AGM

Our 2007 Annual General Meeting will take place on Saturday, 27th October at the Hawarden Institute, Glynne Way, Hawarden from 2.30 to 4.30 pm. The doors open at 2 pm. Please note that this year, the meeting takes place in room 11 on the first floor.

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Waiting for News

This 'Summer' Newsletter was planned for June, to coincide with the railway industry's timetable period, in the hope that we could encourage people to use our line with a clear conscience after its punctuality record suddenly became one of the best in the country.

This was to have been a 'timetables special edition', mirroring our website's restored Great Days Out section. Unfortunately, the restoration of these promotional pages was stopped in its tracks when we discovered the plans that Arriva Trains Wales (ATW) had for the Autumn, more of which later.

Doubts about the advisability of promoting our line had already been created by the advanced engineering information that we had received that showed many, many weekends being disrupted over the summer. These were the very days on which we would expect the greatest response to our publicity and many a Great Day Out was likely instead to become more of an ordeal than a pleasure trip.

Then we saw the new timetables. See the sub-items Railtour and Clwydian Ranger for more on this, but the key to us abandoning our promotional activities again came with a tiny footnote at the bottom of the Sunday Wrexham-Bidston pages of ATW's Timetable 4 (North Wales). This read:

As it happened, our Chairman was planning to spend time on our trains with the excellent Community Rail Officer, Jamie Sant, who on behalf of all of us contacted ATW from the train to find out what was planned.

Neither of them was pleased with the answer and the Summer newsletter was postponed until the matter was sorted out in July. By then, however, we had learned that a decision by the ORR about the proposed Wrexham to London train service was due in August and we delayed once again for that. Finally, the decision was announced in September and here we are at last, starting with the good news...

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Wrexham - Marylebone: Next Spring?

This is Wrexham and Shropshire's own press release:

We, of course are absolutely delighted with this news and congratulate the directors, John Nelson, Andy Hamilton and Richard Harper of Renaissance Trains and Chiltern Railways on their perseverance in setting up the new company and overcoming the substantial obstacles so far.

These included Virgin West Coast's franchise agreement preventing competition between Wolverhampton and London - along with an audacious objection from Arriva Trains Wales who complained, in effect, that because their own performance was poor between Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton, the new company should not be allowed to make things harder for them.

Just to remind you: when two of our Committee met Wrexham and Shropshire directors in London last year, our first mention of extending the new service to Bidston prompted them to dig out their draft timetable and point to two journeys for which this would be possible using their currently planned resources. Obviously, the battles they faced at the time stopped this happening initially, but they have assured us that once the new service is up and running they will look at expanding it.

Very useful additional selling points for London journeys from our line would be the many other destinations brought within a single change of trains by the connections available at Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton and Banbury.

If you find Liverpool Lime Street and Chester stations inconvenient for InterCity journeys and would find through trains from our line to London attractive, then Wrexham and Shropshire would like to hear from you. Write to:

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The Leaf-Fall Timetable Saga

As we mentioned earlier, we spotted some strange 'small print' in the ATW North Wales summer timetable. Our Chairman, Malcolm Wright, immediately emailed the ATW timetable manager and the next day joined Jamie Sant on his PR exercise on the Borderlands trains.

After seeing the timetable footnote, Jamie contacted ATW's Stakeholder Liaison Manager who revealed that a special 'leaf fall' timetable was to be implemented in October and November. This was complete news to the WBRUA although Jamie had come across the suggestion before.

Now, there have been many 'leaves-on-the-line' measures taken elsewhere, but, as far as we know these have all been simple extensions of journey times. The day after the train exercise, we received the email reply from ATW in Cardiff.

They told us "...basically the service will be at 90-minute intervals between 09.00 & 15.00" and that the temporary timetable had been approved by all the relevant authorities. On learning this by email, Jamie responded thus:

Although the Steering Group meeting had included the usual ATW representative, clearly there had been some misunderstanding about what had been agreed there, if anything.

Meanwhile, we were continuing our attempts to find pleasure trips to publicise in this "Summer" newsletter. To this end, our Chairman used the Create Your Own Timetable facility on the ATW website to make a summary of the journeys from Bidston to Porthmadog.

It generated an incredible selection of possible journeys, most of which were only valid for limited periods. Malcolm had not defined the dates for the tailor-made timetable and, as well as the summer timings, it included all the connections that Arriva had already uploaded into the database for the period of the 'leaf-fall' timetable.

We were, therefore, able to see what had really been planned for the autumn and Malcolm, abandoning once again the promotion of our line, used the website to produce a summary of the Bidston - Wrexham timetable for mid-October only.

