The name of our Association was soon changed because our principal aim at the time was the reversal of the ludicrous 1978 decision to curtail the service from Birkenhead North station to Bidston.

Merseyside County Council had briefly gone over to the Conservatives, who were horrified by the amounts of subsidy paid by their Labour predecessors in many of the local railways. It has to be said they were a little bit right to be so appalled: not by the investment itself, but by the poor value for money.

There was a great waste of resources on our line, with the basic hourly service operated by four units, trains standing for about fifty minutes at both termini and for six to eight minutes en route at Shotton. Two more units were parked at Wrexham Central for most of the day and these supplemented the service at peak hours - every fifteen minutes between Birkenhead North and Heswall.

Three units were comfortably enough to operate the Wrexham - Birkenhead service. If two others been had used, say, to restore the New Brighton to Chester route to passengers - all but the final rail approach to Northgate Station was still used by freight - the line would have been thriving even more than it was already. Just to reiterate: it was VERY well used. Only the financial balance was unacceptable.

The damage the Conservatives did, however, was horrendous: instead of optimising the use of the available infrastructure and rolling stock, they wielded the axe. Birkenhead North to Wrexham trains were simply expelled from the Merseyrail network. It is incredible these days to imagine it, but the next routes on their wish-to-get-rid-of list were the Hooton lines from Rock Ferry to Chester, Ellesmere Port and beyond. In the event, Labour regained control of Merseyside before the second stage could happen.

In the 1970’s, closure procedures were still common and probably only one thing saved the rest of our line from going the way of Chester Northgate: freight. Merseyside’s Labour Council may have saved the Hooton services but they showed no inclination to reverse the actions that had already been taken.

We were constantly pursuing the return to Birkenhead North but MPTE officers and British Rail managers refused to acknowledge the practicality of the idea because, within weeks of the curtailment to Bidston, the necessary crossover at Birkenhead North had been removed. It is amazing how much public money some people will spend to render irrevocable a decision that had been taken "for economic reasons".

In this case, they also refused, refused and refused again to look at the financial figures represented by the loss of passengers over which they had presided.

In 1982, with little warning to our many holders of annual season tickets, supplementary peak hour trains were removed from the timetable. It was not long after this that our current Chairman accompanied his original predecessor, the late and much missed Graham Tolliday (left), to a meeting of the Merseyside Passenger Transport Authority. There, they heard confirmation of what they had long suspected from their own observations...

In six short years and despite the mushrooming catchment population of the Wrexham line, about 1600 people a day changing trains at Birkenhead North had reduced to a mere 600 or so at Bidston.

You only need the most basic instinct for number to realise that, discounting Sundays and Bank Holidays, a reduction of 1000 journeys per day multiplies to about 300,000 passengers annually. The replaced crossover at Birkenhead North would have paid for itself many times over if only the individuals with the power at the time had taken our campaign on board.

(Today the crossover is not required. In 1978 both the New Brighton and West Kirby Merseyrail services had ten-minute peak frequencies, running every five minutes through Birkenhead North. Today, there are no extra trains at peak times and ten- or fifteen-minute gaps are available all and every day for the use of the remaining crossover east of the station).

Under the Transport Act of the day, a railway service could be reduced with impunity to a single train one way once a week in the summer. This final train could then be withdrawn and a line be closed to passengers only with the consent of the Transport Minister after deliberation by the regional Transport Users’ Consultative Committee.

The ridiculous thing was that they were only allowed to consider the "hardship" which would be caused by the loss of this last pathetic train. In the case of the Bidston to New Brighton service - one journey late on Saturday nights - this was even "temporarily suspended" according to local notices, although how they got away with THAT is a mystery.

Previously created hardships had to be ignored; hardships, that is, such as those caused by the reduction from the two or three direct trains per hour of the 1960s or the loss of the 1970’s single-change connections via Birkenhead North.

However, a very serious new hardship was about to be created by the closure of Wallasey’s main hospital and the necessity to travel miles to the giant new facility at Arrowe Park.

Although the TUCC did consider this point made in an objection by some chap called Malcolm Wright, the information submitted to them by the MPTE - that their new bus to the hospital "from New Brighton" would only take 35 minutes - was wholly erroneous.

There was NO bus from New Brighton, only a tiresome, tortuous 45 minute journey from Wallasey bus garage which left two minutes before each half-hourly bus arrived at the depot from New Brighton. All other "connecting" buses ran at frequencies different from that of the new hospital service.

