We are very sorry that you have had such a long wait since the last newsletter, especially the new members who joined us during our leafleting campaign on our Borderlands Line trains in the Autumn. At that point we were not at all sure that the Association would be able to form a Committee with both our Chairman and Treasurer relinquishing their posts, and our lack of a Secretary since Colin Stephenson’s departure for Holland some years ago.

At the AGM however, Malcolm Wright accepted his unopposed nomination as Chairman and we are delighted to announce that very long-standing WBRUA member Peter Lamkin volunteered to join the Committee as our new Secretary, having recently retired from business. Michael Dixon also joined us that day and with Alastair Graham being co-opted in January, the Committee is now once again up to full strength. In the confusion at the AGM caused by our trains running half-an-hour late in the early afternoon, everybody had to disappear suddenly with the news that the trains were back on time. Don’t tell anybody, but we never actually got officially elected. All of a sudden there were no voters...!

So who are we? Here, in alphabetical order are our mini-biographies as relevant to the WBRUA:

Mike Barber has been a Committee Member since the very earliest days of the Association. He was very much involved in setting up Liverpool Polytechnic’s professional study of the line’s potential in the early 1980s, financed by local authorities from all along the railway. This led to the creation of twice-yearly liaison meetings between the authorities, the rail companies and the WBRUA which continue to this day. Mike shares the co-ordination of these meetings with John Edge and writes:

Michael Dixon also joined the WBRUA Committee at our recent AGM. Raised on the Wirral he returned after twenty-five years away, generally in areas with excellent, well co-ordinated public transport. He then moved to marry and to live outside Wrexham. Says Michael "I joined the Association because I commute to Neston on a regular basis. I believed that the line should be capable of support and development, not least because more frequent and more reliable trains attract more travellers. Without this passenger confidence the car becomes a reflex against the risk of stranding." He sees one of the next stages to be to make bicycle and disabled access easier – for all.

John Edge is a founder member of the Association and a Committee Member from the very early days. He well remembers the evening he caught the train from Bidston, as he did each day, but the difference this time was that he was not alighting at Shotton as usual. He was travelling to Wrexham where the inaugural meeting was to take place.

Clearly in his memory also is the rather distinctive gentleman and accompanying party who boarded the train at Upton. Rather loudly but well spoken it soon became obvious that he was going to attend the same meeting in Wrexham. This gentlemen turned out to be our first Chairman and subsequent President, Graham Tolliday.

John served under his Chairmanship for many years but much to Graham’s annoyance, would never take on an officer’s rôle, preferring to remain a kind of "Minister without Portfolio". Despite playing a very active part in our special charter trains, contributing to the regular Borderline journals of the early 1980s, standing in as Secretary for our Liaison Meetings and being minute secretary for our AGMs, he still resists subsequent Chairmen’s pleas to become a full Committee Officer. It has to be admitted, however, that John is heavily involved with a number of other charitable organisations.

John was an annual season ticket holder between Shotton and Liverpool for twenty years so was well equipped to comment on the service and provide constructive suggestions to the relevant powers and as such, he tended to be listened to. He saw many changes over those years, not all for the better but saw a number of threats to the line overcome. Writes John:

He likes to think that there is an extra "clunk-clunk" on approaching Bidston as the train passes over the extra gap caused by his memento!

Rod Fairley retired as our Chairman at the last AGM after guiding our fortunes for 15 years. He first discovered the Association as a passenger on one of our charter trains and was encouraged to join the Committee by our former Secretary, Colin Stephenson. He arrived at his first committee meeting expecting to meet a bunch of rail enthusiasts and was pleasantly surprised to find himself in a campaigning pressure group founded on solid businesslike principles! Three years later in 1988, he became our second Chairman when our founder, Graham Tolliday, relinquished the post to become President. "My life changed when I got involved with WBRUA" says Rod "and I have met some splendid people". He resigned from the Chairmanship prior to moving out of the immediate area but will remain a WBRUA member whose contribution to the Association has been immense.

Alastair Graham is our latest recruit to the Committee, having been co-opted in January of this year. He uses the line about five times a week, mainly for leisure on direct local journeys or connecting trips further afield. "My aim" he says " is to promote the line, encouraging more people to use it for both business and pleasure. I also wish to provide feedback to operating companies as to the facilities and services required. I also hope to be able to keep an eye on the condition of our stations. I work part-time for a distribution company in Mold, but in the past have worked in catering, preserved railways and the voluntary sector." Alastair is very keen on walking and cycling and on most occasions that he is seen on the train, his trusty bike is with him.

Brian Grey from Irby has been our Membership Secretary since the mid-1990s. He was already on the Committee of the Wirral Transport Users’ Association when joined the WBRUA in 1988 because he felt that public transport and facilities for other alternatives to the car must be expanded and improved. Equally he wished to see the development of rail freight and other alternatives to road haulage. "In particular," he says, "I felt that the Wrexham-Shotton- Birkenhead railway had enormous potential, especially for travel between Merseyside and North Wales. Although I use the line only occasionally, I felt that the maximum possible use of this route by both freight and people would be of great benefit to society as a whole. In 2004, my feelings have not changed. The line STILL has a great deal of unexploited potential".