Despite what Arriva had told us all, the service was not to be reduced just between 0900 and 1500. Southbound, the 90-minute interval would apply from the first train right through to the evening 'peak', which, ironically, has a 75-minute gap in any case. The only departure to be followed by an hour's gap before the next train was the 1745 from Bidston.

The local authorities were furious. Our Committee had a full discussion before deciding that we supported their opposition to the leaf fall timetable, although for us our stance was not a foregone conclusion. We ourselves had suggested an emergency timetable in 2006 when Arriva were insisting on trying to operate the service with two class 153 railcars that could not be relied upon to complete the hourly journeys in 60 minutes.

Our suggestion in that case, however, was that one off-peak northbound journey for each unit should be scheduled to terminate at Shotton. The terminations were happening almost daily anyway - but we never knew which journey was going to be the one aborted.

However, last Autumn, ATW allocated a class 150 unit to the line and the two 153s were joined together as a single train. The Welsh Assembly had agreed to fund the extra cost of class 150s to operate the whole service from December 2006 and Arriva should be congratulated for getting one of them in place a few months early. Crucially, we found that while the '153-train' still failed to keep to time, the class 150 - with its extra power and four sets of double doors for slick boarding and alighting - managed to do so. If there were hold-ups for other reasons, then recovery time remained non-existent and a few Shotton turnarounds, even of the class 150 unit, continued to be inflicted upon us.

However, leaf-fall problems in themselves did not appear to delay the better train. For this reason, we decided to back the local authority members of the Borderlands Line Community - Rail Partnership regarding this autumn's arrangements.

We are pleased to report that Arriva Trains Wales relented and the two 150s will operate an hourly service as normal throughout the autumn. Let us hope that there are not too many other delays, however, because we just know that these will encourage ATW to say "we told you so" despite these problems arising throughout the other seasons.

What we all need, of course, is to...

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...Get the Third Unit Back!

In the mid-1980s our WBRUA Border Line publications were reporting on the negotiations that were going on between British Rail, Cheshire and Clwyd County Councils regarding construction of a north to east chord at Shotton.

We quoted the BR Area Manager, who had told us that the passenger potential of this chord was not being taken into account, but that "it would raise the possibility of a passenger service". This was, we now know, complete flannel.

One of their civil engineering managers, now retired, but who was involved in the Shotton Chord project, tells us that British Rail's motivation was actually to keep the Dee Marsh freight traffic while allowing the closure of the rest of the Wrexham to Bidston line. Perhaps the county councils got wind of this, because the project was shelved and, instead, our mothballed route through the Chester Northgate triangle was reopened for the timber and steel trains from Scotland.

This, then was the context in which the allocation of rolling stock for the Wrexham - Bidston service was reduced to just two units on Mondays to Fridays.

At that very time, there was a renewed burst of line closures elsewhere. We reported in 1985 on the fact that a Kent MP had been infamously quiet about the closure of one his local lines but promptly joined its resultant steam-inspired Tunbridge Wells and Eridge Railway Preservation Society - yes, the TWERPS - once the BR service was withdrawn.

It was axed for much the same reason that the Wrexham to Bidston Line was vulnerable: that is, a badly organised change of trains on journeys to the principal destination was deterring most passengers. Perhaps that should read "principal surviving destination" in our case...

The Bidston to Wrexham line only exists in its present form because the busiest services - those to Chester - were Beechinged in the expectation that the rest would go the same way. Fortunately, the Merseyside PTE was created and for a while made the line part of the Merseyrail diesel network like its City Line services.

During our line's Merseyrail period, except on Sundays when the trains continued to serve New Brighton, the northern terminus was Birkenhead North. There, crucially, the second-leg train would be waiting for Wrexham-bound passengers, rather than vice versa. HOARDS of passengers would sweep over the footbridge on to the diesel, which, because of a new crossover installed west of the station, could depart from its arrival platform a couple of minutes later.

Passengers do not want to hang around on station platforms twice in a relatively short journey. Countless examples in Europe of trains waiting to provide passengers with their connection on arrival prove that a change of trains, in itself, is not such a great deterrent to patronage if it is quick, convenient and dependable.

From Wrexham, going towards Liverpool, the passengers would generally sit on the diesel at Birkenhead North until the electric train from New Brighton came into view - just a couple of minutes later, according to the timetable. In practice, the diesel arrived a minute or two early if it had left Bidston on time. In other words: nearly always, because our uncongested line was consistently the most punctual in Britain. The two eastbound trains arrived on opposite sides of the same island platform at Birkenhead North, so when the electric arrived there would be a bit of a scramble of passengers leaving the diesel.