Because three units were still being used for their operation, trains still stood at Wrexham Central for about fifty minutes in every return journey from Bidston, which in turn was seven minutes from New Brighton. As it happened, the new number 18 from Wallasey, eight minutes before the hospital, zigzagged its way past Upton Station which possesses to this day an almost ready-made bus station in the form of the old road bridge.

New Brighton to Upton by train: 11 minutes. Upton to Arrowe Park by bus: 8 minutes. It would have better than halved the journey time for many passengers.

Suddenly it was no longer as clear to the WBRUA Committee that Birkenhead North should be the only terminus for diesel trains from Wrexham. We too objected to the closure of the track from Bidston to Seacombe Junction, but also on the grounds that New Brighton may once again become a tripper’s destination and that convenient freight possibilities from Bidston Dock via Dee Marsh should be preserved.

The TUCC rubber-stamped the closure and all our attempts to get Merseytravel even to contemplate re-opening this section have, to date, proved fruitless.

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In the early 1980s there had been a terrible neglect of duty by British Rail and, ultimately, their political masters/mistresses. The generation of DMUs - diesel multiple units - which had replaced steam traction in the fifties and sixties were by now reaching the end of their intended lives and few plans had been made to design and build new ones. If the Thatcher administration had invested the kind of government money that was later used to ensure the profitability of privatised rail companies, there would not have been a problem. In the mid-eighties, however, things were really being done on the cheap. Hence the creation of the class 142 Pacer train which was in fact based on a type of Leyland BUS.

We were actually quite chuffed when our line was chosen to pioneer the use of the new train. It was not made clear to begin with that the three old DMUs which were allocated to our basic hourly service would be replaced by only two Pacers and that, except on Saturdays, the hourly service was to be no more.

Patronage was to plummet once again.

Our hearts sank even more, however, when we took our first rides on the new Pacers. The engines were noisy and the ride was so spectacularly bouncy that at high speeds you wondered how their four wheeled carriages stayed on the track. As for the wheels themselves, they squealed so loudly in protest at anything tighter than a slight curve that they were soon banned from many of the branch lines for which they were primarily intended.

There were many different less-than-hourly timetables over the next few years. One of these which appeared in the National Timetable included gaps of nearly three hours north of Hawarden Bridge, but after protests from Cheshire County Council this was abandoned before it was actually implemented. We were neither for nor against the new timetable ourselves because our service within Wales would have been much improved. All we wanted was the third unit back...

...because, back then, it was never even expected that just two units could operate an acceptably reliable hourly all-stations service between Bidston and Wrexham. On the other hand, the rapidity of the decline in its use proved beyond doubt that anything less than that hourly frequency could result in its demise. Attempts were made, therefore, in various ways to squeeze a precarious hourly service out of just two units.

Firstly came the introduction of request stops with several stations - including Upton and Cefn-y-Bedd - removed from all but three journeys each way. The resultant protests did spur British Rail into the first action that they should previously have taken: engineering work to increase the line speed on the Wirral.

Even so, the punctuality record of our service has been poor almost ever since - only in 2005 have things improved to what some might call an acceptable level and we suspect that, without the third unit or a more substantial increase in the line speed, it cannot be sustained.

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1980 to 1988: Charter Trains

In the beginning our excursion trains were pleasantly profitable but not once did British Rail attain operational perfection on our behalf. Strangely, the greater the chaos the more people laughed about it but your hapless Committee would nearly burst with frustration. The principal purpose of these ventures was to market rail as a good way to travel.

To begin with our DMUs would start at New Brighton with destinations such as York, Pwllheli and Bewdley on the Severn Valley Railway.

DMUs failed routinely. The game of "musical trains" on the Cambrian Coast trip became the stuff of folklore while the Bewdley train became unexpectedly loco-hauled after being pushed by the regular unit from Shotton to Wrexham. In 1983, however, we started to get really ambitious with an intentionally loco-hauled InterCity train from Bidston to Bath which, at just £7 return, sold out weeks in advance. In this instance, our only quibble was a late change to a less scenic route.

However, later ventures were plagued by uncooperative BR administrative staff. We could never get timings for the trains until just a couple of weeks before departure and sometimes they turned out to be so bad that we would have to cancel.

