Strange goings on at Rose Hill

I've had a strange message from the Friends of Rose Hill Station, which I thought I should pass on.

A person is using the emergency help point to make a complaint about the station cleanliness introducing himself as “a former station adopter”.  He apparently does it from various stations, often Woodsmoor and last Friday it was from Rose Hill.

Obviously, this is improper use of this facility so if by any chance you happened to be around the station when this occurred, please let the Friends of Rose Hill Station group know any information that would help to identify the person.

So farewell then, Pacer trains

A few weeks ago I was taking one of my rare trips into work in Manchester and this sleek, long, clean modern and quiet new train arrived  grandly into my local terminus, Rose Hill. The coronavirus and the lockdown has reduced commuting by rail into a real minority pursuit. As it glided into the station I took a quick photo, then scanned the length of this beautiful feat of engineering that I'd only ever seen on other Northern routes. I was looking for the green bike sign, so I could tie up by bike safely while I took my seat. As it happened there wasn't one, oh horror of horrors. I had to stand up with it for the half hour journey in the doorways, guessing which side it would open on as passengers tried to squeeze past me. I needn't have worried. Our branch line has also had a temporary closure imposed on it due to the need to train up new staff on these new trains. Just as there was hardy anyone on our platform, the few people who did get on at the other stations could easily get on board. But in that fleeting moment I had to check myself and pause before being dragged into the weeds of disappointment. I think I can live with not cycling when things return to normal, I'll get over it.

Let me say it as clearly as I can. I am so pleased that Northern Trains have finally run the last Pacer train on their network. I suppose we're supposed to feel grateful, but it's not gratitude that I feel but latent anger and a bit of relief. Over the years they've been too hot in summer, freezing in winter, wet inside when it rains, and in normal times far too small to cope with the capacity on our line.  The seating format was hideous. They were noisy, and dangerous. I mentioned all of this in one of the most popular posts this blog has ever run, a rant about the damned things from 2017, where I included a picture of one of the ugly units left to rot on a siding in Iran. I feel not a smidgen of nostalgia for them; they were neither quaint, nor utilitarian, just a monstrous assault on our human rights.

I know too that we won't always have these gorgeous new trains, for the most part the route will be serviced by refurbished Sprinters which are grotty and noisy and hard to board it you have mobility issues. But they are still better than the Pacer.

I find it quite hard to imagine the new normal, or life in a big city and the whole experience of commuting from our little station on the edge of the Peak District. It will never be the same again, I'm sure of that. But there will also be many things that are better, starting with our trains.

Our train hell - Channel 4 Dispatches on Monday

After five weeks of hard work, and a lot of train travel, Channel 4 Dispatches' "Britain's Train Hell" is airing on Monday 16th March at 8pm on Channel 4.

I helped out by talking through our experiences on the line from Rose Hill or Marple into Manchester Piccadilly and home again, and submitting a video diary. The producer has written to thank me for my contribution to the film. Many other people submitted video diaries, and they have tried to use as many of these as possible, but have a watch on Monday and see if mine is in there. If it isn't then I'm fine with that, because if someone else can give their powerful and personal testimony in a far better way than me, then brilliant.

It's more important we keep this message up that our trains are unacceptable. They are still shocking. I actually dislike the Sprinters as much as the Pacers. I love the beautiful long new electric trains that run from Blackpool to Hazel Grove, but we can't have them, we still have antiquated diesel cast offs.

Give the programme a watch and do let us know what you think.

Sign the petition - link Marple with Stockport by rail

There are so many great things about living in Marple.

But let's be honest, the relationship with Stockport is an odd one. Many people don't even put Stockport on their addresses, preferring to think of it as Marple, Cheshire, and avoiding thinking too much about who the direct debit goes to once a month to pay for the bins to be collected. Then there's the local councillors who about half of us elect most years, without them ever campaigning on a vision for leadership in Stockport. That's not a criticism, by the way, but a valid observation.

To get to most places from Marple, I imagine a journey through Stockport doesn't figure much. You either go round it, or join the M60 motorway to go through it, rarely touching the centre itself. Unless that is, you actually want to go to Stockport. At peak times, this is slow. My kids get a bus to college in Stockport that is unreliable due to congestion, and frankly it is disgracefully expensive.

So it doesn't exactly help to build a civic connection when there isn't a direct train service, despite Stockport station being only 4 miles away. Building a new line wouldn't be easy or practicable, mainly because of the topography, and there was probably a good reason it hadn't been done in braver bolder times.