At this point in history, there were six units allocated to our line, with its peak service increased as far south as Heswall when the Liverpool Loop opened. The first arrivals at Birkenhead North from Heswall or beyond were at 0618, 0651, 0741, 0801, 0816, 0831, 0846, 0901, 0916 and 0936.

Then the Merseyside County Council briefly went Conservative (in name) - and unconservatively Monetarist politically. As a result, the Wrexham line was expelled from the Merseyrail network in 1978 and the line's allocation of rolling stock was reduced to five units.

The new crossover at Birkenhead North was removed within weeks by British Rail. This rendered termination of the diesels there impossible at peak hours when the frequencies of the New Brighton and West Kirby lines combined to run every five minutes to Liverpool. It still remains perfectly possible for diesel trains to terminate at North station in the ten-minute gaps that now exist all day, fifteen in the evenings and on Sundays.

At Bidston, the diesels were left to use the existing infrastructure, which, back then, necessitated the use of the two-way track on the north side of the solitary, windswept, island platform. Passengers for Liverpool now had to wait an average of 12 minutes for their onward journey.

Wrexham Central retained most of its passengers, however - around half a million a year - until, without warning to the many season ticket holders, the supplementary peak hour journeys were scrapped in 1982. The hourly service was now operated, still with punctual perfection, by three class 101 DMUs.

At Bidston, the poor connections added to the deterrent of the lost peak service and about 600 people a day were now changing trains there. At Birkenhead North, it had been around 1600.

Now we come back around to 1985, the year of the British Rail "flannel" of which there was more than one example. This was when we were fool enough to believe that the allocation of the very first of the new generation of class 142 (Pacer) diesel trains represented, as British Rail claimed, their commitment to the future of the line.

We now know that the new units were put on our line first to TEST them in full passenger use. Why? Because if they proved to be rubbish, it didn't matter. The line was doomed anyway. Or so they hoped.

What we were not told until the very last minute was that only two 142s were being allocated to replace the three 101s. At the start of each weekday's service, an extra class 150 Sprinter allowed the first three round trips to be hourly, before it formed a service from Wrexham General to Hull.

Otherwise, there was not even any intention or expectation that two train units could maintain an hourly timetable between Wrexham and Bidston. They ran irregularly with intervals of up to an hour and three quarters between trains (although there was an hourly service on Saturdays when an extra Pacer was allocated to the line).

It turned out that the four-wheeled 142s WERE rubbish. Nearly all their gearboxes failed and they provided a noisy, uncomfortable ride except on the main lines with continuous welded rail for which they were not intended.

They were also banned from many a rural route, for which they WERE intended, because of the dangerously high decibels that were emitted by their protesting wheels on even a slight curve. There was another related problem caused by the excessive side friction on many branch lines: the wheels were constantly wearing out.

Nevertheless, we were stuck with the 142s for nearly twenty years. At least the sporadic timetable of the late 1980s regained the line its phenomenal punctuality record once the gearbox problems were cured.

The present hourly service that has run since the early 1990s, however, was an experiment that failed from the moment it was hatched. It started with three stations being left out of the basic off-peak timetable. The residents of Upton and Cefn-y-Bedd protested loudly and their trains were reinstated, but the industrial users of Hawarden Bridge were left to buy cars or arrange daily lifts with workmates.

Despite the thousands of Wirralians who now work at Deeside Industrial Park, Hawarden Bridge remains largely excluded from the timetable in 2007.

The reinstatement of the two community stations depended on ALL the intermediate stops except Shotton and Wrexham General being served only on request. Crucially, despite 2006's allocation of two powerful class 150s to the line, the timetable still relies on the service remaining unpopular and the trains sometimes being able to run through some stations without stopping.

The Wrexham-Bidston line, despite an increase in patronage over the last year (healthy at Wrexham, slight at Bidston) is at present carrying about one fifth of the number of passengers that it did in the mid-1970s. Meanwhile, the potential of its destinations and catchment population has mushroomed so much that patronage should have doubled in that time.

Arriva are still turning trains around at Shotton to recover from delays and still not doing enough to maintain connections at Bidston. The only solution to this is a three-unit operation.

We do not believe that a 50% increase in the number of units would require proportionately extra train staff. Three crews are on duty for much of the day in any case, covering each other's breaks.

While an hour's standing time in a 60-minute service on our hour-long route could be considered excessive in a three-unit operation, little of it would be non-productive. Merseyrail have proved that even modest recovery time, which obviously improves reliability, pays for itself through an almost embarrassing increase in revenue. That the Borderlands crews' breaks could be accommodated in 45-minute turnarounds offsets more of the slack-period costs.