Peter Lamkin has become our new Secretary having retired from business in Easter 2003. He was a daily commuter from Neston to Birkenhead North for thirty years and, for nearly six years prior to that, from Neston to Liverpool. "In those days," he says,"there was a 20-minute peak-hour frequency and signal boxes at Neston, Heswall and Upton". He joined the WBRUA in the early 1980’s and travelled on a number of our excursion trains. He continues to use the line from Neston whenever possible, including making use of the connections at Shotton for North Wales and Crewe. We are absolutely delighted to welcome him to the Committee after so long with us as a member.

Angus Tilston says: "I have been interested in railways and public transport generally for as long as I can remember. Way back in 1978 I was persuaded to go to a public meeting in Bromborough because the line from Rock Ferry to Chester was going to have all its stations closed except for Bromborough itself. I was made chairman of the meeting and then became the chairman of the resulting Bebington Rail Action Group (BRAG). The main objective was to retain the stations and lobby for electrification to Hooton and then to Chester. Despite achieving our first ambition (Hooton) in 1985, bus deregulation was looming and BRAG expanded to become the Wirral Transport Users Association, continuing to campaign for further electrification, successfully in the cases of Chester and Ellesmere Port." Graham Tolliday invited Angus to join the WBRUA Committee when the Local Authorities Liaison meetings were set up to enable informal WTUA participation in the dialogue. He has a highly valued member of both Committees ever since.

Bob Wilson, our returning Treasurer, writes:

David Woodward attended the Association’s founding meeting in 1980 when he was appointed Treasurer, a post which he has held twice, for a total of about 16 years of the Association’s life, finishing in January 2004. He is also a member of the Isle of Anglesey Railway Association and the mid-Cheshire RUA. David recalls "My father worked as Clerk and then Station Master in North Wales - even returning years later as signalman at Mold Junction - so I have been interested in railways all my life. I still travel by train as much as possible but , of course the inevitable predictable DMUs do not hold the same fascination as loco-hauled trains of any era. I hope the new Committee will be active and successful in its efforts to obtain the improvements to the line and its rolling-stock which are essential to breathe new life into a line with enormous potential".

Malcolm Wright from Wallasey first heard of the WBRUA in 1982 when he and the Association were the only two objectors to the withdrawal of the Bidston to New Brighton section of our line’s passenger service. Ironically, he joined us as a member on an excursion train to Kidderminster which used that very route later that year. After failing to get places on the next (loco-hauled) excursion from Bidston to Bath, he agreed to join the Committee as P.R.O. in 1984. This was partly in order to get to the front of the ticket queue - but Malcolm ended up organising the trips himself! He edited the Border Line publications until 1996 when he briefly left the Committee during his final year as a mature student at Leeds University, having previously travelled all the way back for our meetings.

After graduating - and due to slight misunderstanding - Malcolm found he had been co-opted on to the Committee again. Then he accidentally became WBRUA Chairman at the last AGM! "I didn’t seek the nomination" he points out, "but I cared too much about the Association to refuse. At that point it was in serious danger of folding completely."

"I first realised in 1979 that our line needed help." he continues. "I was working at an activity holiday centre in Conwy from where BR's telephone enquiry bureaux would always send one of my staff home to West Kirby on her days off via Rock Ferry and Chester. Even when she started, on my advice, to ask for times from Bidston the Liverpool TEB would attempt to send her the long way round! When Arrowe Park Hospital opened, the need for a rail-bus link from New Brighton via Upton became desperate. It remains so to this day. Can you believe that because of traffic congestion, they are planning to ban all afternoon visitors except for those of terminally ill patients? That is outrageously unfair to the thousands of people who do NOT arrive at the hospital by car. The need for the WBRUA is never-ending."

The delay in this newsletter has had quite a few causes. After our November AGM we decided to have informal Committee get-togethers for a transitional period before Christmas and finally started our more formal Committee Meetings in late January - when the planning of this missive began with the news that our membership database was stuck inside a virus-hit computer but was for several weeks on the point of being retrieved. With a great sigh of relief it was recovered and copied (and backed-up and copied again) on to floppy disk. It’s a lesson we ALL learn the hard way! If we had known it was going to take so long we would have recreated it from scratch, but that is the sort of chore you hope will prove unnecessary.

Since then, however, we have been rather busy with activities which may have led to news that could be included here. This especially includes our being circulated with the provisional summer timetables and asked for comments about them. Now our line may be a simple shuttle but a big part of its potential usefulness comes from the connections at Bidston, Shotton and Wrexham General. Studying the possible improvements became quite urgent because we had to get our suggestions in before the end of February.