But now that there are ambitious plans for Stockport - greater residential concentration and a larger secondary office market in the centre - and that the commuting population of our area seems to be increasing exponentially, then it would at least be worth examining travel patterns to see what could reduce road usage and provide a better link.

Thus far, Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester Mayor, has developed an ambitious plan for a massive expansion of routes around Greater Manchester including the possibility of a tram train to Manchester from Marple and Rose Hill, improving a spoke into Manchester. However, there is a simpler and more achievable short term solution - a train service linking our community and parts of Tameside with Stockport.

As you know, the Rose Hill services to Manchester Piccadilly pass through Hyde and Guide Bridge, passing by a branch line which runs to Denton, Reddish South and then joins the main line just north of Stockport station at Heaton Norris. An alternate service along this line to Stockport would take about half an hour, pretty much the same as the bus.

There are lessons from London's development of the orbital overground 'orange line' which upgraded poor services on under-performing routes with high frequency, better designed trains, that in turn opened up more variety of journeys and locations. I don't underestimate the hurdles that have to be overcome, but I do see the urgency of creating a rail system that better serves all parts of Greater Manchester.

Andy Burnham gets this, which is why his own transport strategy - Our People, Our Place, Our Network - took a long term and wider view on a whole host of spatial and transport issues. These include sustainable transport, different types of journeys used mixed modes and opening up the whole of the city region to new possibilities.

The Stockport to Guide Bridge line is just such a service, and it's only through sustained jostling from local campaigners and the Friends groups at local stations that the case can be made consistently.

A chap called James O'Mullane has started a petition that I hope more people will sign.

Marple at the thin end of a GM wedge

There's a lot I love about living in Marple. It's friendly, convenient, relatively safe, there's a lot of people very committed to making the community better.

Maybe it's a positive sign that there has been an outpouring of outrage that an old school building will be demolished to make way for apartments.

Aesthetics are important, especially as they represent a link to the past. People care about the physical environment and good quality architecture. Hopefully it guides better decision making about what is acceptable in the future.

Some people at Manchester Metropolitan University who I help out have been doing some very serious work about how a place redefines itself. There's a glimpse of the work of Professor Cathy Parker and Steve Millington and their work here, Five Ways to Save Britain's High Streets. It's not particular to this country though, all over the world, there is a debate raging which is about one thing, shops, but should actually be about something else entirely, land and how we use it.

This issue has become the thin end of a very large wedge; that is, what we do in Marple is but a part of a bigger picture in Greater Manchester.

Flawed though the application for this building is - another retail unit??? - it does meet the requirement for 'brownfield first' that concentrates the minds of the councillors on the planning committee and the planning department, trying to follow complex rules.

Two things can and should clarify those rules, one here in Marple, the other at a GM level, which in turn is heavily influenced by central government.

First, I'm not a town planner, but to me it's fairly obvious that like many areas Marple suffers from poor traffic flows, a struggling central core and a sense of purpose. I like how Marple's Neighbourhood Plan has tried to take a long view on these issues, though the questionnaire rather leads the witness on some issues. But at least it looks up and onwards at the trends that shape our world: an ageing population, a lack of property alternatives for retirees to downsize to, a different kind of demographic and what they might require from shared civic spaces.

Change takes time, and much as it seems unrelated, a high priority should be a high frequency train service to Manchester and a line to Stockport, even if it looped through Guide Bridge and Denton. More than anything else that could ameliorate many of the other issues of overcrowding and air quality.

The second is the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, which I'm frustrated to see is stuck in the weeds. It needs all ten council leaders and the Mayor to support it. Bolton is on a bit of a knife edge, but the others are stacking up behind it and Andy Burnham looks like he's getting the rewrite he wanted. But Stockport's Labour leader Alex Ganotis has said he won't support the plan if a majority on the Council don't. Given it is under tentative minority Labour control, there's a real chance that it will eventually be sunk in this very area. In order for it to get through in Stockport would require a dialling down of the plans to build extensively in High Lane and Woodford, despite the opening of the new Airport road. In turn that may make it hard to swallow for leaders in other boroughs trying to sell it locally.