Given that the leasing costs of three 153s would be much less than two 150s, this is why we asked repeatedly for the former option to be considered. Three 150s would be much, much better of course, but would almost certainly come about only if the three 153s were introduced first.

Another thing that Merseyrail have proved is that word spreads quickly when things get better and it would not be long before the 153s would have to be replaced by bigger trains because of overcrowding. The main problem would then be getting hold of and keeping them. Despite additional financing for the two 150s, class 153s have been used frequently over the last few weeks. Let's hope the Welsh Assembly Government gets a cash refund from ATW! There is of course an aspect to a three-unit operation other than just making our present service reliable and that is overcoming...

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...The Shortcomings of the Franchise

We have written many times that our present service is a failing experiment rendered permanent by being written successively into the North West and Wales-and-Borders rail franchises, the latter operated by Arriva Trains Wales. The third unit would allow a great deal of improvement to bring the service back to what we would call an absolute minimum, if the crew allocation were also to be increased to make full use of this additional resource.

For a start, the three units could bunch up run half an hour apart at peak hours. When the WBRUA was formed in 1980, the first trains arrived at Bidston 0709, 0742, 0802, 0823, 0854 and 0928. Arrivals at Wrexham Central from Hawarden Bridge and beyond were at 0656, 0817, 0849, 0909, and 0938. The first hourly train into Wrexham arrives now at 0830, its lateness being another factor in the "less-than-minimum" description

More than anything, the present abysmal provision for the region' s commuters is what would mark out our service as inadequate, even if it were dependable. The change of trains at Bidston means the maximum peak-hour flow would happen there earlier than at Wrexham in the morning and later than at Wrexham in the evening. While commuters to Birkenhead and Liverpool form the bulk of the peak market on Merseyside, a great many students and shoppers in Wrexham would welcome trains leaving at 1530, 1615, 1645, 1730 and 1815.

The consequent return journeys from Bidston at 1630, 1715, 1745, 1830 and 1915 would give many a commuter's family the option of selling their second car, if the first few trains northbound were similarly tailored to their needs.

Off peak, there are two options for a three-unit regular service. Each train unit could operate three-hour cycles for an hourly service or every two and a quarter hours for a frequency of 45 minutes. Option one would need fewer crews and its departure times would be easier to remember.  (Continued below)

The paper version of this newsletter contained a 'pull-out' reproduction of the timetable for our line in its 1964-5 form. Click the picture on the left to open/download it in PDF form. Who was it in 1960 that had such an amazing vision for the Dee Marsh lines that the service would treble with the rickety sporadic Victorian steam trains to and from Seacombe being replaced by no fewer than twenty-two new diesel multiple units serving New Brighton, Chester and Wrexham?

It would not be much more reliable than the more frequent option, however: the latter would involve extra crews covering each other's breaks while the trains keep moving. Taking the crew breaks as sacrosanct in the hourly service's standing time, this leaves about fifteen minutes in each round trip for recovery from delays in both options.

Except in very exceptional circumstances, fifteen minutes is all we need to lose the infernal Shotton turnarounds. Our line is so uncluttered that major train delays are rare. Passengers, on the other hand, have been made an hour late by a premature termination when their train has been as little as NINE minutes late.

Which frequency would be more popular? We surveyed our members with the simple preferences: 45-minute intervals or hourly. The result? Exactly half opted for hourly and three-eighths wanted a 45-minute service. The other eighth expressed no preference, but most of these added their own comments about the trains turning up when they are supposed to.

Several people also pointed out that the service should really be half-hourly and we are probably all agreed on that. It would only take five units to operate it, making it great value for money in terms of the operating costs when compared to the three-unit hourly service. It would also have the healthiest potential for timetable recovery with about 30 minutes of standing time in every 2½-hour round trip.

This is more than enough to return our service to Birkenhead North. If the powers-that-be don't know why THAT should happen, then it is probably pointless trying to explain to them the benefits of the spare platform and the double service to Liverpool. We don't expect this to happen, unfortunately. If even Merseytravel didn't make this a condition of their present short-term contracts with ATW for the evening and Sunday service, then there is little hope as yet for our most fundamental aspiration. Nevertheless, this is part of the footnote that is now automatically added to all our emails to the Liaison Group and Copy List:

Since 1980, WBRUA policy has been that three train units form the absolute minimum for the satisfactory operation of the weekday rail service from Wrexham Central to Bidston or, to be more accurate, to Birkenhead North. We have never agreed that Bidston should be the terminus; the Association was specifically formed to oppose it. This is enshrined in our constitution and in our name: the Wrexham - BIRKENHEAD Rail Users' Association.