Arriva Trains Wales’s Service Planning Manager in Cardiff, Paul Jeffries, proved to be highly knowledgeable about our line. "Ah yes, towards Seacombe Junction," he said when our Chairman phoned him to ask about making use of the newish siding at Bidston in order to make the evening and Sunday timetables more attractive. In another conversation in which mention of the bus from Wrexham to Barmouth was made in relation to the likelihood of Arriva integrating their road and rail operations, Mr Jeffries knew the bus’s route number - 94.

However, as always seems to happen when we find a positive ally in the industry, Mr Jeffries is moving on and we wish him a very happy future elsewhere. He does leave us though with a connection from Liverpool that more commuters can use (leaving Moorfields at 1721 instead of 1706, with a slicker five-minute connection at Bidston) and a Holyhead bound train will call additionally at Shotton on Saturdays so that we can advertise to Merseysiders at least one convenient day out per week in North Wales. Mr Jeffries has been pursuing other objectives on our behalf, but as yet we have no news of further successes.

Our Chairman also received an unexpected but very welcome last-minute invitation to participate in a conference/workshop in the Conwy Business Centre adjoining Llandudno Junction station. This was organised by the consultants commissioned by Taith to study the Conwy Valley and Borderlands railways. Taith (Welsh for both ‘journey’ and ‘progress’) is the name adopted for the consortium formed by the six North Wales Unitary Authorities for the specific purpose of developing their transport system together. Even that concept alone is a cause for celebration for WBRUA Committee members: We have spent too many years attempting to bring many authorities together for the sake of our line only to find insularity persisting. (Those of you on the Internet should look at Merseytravel’s "web-timetables" which only give bus times as far as the county boundary).

As for the conference, the workshop was a real novel experience for Malcolm as he found himself actually encouraged to reel off the opportunities afforded by the Wrexham-Bidston railway. We cannot divulge anything that was said at this stage, but do rest assured that there is a new determination in the air among these authorities to explore the possibilities, after decades of discussing how to manage the decline that only ended with our service at its minimum viable level. (It went below that minimum for a while so that is how we know that it wasn’t viable).

We are actively investigating the possibility of a four-page advertising wrap around the Wirral Globe called "Wales by Rail and Bus" to coincide with the introduction of the summer timetable in May. It is partly inspired by the fact that Arriva now operate most of the trains and buses in North Wales and we are hoping to encourage them to integrate their road and rail services by advertising them in this way.

We have to remain optimistic despite Arriva having diverted their tunnel buses away from Liverpool Lime Street when they were franchisees of both main line and underground train services at that station.

The advertising we are seeking comes from three main types of source: tourist attractions in North and Mid Wales; rail and bus service operators; local authorities and tourist boards. So if any of you know of possibly interested parties, please let our Chairman know on 0151-638 3631 or wbrua@aol.com. Please feel free to print and send to potential advertisers the circular which you find by clicking here.

We have finally made it on to the internet with our website, introduced last year to complement the Wirral Globe advertisement which we placed when we realised that our summer Sunday train service was dying on its feet for lack of publicity. The advertisement gave times of the only (albeit very attractive) return journey that was available between Bidston and Llandudno on Sundays, with a large reference to www.wbrua.net for other journey ideas. Patronage of the 1001 from Bidston went up by 500% the following Sunday: where there had usually been five or six passengers (one week only two), there were now thirty-five!

Website features included a timetable web page linking in our Sunday trains with the excellent Clwydian Ranger bus services, one of which happened to be perfectly timed from Shotton Station to Moel Famau both in the morning going out and in the evening coming back with a lot of exciting connections available at Loggerheads Country Park. Other composite timetables that we created for the website included three Cambrian Coast tours, utilising the Ffestiniog Railway, Snowdon Sherpa buses and the Arriva 94 services respectively.

Since then we have added a printable WBRUA membership form, Borderlands Line timetable information with links to UK Rail’s live departure boards for the line and other links to Arriva Wales’s home and timetable download pages, not to mention the inevitable WBRUA propaganda! This newsletter will appear there too along with the archive of Border Line publications as we get around to scanning them all. Three editions have been "webified" so far.

A potentially depressing sight is what appears to be the destruction of the "integrity" of the Dee Marsh to Mickle Trafford trackbed through Chester caused by the demolition of the Sealand overbridge. Without this returning to some sort of segregated transport use our line will never reach its full former potential.

Chester is the most important destination over much of our catchment area, but at present the most we can hope for is that freight considerations will result in the construction of a much inferior passenger route to the city, a north to west chord at Shotton. We will let you know later the state of play with regard to what is happening at Sealand: if we delay this newsletter any more until we have sorted out the conflicting reports on Dee Marsh - Mickle Trafford policy we will be wishing you a very merry Christmas in it! Let’s just say, we are not sure all is lost just yet.