Even if it did, I still can’t see it getting support from a majority of members in Stockport. There is too much political advantage to be gained by Liberal Democrats and the very strong NIMBY voice will sway the Tory councillors at the southern fringes. Some concessions on numbers would be basic common sense, especially as the assumptions keep shifting. But all of this work, all of this vision, all of this serious attempt to address land needs of a future economy will be scuppered right here in SK6.

The irony of course is that without rules, without a plan, without a strategy for what an area requires, there will be a planning free-for-all. And when that's the case, there'll be even more isolated and opportunistic developments like this one.

Another brush with crappy crime

Someone crashed their car into mine at Rose Hill Station on Wednesday or Thursday last week. I was parked on the top row, facing outwards and had foolishly left it overnight when I'd been in London on a late one.

I put a couple of posters up on Friday morning in the hope that someone might come forward and realise what they'd done. I hoped someone in a silver car may have checked their car for blue paint scratches from mine. Hopefully we would then swap insurance details and put it down to one of those things.

It's another of life's annoyances on top of our frustration with the ongoing failure to prosecute far more serious local thugs. I enquired to the police and they said I have to attend Cheadle Heath police station with my documents and report the accident. Presumably this is a way of reducing the number of reported crimes, by making it inconvenient to report and to be given the impression by the police that they really haven't the time or the inclination to do anything. My expectations are very low.

Will I even make an insurance claim? Probably not.

Do you know what's really saddened me about this? By Monday my little posters had been taken down, after just one day, and the local Marple Community Forum refuses to put a friendly request for witnesses on their page. I look around at my lovely fellow commuters each morning and am left wondering which dirtbag did this. I don't want to feel like this about people I get the train with. But someone with a silver car knows and it will be on your conscience.

If the CCTV yields anything, then I unleash hell.

V is for Victory

The Friends of Rose Hill station are delighted to announce that, following all of our efforts, the 17.34 from Piccadilly has been reinstated to run into Rose Hill instead of Marple in the upcoming new timetable.

"Through Northern, Network Rail are offering the service to Rose Hill until 31st August with discussions ongoing as to a proposal after that with the train running to Rose Hill as well as the Work Train. This would result in the return service being retimed earlier. Let’s hope that a satisfactory permanent solution will follow."

This is a real victory for common sense and a massive tribute to the power of small groups of dedicated people who can take on distant bureaucracies.

Northern Rail goes all Kafka on us (updated)

Friends of Rose Hill station make the place so appealing, what are Northern playing at?

I wrote over the weekend about the proposed new timetable for Rose Hill station, at the end of a branch line in the bottom right corner of Greater Manchester. In there, I expressed my delight at the new timetable in May and how half hourly services throughout the day, up until after 9pm were a massive improvement on the status quo.

However (and there's always a however with Northern Rail, the train operating company), there is no train at the absolute peak time. Instead, at 17:34, a train will leave Manchester Piccadilly, go to all the usual stations on our line, stop at Woodley for NINE MINUTES then divert into Marple instead (source, Real Time Trains). At first I put this anomaly down to a data error, but no, it's apparently because they *might* need to park a works train sometime between 1800 and 1810.

I've tried to offer Northern a chance to respond, but they clearly don't care about some berk with a blog. I got the bureaucratic fob off of a 20 day response time to my "complaint".

It isn't a complaint. It's an enquiry.

They told me to phone. I did, I got cut off. I phoned again. No one answered.

Our local heroes, the Friends of Rose Hill Station have done some digging and have had a reply. It actually defies belief. I'm going to quote directly from a note I was copied in on.

It is because Network Rail have a Railhead Treatment Train (RHTT) path on the Rose Hill branch between 1800 and 1809. Note, it is a PATH, not a TRAIN.

It has apparently always been there but the proposed new timetable departure at 1734 would conflict with it. This is why the 1734 departure will travel to Woodley, sit for ten minutes there and then pootle on to Romiley and terminate at Marple, 40 mins after leaving Piccadilly!! This is so surreal that I find it difficult to get my brain round it. It poses the following questions (and I'm sure there are more questions):

1. Why has Northern Rail waited until now to raise this? The 1734 Monday to Friday departure was in the May 2018 consultation timetable issued last year.

2. Has an RHTT ever traveled up the Rose Hill branch? Have any neighbours ever seen or heard a railhead treatment train on the Rose Hill branch around 1800 Mon-Fri? Does anyone else have any knowledge of such a train?

3. Would the good folk of Surbiton or Bromley calmly accept such a pathway for a phantom train to prevent one of their peak time trains from being timetabled? I think not and nor should we.