One of our members pointed out in an email that a recent newsletter mentioned Birkenhead North thirty-four times. There is something else at Birkenhead North apart from the station: a depot with stabling facilities. These are rather overloaded at present because of the wheel problems currently being experienced by Merseyrail rolling stock. However, in normal times we would like to see one of our units stabling there: as ever, this is to remove inadequacies from the 'less-than-minimum-timetable'.

As well as the first arrival in Wrexham being much too late, these inadequacies include the last departure there being much too early - before 10 p.m., seven days a week. It is simply not possible to have a long evening out in Wrexham from Flintshire by public transport. The buses are even worse than the trains.

If, after being serviced in Chester, our second unit could return in the evening to provide a 2300 service from Wrexham to Bidston, then it would boost the use of other evening journeys and the new demand-responsive shuttle bus to and from Theatr Clwyd. The next morning this train could leave Bidston (or you-know-where) at about 0630, supplementing the early morning Joblink buses that take forever to get from the Wirral to Deeside Industrial Park.

Arrival at Wrexham would be at about 0730 - just in time to miss the proposed second train of the day to London Marylebone, but then you can't have everything. The demand-responsive Deeside and Wrexham Shuttle buses to the respective industrial parks would complement this early journey perfectly - as would the Wirral Joblink buses that extend from Deeside to Broughton Aerospace, if they only went five minutes further to and from Hawarden station.

Although ATW's representative habitually rubbished the idea of stabling at Birkenhead North at our Liaison Meetings, it did in fact happen when his company wanted to run a Saturday service on the final Sunday of the Open Golf at Hoylake last year (and on one other occasion also). Merseyrail tell us that they have no objection to it in principal and even suggested, as an alternative, stabling a unit at New Brighton "where there is more space".

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Merseyrail Magic

Talking of Merseyrail, when our Chairman discovered another ATW Shotton turnaround one Saturday morning he tried to ask Merseyrail Control to warn passengers in Liverpool and Birkenhead that they would face an hour's wait if they went to Bidston. Not being successful out of office hours, he emailed Merseyrail's Managing Director, Patrick Verwer, with a request to be phoned back - not expecting a reply until the following Monday. Malcolm was delighted to get a call on the Saturday evening, in which Patrick agreed immediately that the announcements were a good idea.

Sadly they are being needed quite regularly at present, but we thank Merseyrail very much indeed for taking this action to help compensate for ATW shortcomings. None of the "that's another company" mentality here. Another company? "They're OUR passengers!" said Patrick.

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Great Days Grate

It was desperately frustrating, after several months of wonderfully punctual service by our class 150 trains earlier in the year, to find that we STILL couldn't find much to recommend for our Great Days Out website pages that we first created in conjunction with our Wirral Globe advertising campaign in 2004.

Railtour

The flagship of our Great Days Out was the rail tour via the Cambrian Coast, through Snowdonia to the Conwy Valley (on Sherpa bus or steam train from Porthmadog) and back home along the North Wales coast. This summer, however, the tour has been rendered unadvisable by a risky five-minute weekday connection at Llandudno Junction.

This doesn't just affect our line and the railtour. As a result of the 1851 arrival and 1856 departure at the Junction, most Merseyside and Greater Manchester day-trippers are wiped off the Conwy Valley's potential passenger list. Surely the train from Blaenau Ffestiniog - which now has a 24-minute turnaround there - could have been timed to run slightly earlier to make the homeward journey more dependable for so many people?

Another disappointment is that the S97 Snowdon Sherpa bus linking the railway stations at Porthmadog and Betws-y-Coed leaves the former at 1502, just nine minutes after the Cambrian Coast train arrives. While this would be fine in theory, the Cambrian Coast's punctuality record is not good so the connection is risky here too.

It used to be very nice to have over an hour to look at Porthmadog, but this is now only possible on the Ffestiniog Railway version of the tour. In this case, there is about half an hour between the steam train's arrival at Blaenau and departure of the Conwy Valley diesel.

So while we can still commend the beauty of the route and the value of the North and Mid Wales Day Ranger, we cannot advise anyone to undertake the tour without warning of the possibility of very long waits occurring at less-than-idyllic locations.

Clwydian Ranger

Three years ago, the Clwydian Ranger Network of summer Sunday leisure buses was simply fantastic and amazing value. (It was even free for Welsh seniors). There was an excellent connection at Shotton for our July/August Sunday morning train from Bidston, the bus going to the Moel Famau viewpoint on the Offa's Dyke Path. It called at Loggerheads Country Park to make a whole variety of connections not just in the Clwydian Range but into Snowdonia as far as Barmouth. The Moel Famau bus had another perfect connection back at Shotton, while a Barmouth bus was quite well timed for a return journey to Bidston from Wrexham. Despite our efforts, too few people heard about the Clwydian Ranger. Therefore, its network of services has been drastically reduced along with its period of operation. Worst of all, the timing of the returning Moel Famau bus was not changed when the year-round Borderlands Sunday train service was introduced in 2006. The last two years' booklets have even included a footnote stating that there is no connection for this bus coming back, despite showing all the times of the outward journey from Bidston.