We had already sold out one such excursion to the Severn Valley, Kidderminster this time. DMUs from New Brighton AND Birkenhead Central were to join up at Wrexham but we found that we were expected to leave at about 6am. We tried desperately to get the Customer Service people to do something about it but they simply refused.

In desperation we contacted Operations ourselves and not only got the timings improved to perfection, but were also able to expand the combined train from four to nine cars - something else that "Customer Service" had refused to try on our behalf. Unintentionally, our committee member had not revealed who he was until after Operations had made the requested changes and when the penny dropped at the other end of the phone the comment came: "you’re the public - we’re not supposed to talk to you!"

Our next adventure was to Bristol with inclusive travel to Bath or Weston-super-Mare. It was just perfect on the way south, hauled by a locomotive that was usually reserved for the royal train. For the return journey, however, we were branded as "Railfreight" because that was the only loco available to replace our beauty which had been hi-jacked earlier after an engine failed in Bristol. Luckily it was a warm night, and our customers did not notice the consequent lack of heating.

Next, we went once again for double DMUs - this time from Rock Ferry and Birkenhead North to Aberystwyth - but we refused point blank to deal any more with Merseyrail after their Customer Services Manager had told us "I don’t know anything about Operations and to tell you the truth, I’m not interested". In contrast, we had a very helpful Area Manager in Chester at the time who agreed to handle the charter although BR rules stated that trains should be ordered through the Area in which the journeys were to originate.

However, even the Chester staff contrived to give us a contract stating the charter fee "plus additional costs where necessary" which of course we could not possibly sign. We did cancel that one when the clerk responsible refused to budge but the Area Manager took personal control of its later replacement after he heard with displeasure what had happened. We sold this one out in a trice too because, believe it or not, the Wirral Globe’s motoring supplement carried a big article about it!

Our next loco-hauled train - to Oxford via the Cotswolds - turned up with forty seats fewer than expected. Although "fortunately" we were more than that many passengers short of selling out, our blood pressure could stand no more and we left the rail charter business.

For good? These trains were always greatly enjoyed by our passengers and drew a lot of attention to our line’s possibilities. They also boosted our membership numbers more than any other activity, so you never know...

We have always attempted to encourage people to use the service and continue to wish that the various operators had matched our efforts. Unfortunately it can be expensive and we get little financial return for the WBRUA from paid advertisements or door-to-door leafleting. However, when we have had something new worth promoting, we have been very successful in boosting patronage of the trains - especially with the leafleting. When Upton had its full-service status restored, it coincided with a rare period when Shotton connections to and from the North Wales Coast were actually GOOD. Not only that, Upton was zoned with Shotton for its fares. That is, the fare to (for example) Rhyl was the same from both stations allowing us to promote a real bargain from Upton especially compared to Bidston or stations on the Hooton lines. We did a modest leafleting around Upton with the Wirral Globe newspaper at a cost roughly equal to the extra fares generated on just two trains that we observed the following weekend.

The next year, in conjunction with the Wirral Transport Users Association and British Rail, we had 30,000 leaflets printed and distributed in the same way.

A short while later, one of our conductor-guards banked a record amount for any single shift on any line at his depot. Rhyl became the top destination for passengers from Upton. The Lime Street enquiry office, then still using timetable books, began referring to our leaflets first to see which route to North Wales would be quickest at any given time.

And such was the new level of traffic generated by our Upton to Rhyl in 55 minutes! leaflets, BR immediately hiked up the price between those two points...

Sigh.

Recently we have been severely let down when trains that we specifically recommended in our adverts were cancelled at the very times when we expected maximum response to the publicity. We have had, therefore, a brief period in which we have refused to spend any more money in this way. This however, is only temporary and if reliability remains as it is now, then we may consider it worthwhile to invest in more advertising.

We first brought all our local authorities together in the early 1980s to finance a professional study into the development of the Wrexham - Bidston line. Although the final report of this study was not well received, it did precipitate twice-yearly liaison meetings attended by local government officers and representatives of British Rail. The usefulness of these efforts varied from meeting to meeting and according to the individual attitudes of those attending.

There have broadly been three types of people involved. Firstly there are those who will reject anything they haven’t thought of themselves, then tie themselves in knots trying to justify their negativity. These were generally also the ones who would try to prevent our direct contact with their political bosses.