4. Why can't Northern Rail shift their phantom RHTT path to 2140, after the last Rose Hill train will have been and gone? Most RHTT's run at night.

5. Has Network Rail got it in for Rose Hill? After their five year unjustifiable refusal to give us permission to clear part of the disused platform, it feels like an anti-Rose Hill vendetta.

We need to reverse this stupid decision. Who is this railway run for?

UPDATE: Northern Rail have officially confirmed this account to be true, but say they hope to have the problem sorted in time for the December timetable change.

Strange moves on the railway - how new timetable for Marple and Rose Hill makes no sense

Us hardy commuters of Northern Rail have had to put up with a lot over the last few years. As working patterns change, cities grow, so does the popularity of taking the train to work in the morning. This has led to overcrowding at a time when the rolling stock is well past its sell-by date. The government issued Northern with a new franchise on the condition that the hated Pacers be replaced by 2020, and we have been assured that’s happening by the end of next year. What is more likely, however, is our lines will get the refurbished Sprinter diesel units which are still pretty noisy and have a higher doorway, which makes them hard to access for less mobile passengers.

We've also had to grin and bear it through regular strikes over future staffing levels on new driver only trains. Yes, the limited services are a disruption, but we cope. But it rather exposes a worrying intransigence on the part of Northern Rail management and the RMT Union that they can't sort this issue out.

I digress, but that’s important context. In May there is to be a new timetable, thanks to the Real Time Trains site we've had a glimpse before they are officially announced. It looks like the morning services are broadly the same, and there is a massive improvement in the frequency of trains in the evening. Currently, if you go to an event or work late, the next (and last) train after the 18:35 isn’t until two hours later, or you get one to Marple and hike up the hill. That’s changing and there will be two trains an hour up until 21:09. Inevitably the frequency of that service will result in more park and ride passengers utilising Rose Hill in the morning. The tweaks however don't make much sense. There will be a gap in service in the absolute peak time from the frustratingly early 17:10 (which was the 17:20 and will have worked well for people who finish work at 5) until 18:09! But there will be a 17:34 out of Piccadilly via Hyde, but running into Marple instead of Rose Hill.

As fellow commuter Catherine Waddington first suggested on Twitter this just has to be a mistake as it seems to clash with other Marple trains minutes apart and the return to Piccadilly is right behind a service from New Mills. I’m intrigued as to the planning process that has informed these changes. The wonderful Friends of Rose Hill Station conduct a survey on numbers, but I’m not aware of any detailed enquiries into why these changes are taking place in the shape they are.

Also, Piccadilly station will soon have the electronic barriers on platforms 1 to 3 which will make it even more crowded at peak times. Already my season card doesn’t work in barriers because my phone has damaged it, and I’m not convinced that everyone will have the ability to purchase a ticket by the time they get to Manchester and the rules are tightening on people who don't. Or maybe they’ll open the barriers as a free for all at peak times meaning the fare dodgers will take their chances like they do on Metrolink.

In the interests of fairness I've put these points to Northern Rail's press office on Friday morning, but they hadn't replied (it's Sunday now). I will update if they do.

Finally, it's difficult to understate how important to our service the local Friends of Rose Hill Station have been, improving the environment of the station and campaigning for improvement to services. Please sign up to receive updates and subscribe to support the excellent work they do on our behalf.

Rose Hill Station - a great place to walk from too

I was delighted to be asked to get involved in the Friends of Rose Hill Station, our local station. David Sumner (pictured left), who chairs the group, has worked wonders with the other volunteers in creating a delightful ambience around our small and perfectly formed terminus. 

At the end of October we launched a guide to walks around the Marple area that are all accessible from Rose Hill. The idea is to work with Northern Rail to increase passenger numbers and usage of the station, but at the same time campaign for a weekend service and a far better frequency of trains in the evenings.

We were delighted with the launch and thrilled with the support we received from the Marple Ramblers. It's certainly one of the aspects of living around here that many people enjoy.

The leaflet is now available in the station at the booking office and in the library at the waiting room, as well as around Piccadilly Station and local tourist information centres around Manchester and the wider area.

There is a serious campaigning edge to the work of the Friends too and we've had some extremely productive and frank discussions with Northern Rail. Most recently, a squad of volunteers have been monitoring passenger numbers.

Anyway, do visit the station and get in touch if you'd like a guide.