Shotton Connections...

...are too bad for words. We have had tremendous success in the past with leafleting campaigns on the rare occasions when journeys to the North Wales coast have been both cheap and slick. The biggest insult comes from the fact that, this year, there are twenty trains that pass though the low level platforms at just the right time to provide perfect connections for Borderlands trains in one direction or another. Seventeen of these "perfect" trains DO NOT STOP.

The Barmouth Bus

This is the one thing we really could still have plugged. The Arriva bus company does a fantastic value day ticket at just £5 for Wales and the North West. Their X94 TrawsCambria bus from Wrexham to Barmouth has been extended to Chester and its times at Wrexham are generally quite convenient in theory for Borderlands Trains (not Sundays). Unfortunately, as the train reliability has taken a dive recently, we can't even recommend this Great Day Out for now.

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Commuter Woes

When ATW were planning to introduce their Standard Pattern Timetable (SPT) for Wales in 2005 we were very pleased to find in the draft version that the main evening commuter train from Bidston was to run thirteen minutes later, allowing nine-to-fivers from a much wider area of workplaces to reach Moorfields in time to use it.

We had been asking for this for another reason too: the 1732 from Bidston usually departed late because its previous working at 1632 from Wrexham was too popular for the excessively tight timetable to be maintained. This is probably why ATW conceded this alteration: their obsession with performance statistics, sometimes at the passengers' expense, is well documented in previous newsletters. In this case, however, the change suited the majority of potential commuters very well.

Our main motive for requesting the change - the increased walk-from-work time - was rendered worthless, however, by a change to the morning timetable in which the walk TO work now happened fifteen minutes later. The commuter destination zone remained miniscule.

ATW had requested that we comment on the draft timetable by email to a special address, consultation@arrivatw.co.uk. The man behind the consultation address was present at a WBRUA Liaison Meeting with local government and rail representatives some weeks after the deadline, but it became clear that our input had not been properly read.

The most glaring madness of the SPT had been to make our last two evening trains leave Bidston five minutes before the arrival of the half-hourly trains from Liverpool, but Arriva had not registered even this comment. The 25-minute connection interval persists on Saturday evenings to this day. (This is another inadequacy that can only be cured by stabling at Birkenhead North because the line from Wrexham to the Chester base closes overnight on Saturdays.)

Southbound nine-to-fivers at Deeside Industrial Park were affected too by the later morning train because it now reaches Hawarden Bridge at 0855 instead of 0840.

We begged, repeatedly, for the timing of the second train each way to remain where it was, but the 60-minute regularity of the SPT seemed sacrosanct. The train that we wanted to stay fifteen minutes earlier than proposed hung around in Wrexham for well over an hour prior to its departure so there was little, operationally, to prevent this concession from ATW. As with most of our dealings with this company at "Liaison" Meetings, however, our request was strangled at birth in front of our eyes and subsequent pleas were ignored. (Note the "quotes").

When the later running was implemented, however, a new factor loomed all-too-clearly into the view of our hapless commuters. An EWS freight working now immediately preceded the passenger train and, to begin with, sat in the latter's path at Dee Marsh until a shunter decided to turn up for work. A few financial claims for this delay soon solved this problem, but the freight train still provides an obstacle to our commuters.

Since we started copying in all the Liaison representatives' bosses to our email input, ATW timetable managers have FINALLY started to try and put back our morning peak trains to where they were. They have not been successful, because EWS now has the power over the southern half of the northbound path. The freight company prefers their earlier working and they will not budge.

We are therefore even more furious in retrospect that Arriva's representative was so obstructive when we first asked, not for some ludicrously unattainable objective, but simply for the morning timetable to stay exactly as it had been for years.

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Good Rail Relations

The WBRUA has dealt with many different people over its 27 years with Cheshire CC as the only constant presences in the affairs of the Wrexham - Bidston Line. Merseyside and Clwyd county councils have gone, and British Rail was re-structured twice before privatisation with its Provincial Sector and Regional Railways successively controlling our line. Quite honestly, we have lost track of all the different company names involved with the subsequent franchises for our line and Merseyrail. Over the years our relationships with the various managers have been great, poor or non-existent depending simply on the whims and perceptions of the individuals involved.