In sharp contrast, there have been others who would react with excitement to a good fresh idea and rush back to their office or councillors with it. Unfortunately, this often meant that the person involved had the get-up-and-go to move to pastures new within a very short time.

Probably the most rewarding participants as far as we were concerned were those who said "no, can’t do that" to a suggestion at the liaison meeting but would phone up, maybe weeks later, to say "actually, I’ve been thinking about what you said..."

After twenty years, we cannot really point to much concrete evidence that all the hours of liaison meetings and the preparation for them has been worthwhile. All too often it has just been a place to learn what has been decided without us since the previous meeting.

Two of our suggestions, however, were eventually taken up by Merseytravel. Firstly, that the new Conway Park station in Birkenhead - originally planned as a wholly underground facility - would only be achievable as a cheaper, open-cut station. There were several failed attempts from 1987 onwards to make the sums add up, but it was only after privatisation when Railtrack upped the latest estimate of the underground version’s cost by about 50% that the original plan was modified as we hoped.

It was such a relief to the Committee because Merseytravel had been citing the construction of this station as a prerequisite for electrification to Woodchurch Road.

We suggested years before Conway Park opened that it would sell itself better by being called "Birkenhead Market" but that was another seed to fall on stony ground. The station is now very well-used but the build-up was slow.

One problem was, of course, that it opened during the "Miseryrail" era. The tag was well-deserved because of the terrible unreliability and we regularly stated in liaison meetings our opinion that to try and operate our connecting service to Liverpool with the barest minimum of units was a genuine false economy...

...especially since this involved the trains interworking between all the Wirral Line branches. Announcements that, for example, a Liverpool train due at Bidston had been "cancelled because of signal failure in Chester" did not create a good impression. Interworking increased the risk of disruption on every line and the lack of catch-up time at the various termini meant that recovery of the timetable was difficult.

It took many years, but we were proved right when, full marks to Merseytravel, they did just what we suggested. Nearly all Wirral Line trains return to their origin from the Liverpool Loop these days even though this requires the use of more rolling stock. Merseyrail is now the best-performing franchise in mainland Britain and the new station is finally reaping the benefit of dramatically increasing passenger numbers...

...although we still find the occasional passenger looking out of the window and asking their companion "Conway Park? Where’s this?"

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The 80s and 90s Wrexham Central Campaign

We lost this one completely, in the end.

We may take some consolation, however, that our battle - the first after privatisation - was so prominent nationally and the outcome so finely balanced that it probably prevented at least some other move-the- station-away-from-the-centre schemes.

We could write pages on this subject alone and it was by far the most costly thing we ever did. We enjoyed several 1980s victories in preserving the location of Wrexham Central in the local Town Plan but we only had to "lose" the argument once for the damage to be done. This last battle required us to get legal representation and this is never cheap.

When you look at the town’s smart new bus station and realise that until about six years ago it could have been built on the site of the original multi-platform Wrexham Central with both a railway and a segregated busway running up to it - well you wonder what the planners are up to. It is a real obstacle course between Wrexham’s bus and rail stations these days.

We still promote the fact that the new Wrexham Central is "right next to the shops" but through very gritted teeth. OH HOW WE WISH, if nothing else, that it had been built adjoining Hill Street on the part of the original station site (see the photo above) which had been used for years as a rough car park.

Built not "next to the shops" but surrounded by them.

It was partly our legal expenses that put paid to our Border Line Bulletin for a while. There was always a bit of a problem finding something to write about a couple of trains shuttling rather despondently up and down a line which only exists in its present form because Dr. Beeching only managed to withdraw its most important services (to Chester Northgate).

Anyway, Wrexham excepted, our line depends on connectional opportunities so we always covered a great deal more than just the route itself. We sometimes got criticism from our Liverpool-commuting members that we didn’t cover their journey enough, but this was because they were, at least, being catered for and there was little more to be said once we tired of the words "Birkenhead North" or "electrification"

We are in the process of creating an archive of all Border Line publications for our website - www.wbrua.net - and are considering the publication of a new hard edition of the Bulletin in the not too distant future.

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You may think that all in all we have wasted much of the last 25 years on failed campaigns or at best, standing still. The WBRUA Committee is a very united bunch of kindred spirits, but we disagree amongst ourselves about whether our line simply having any kind of service on it in 2005 constitutes "an achievement". However, the momentum is definitely picking up in the right direction now.

