseeching the engine to come. My first telling off. " Come back here this minute".
I spent the next moments locked by my Mams arms.
Then a cry at the far end. " It's here". A metallic squeal in the rails and suddenly the carriages came hurtling by , plastering back my fringe, the windows flickering past like reels on a fruit machine.
Whistles and flags. Porters slamming doors one after the other rather regimentally like falling dominoes.
The sweet sickly smell of oil and steam like Dad's pipe tobacco.
Then off . The London express, thundering south through stations and the darkness of tunnels.
Those trains with compartments and a corridor down the side were best for exploration. Sacks and parcels at the Guard's end. Crossing the swaying couplings from carriage to carriage. The florid faces in the buffet car. Sticking your head out the window was bliss. The urge to pull the communication cord sublime.
Trying to find the family again quite a feat. " Where have you been". A wonderful journey with never a thought of asking Are we there yet!
Then at Euston , passing the great heroic engine as it stood sweating and puffing at the buffers like an exhausted horse. It was alive. I wanted to thank it.

Poet,
Your reference to bumpers far is most delightful.