It will come as no surprise to you that the longest-standing members of the WBRUA Committee regard our recent dealings with Arriva Trains Wales as among the worst that we have ever had to endure. It is not without precedent though that WBRUA ideas have been taken no further than the supposed communication channel of the Liaison Meeting. You may recall tributes to the late Martin Robertson in recent newsletters: he was head of the transport unit at Clwyd County Council and we have a copy of a 1992 letter that we wrote to him about Shotton connections:

Martin, who went on to become national chairman of the Association of Transport Coordinating Officers, was one of our greatest professional supporters. This was to such a degree that he would take it upon himself to make sure that our input got to the right people in case the official chain of communication, the WBRUA Liaison Group, had a weakest link from British Rail in attendance.

Simon Pitcher, the decision maker for our line at BR, then decided to come to the subsequent meetings himself and was very keen to take our suggestions on board if at all possible. After one of our successful leafletings about the Shotton connections, he actually arranged for a loco-hauled Birmingham train to stop additionally at Shotton Low Level to maintain the momentum of the publicity. The fact that the train was too long for the present-day station and would require the installation of "do not alight here" signs where the carriages extended beyond the platforms was not an obstruction to progress as far as Simon was concerned.

There were plenty of other benevolent managers in the past, some of them not even needing to be asked for improvements. Steve Sharp was one of the last BR managers in charge of our line and he was responsible for restoring its hourly service. We did tell him that we thought reliability would be lost but obviously agreed that hourly was the absolute minimum frequency for the line. He took so many other positive steps that we had no doubts about his motivation. Our only reservations concerned stretching so much the resources that were then being made available.

It was Steve Sharp who calculated that Clwyd's short term-contract for the evening and Sunday trains (instigated by Martin Robertson when BR scrapped them) could for the same money include extra trains in high summer on Sunday mornings.

Steve even used the extra Sunday unit to run an early Chester - Shrewsbury journey where, as on our line, there had been nothing before mid-afternoon. The mid-80s revamp of the lines around Wrexham (designed with the closure of our line in mind) allowed him to introduce, with this unit, the first Shrewsbury - Bidston train service, albeit one way just eight times a year!

This gave us a mid-morning Sunday train from Bidston in July and August: both this and the working from Shrewsbury had fantastic connections for the coast at Shotton. We publicised this in our area with very great success until subsequent planners completely forgot about the upper line at Shotton and we found ourselves, once again, with no connections worth recommending.

South of Wrexham, the Shrewsbury journeys got little publicity, carried mostly fresh air and were soon truncated both ways.

Steve Sharp also slashed the fares on our line by nearly fifty per cent, prompting a great boost in passengers, at the south end at least. He didn't include Wirral Line stations in the reductions except to Wrexham itself and the evidence of this is felt to this day. For example, the return fare from Wallasey Village to Hawarden is £5.70, but just £5.10 to Wrexham, nearly twice as far away.

Mr Sharp was another who went to great lengths to ensure that enough daily Shotton connections were available at least to allow for convenient days out in North Wales from our line. In his case, he inserted a stop into a Saturday train from Llandudno to Manchester and Stockport that otherwise ran non-stop from Prestatyn to Warrington Bank Quay. Yes, for a while we had a train calling at Shotton Low Level that even missed out Chester!

In 1980, BR's then Area Manager in Chester, Merrick Roocroft, actually encouraged the setting up of the WBRUA, writing for the early editions of our Border Line magazines. His successor, Eric Roberts, adopted and underwrote one of our loco-hauled InterCity charter trains as part of a Wrexham Rail Weeks promotion. When Merrick returned to us for a second spell around 1990 and saw the 'Upton to Rhyl in 61 minutes' leaflet that we were planning, he instantly matched our investment so that we could double both the print run and the area of its distribution with the Wirral Globe.

Although things really took a downturn at privatisation - First North Western only rarely sent a representative to our Liaison Meetings, for example - there have been occasional instances of good contacts since then.

Arriva Trains Wales's first managing director, Peter Strachan only met our Chairman momentarily at a Rail Passengers Committee conference in Cardiff in January 2005, but in that instant suggested a meeting during his next visit to our area. That one-hour encounter went so well that he finished by suggesting a full day's "brainstorming" session about how to make the most of the Borderlands Line. Sadly, this didn't happen, because he suddenly left for a very senior post with Network Rail.

Which makes our last face-to-face meeting with ATW all the more depressing. We had heard about the extra investment for the two 150s and were certain that this money could be better spent on the three 153s. Neither the Performance Manager nor the Stakeholder Liaison Manager would even countenance the idea and when we tried to press the point that our suggestion should at least be studied, the SLM told us "you're wasting my bloody time". So when we refer to "our last" meeting with him, we do of course, mean our FINAL one.