The local authorities and train operator pooling together to finance a Community Rail Officer - currently the very committed Mike Clutton - was the symbolic beginning of a new, upwardly mobile era. They even gave the route a name although the rail companies have shown a marked reluctance to use it.

Ourselves, we use the brand occasionally to market the line as it now is. However, we do not wish the line to stay "as it now is" and the name could confuse the issue of development beyond "The Borderlands Line."

We have always seen it in the long term with multiple uses and electrified at least as far as Shotton or a parkway on the A55, in which case one brand would be "Merseyrail". Until recently however, certain Merseytravel officers derided any suggestion that electrification could be justified south of Woodchurch Road (at the bottom of "the Swan hill" in Birkenhead).

It is amazing how fresh eyes can see things, however. The new Dutch managers of Merseyrail immediately upon their arrival professed amazement at how under-utilised the Bidston-Wrexham line is. And this new-found enthusiasm has proved contagious. Look at this news item from the Merseytravel website:

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Yes, you read that right. They are about to study electrification options to potential termini over THE WHOLE LENGTH of our line. We have also been informed that the study will look at the Mickle Trafford branch as far as Chester and that while the new bridge over the Queensferry by-pass at Sealand has only a lightweight span at present, the supports have been built to take heavy rail. And finally, many years after the introduction of Sunday trading, we are to get once again an all-day Sunday service throughout the year, although the timings are yet to be confirmed. Once again, our line is to be financially supported by Merseytravel although not to the extent that it is a branded Merseyrail diesel service like their City Line routes.

Mr Scales’s quote still hints at the old Merseytravel mentality that their main purpose is to suck people into Liverpool. Cross River Saveaway tickets, for example, enable Liverpool city centre traders to relieve Wirral residents of their hard earned cash, but there is no reciprocal equivalent taking Liverpudlians into Birkenhead.

We may, therefore, still have some trouble with the New Brighton to Arrowe Park and Bidston to Chester arguments, but his words still resonate with a welcome new willingness to think beyond the boundaries. And this is VITAL for the best development of our line.

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Battling The Boundaries

Anybody over about thirty who grew up in the vicinity of our line will recall the Crosville bus company whose territory encompassed the whole of geographical Merseyside and North Wales as far as Warrington and Aberystwyth.

Until the 1960’s there was a great deal of economic migration from Wales into Liverpool while the John Summers steelworks at Shotton could be held almost solely responsible for the definite scouse twang that is to be found on Deeside. There have also always been many Merseysiders who have moved to the coast on retirement.

Even some native Welsh people, if they only speak English, choose to point their TV aerials across Liverpool Bay, prompting Granada to carry news items from as far afield as Anglesey. The Liverpool Echo is widely read in the principality where there is a North Wales edition. And of course, in the days of state-owned monopoly utility companies, there was MANWEB, the Merseyside and North Wales Electricity Board.

So in every respect but two, Merseyside-cum-North-Wales is a well-defined and cohesive socio-economic region. The two exceptions have been local government and public transport. On the other hand, road development has been almost excessive: both Chester and Queensferry have effectively had even their by-passes by-passed.

In sad contrast, the only trains between Merseyside and Wales these days are those on The Borderlands Line and the Manchester - Llandudno service which calls at Newton-le-Willows, Warrington and Runcorn East. (Remember, we are talking real as well as administrative Merseyside here).

Not one train runs regularly from Liverpool or the Wirral to the North Wales Coast nowadays. National Express’s sorry total is one solitary daily coach to Pwllheli (from Newcastle-upon-Tyne) which actually meanders over to Ellesmere Port en route, but fails to stop as it passes Shotton Station.

Why there should be such a discrepancy between private and public transport facilities has always been a mystery, but this has been the story of the last fifty years.

One factor, though, has been the insularity of local government bodies. The Dutch managers of Merseyrail express incredulity when they mention the substantial physical barriers that were slapped across railway at both Kirkby and Ormskirk in the seventies. The Merseytravel internet timetables for Wirral to Chester buses - such as the 22/22A from Heswall and the 447 from Upton Station - only give the times to "County Boundary" as if the buses terminate there.

The sometimes bizarre counties created in the 1970s did not help. Perhaps we should distance ourselves here from the Wirral in Cheshire Campaign who want out of Merseyside. The Mersey was definitely still there the last time we looked, but the county and borough boundary that was slapped across the middle of the peninsula did nobody any good at all.