Luckily, we have our email circulars, which are well received by many interested parties, especially those on the copy-to list of the most senior managers and officers. Simon Pickering, the boss in Wales of the official body, Passenger Focus, responded thus to our first circular about the leaf fall timetable:

If we are on the phone to one of the recipients for the first time, we generally apologise for the number of emails they get, but are nearly always rewarded with a reply about being glad to be kept informed.

A direct email to Merseyrail's Patrick Verwer about a "that's another company" incident prompted a request from his Station Manager for a personal meeting, about various topics, that took place very enjoyably just a few days before the completion of this newsletter.

In July, the face of Merseyrail's Corporate Affairs Manager Rudi Boersma positively lit up when our Chairman introduced himself at a recent evening public meeting by simply indicating the colour version of the WBRUA letterhead at the top of an A4 sheet of requests. "Oh!" he said, "I get your emails - and I DO read them!" He receptively addressed all the issues raised on the sheet in an email to us, first thing the following morning.

So we feel well regarded in some quarters. Even those local government officers whom we found less supportive than we would have liked at the Liaison Meetings have proved themselves to be more positive in cyber-space, taking strong action after WBRUA email tip-offs. The latest example is the recent saga of ATW running 153s when they have received additional funding for the 150s.

We would ask you, therefore, to keep your eyes and ears open and email us yourselves at wbrua@aol.com if you find something amiss - or write to our Secretary in the traditional way.

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Cheshire News

If any of you are aware of how a new rail ticket called the Cheshire Day Ranger came to be introduced, we would very much like to know. Rover tickets were not liked by the privatised rail companies and although they were required by law to keep selling them, there was no obligation to advertise them. Consequently, most types are very seldom bought these days.

The Cheshire Day Ranger covers Liverpool, Manchester and Stoke on Trent, none of which have ever been in the county. While West Kirby and New Brighton may be in 'ceremonial' Cheshire they are not in the modern administrative version; they are, however, included in the Day Ranger area. Despite being in Cheshire, Neston, Nantwich and other 'qualifying' stations are NOT included. It costs £15, with the usual concessions and morning peak restrictions.

As for the present Cheshire CC, their Sunday bus network is just awful with Neston particularly ill-served. You would probably have to go to the Outer Hebrides with their tradition of absolute observance of the Sabbath to find a town the size of Willaston without a single Sunday bus.

As this authority is the only local one not to give revenue support to our Sunday trains, we have asked them to look at financing a single bus that ties in with our Sunday service at Neston. Every 2½ hours it would do a round trip to Hooton via Willaston (while the train goes off to Bidston and back) and then provide Wirral stations with a Neston - Chester link when the train is on its way to and from Wrexham.

Don't hold your breath though.

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Merseytravel Aspirations

As well as Merseyrail (the train operating company), Merseytravel (the transport authority) have become very positive and imaginative in their declared aspirations.

For a start, they are now adamant that electrification of our line should happen all the way to Wrexham, despite the Faber Maunsell study making the prospect of anything beyond Shotton look doubtful in terms of the comparative benefit-cost ratios. (We have submitted our own opinion to the Steering Group that the study's passenger figures for a Liverpool-Wrexham service are a substantial underestimate). The WAG is equally committed to electrifying the whole line.

Merseytravel continues to press for the full restoration of the Halton Chord between Runcorn and Frodsham to take trains from Liverpool to Llandudno. That would give Deesiders two direct routes to Liverpool, the Halton option being much longer, but excellent for the airport buses serving Liverpool South Parkway.

Network Rail recently stated their intention to buy a fleet of 'tram-trains', which are impact-proof versions of light rail vehicles for use on standard rail lines. They are looking for somewhere to try them out and Merseytravel announced their interest in a press release, although they kept it quite vague as to where this would be. In another statement, Merseytravel boss Neil Scales revealed his interest in bringing the Waterloo and Wapping tunnels back into use. Fortuitously, the new Liverpool One mega shopping centre was designed with a corridor for the aborted Merseytram scheme that would be ideal for completing a tram-train loop utilising the two tunnels from Edge Hill, although Merseytravel have yet to merge the ideas from their two recent statements.

Tram-trains would eradicate the design forfeit of the tight curves on the Liverpool Loop, which have caused such havoc over the years. The Northern Line could extend to Liverpool Airport, sprout a branch from Kirkdale to Anfield and even rise up into the old Overhead Railway tunnel to Dingle. On our line: suddenly, Chester would be back in the realms of the possible. The original plan for our line shown on the map of 1899 Birkenhead, below, would not be! (Click on the image for a larger version)

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