Merseyside? Cheshire? The whole of the Wirral is BOTH.

Actually, insularity does not have to be a consequence of an artificial, human-defined boundary. It all depends on the individuals who have the power to try things and whether or not they are inclined to do so.

Huyton, once served off-peak only by half-hourly St Helens trains and less frequent services to Wigan and Newton-le-Willows, has benefited since the 1980s from many new through services - some proving distinctly unsuccessful and temporary - with destinations as diverse as Barrow, Scarborough, Wakefield, Ellesmere Port and Chester.

We cannot fathom why so many experiments happened on that particular branch of the City Line when any simultaneous suggestions that some of our trains could run beyond Bidston and Wrexham were, with one exception, treated with contempt.

BR Manager Steve Sharp did introduce a Shrewsbury to Bidston journey on Sundays

As for the Hooton lines, once the campaign instigated by Merseyside County Councillor Phil Gilchrist (Liberal) began to bear fruit with an official plan to electrify from Rock Ferry as far as Bromborough, Cheshire County Councillor Derek Bateman (Labour) was instrumental in getting it extended over the boundary to Chester and Ellesmere Port. (Tory name check to follow).

It was the Welsh Assembly, however, who came up with the ideal solution for planning public transport: consortia. The principality’s unitary authorities have been given a formal structure for cross-boundary co-operation on transport matters. As mentioned in the news item above, the North Wales consortium is called Taith which means both "journey" and "progress".

A really great thing is that Cheshire and Merseytravel representatives - along with WBRUA Committee Members - are to be found at Taith conferences. If only there could also be a formalised cross-border consortium too, then instead of being out on the edges of a principality and two English counties, then the potential of The Borderlands Line with its former branches to New Brighton, Chester and Connah’s Quay would be recognised for what it is.

At the very heart of its region.

Better and Better

In this next Merseytravel internet news item the importance of facilitating travel out of Merseyside has finally been acknowledged.

General Election 2005

Back in the eighties an irate Daily Telegraph reader complained in a letter that he resented being called a "floating voter" as if he was the one who didn’t know his own mind. "I have been steadfast throughout in my principals and beliefs." he wrote, "It is the political parties who keep floating past me."

The WBRUA is avowedly non-aligned. If any party reflects our preferred mixed-economy solution to the running of the railways then we will support them. That is, we believe that the infrastructure (track, signalling and stations) should be state-owned with train operation open to both private and public enterprise.

In other words, the Liberal Democrats have always spoken for us while Labour - who floated from far left to centre right during our lifetime - are swinging back in our direction, on transport matters at least, with Network Rail replacing Railtrack on behalf of the taxpayer.

Earlier, we mentioned individual local politicians who made a profound difference to the Hooton lines but in the days of John Major’s effectively minority government - after withdrawal of the whip from six Euro-hostile rebels - there was one Tory MP who found himself with an unexpected amount of power on the left of his party. His name was Robert Adley and he was a real hero of our founder Graham Tolliday, himself a former Tory branch chairman.

Labour’s Brian Wilson MP, then in Opposition, told the House of Commons in 1996:

We have reason to believe this account. Robert Adley had already won concessions preserving Railcards and Rover Tickets. Yes, unfettered "Conservatives" would have scrapped railcards - the quotes are there because nothing was cautious about rail privatisation as it was originally intended.

And yes, thanks to Mr Adley, all the Rover tickets are still available BY LAW. Unfortunately there was nothing in the bill requiring unwilling rail operators to advertise them, so it varies from region to region how likely they are to be bought. (If you want more details of Railrover tickets, click here)

Look at this further extract from Brian Wilson’s 1996 speech to the House of Commons, copied directly off the www.parliament.uk Hansard web pages:

The privatisation that spawned the Railtrack monster is something that we won’t forget in a hurry. As for your vote, well we can only talk about public transport and you have to place this yourself among your list of priorities. From the example of Mr Adley, however, perhaps we should hope for no overall majority with the Liberal Democrats acquiring a similarly disproportionate degree of power.

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Administrative matters

Just a quick advice that our Annual General Meeting is scheduled for Saturday 8th October although the venue is yet to be finalised.

April is the start of our membership and financial year so enclosed with this newsletter is your renewal form and an application form for new members if you know of anyone who would like to support us.

An application form can always be found on the internet at www.wbrua.net/membership.