President: The Rt Hon Lord Jones P.C.
This has been a very strange few months in the life of the Wrexham - Birkenhead Rail Users' Association. On the one hand, we could not have anticipated just a couple of years ago the positive change in the future prospects of the Borderlands Line and, especially, rail in Wrexham. Conversely, neither could
we have predicted the sheer negativity of the present-day passenger experience.
The Borderlands Rail Study In early 2004, thanks to the then Community Rail Officer, Michael Clutton, our Chairman was invited to participate in a conference at Llandudno Junction organised by Taith, the transport consortium of north Wales local authorities. It was a pleasant surprise to be invited because we could write a whole newsletter about decisions concerning the line that have been taken without us over the last 26 years. The conference, however, had an aim that we found a little dubious: the combined marketing of the Borderlands Line with the Conwy Valley Line. We have always moaned about Wrexham to Bidston being treated as a minor rural branch and it appeared that this initiative was intended to bracket it with one of the most bucolic, albeit delightful, routes in the United Kingdom. Part of the conference involved simultaneous, separate workshop sessions for the two lines led by the project consultants. It was here that Malcolm was able to emphasise all the urban and regional aspects of our railway. When the entire gathering reconvened later to compare the notes that had resulted from the two workshops, it was obvious that the all the two routes really had in common was that they were both perpendicular to the North Wales Coast line. However, within months there was a very dramatic change in how our line was being perceived in authoritative circles. Several things precipitated this, but the first - that we know of - was the arrival of influential Dutch managers to run Merseyrail as part of the Serco/Nedrail train operating company. After decades of talking to brick walls, suddenly we found that our sentiments regarding development of the line were being voiced independently by expert businessmen who found it just as difficult as we did to believe that trains could travel for an hour from Wrexham and then stop just short of their would-be passengers' two principal destinations, Birkenhead and Liverpool. Electrification Merseytravel surprised us soon afterwards when they started making noises about electrifying the line to the Deeside Industrial Park in order to link an area of high unemployment with one of labour shortage. The scorn this authority had always poured on any suggestion of electrification south of Woodchurch Road seemed suddenly to have evaporated - which is something which, obviously, we welcome unreservedly. To us, the suggestion of getting so close to Shotton yet stopping short of it seemed distinctly bizarre. However, the officially imagined third rail appeared to be getting longer and we were obviously thankful for that. Flintshire then stunned us early last year by announcing not just that there would be another official study of the line, but also that this would include the possibility of electrifying from Bidston ALL THE WAY TO WREXHAM! We always thought it would be viable to take the electric trains to Shotton, but had never seriously thought to advocate Wrexham ourselves. A BBC Wales reporter phoned our Chairman at about the same time to ask about this possibility. She had heard that the Welsh Assembly was very keen to have at least one electrified railway in the principality and that ours was the most easily attainable! It would be very ironic if, after all our years attempting to justify development with socio-economic reasoning, some of our sweetest dreams were to come true because of political prestige. Would we complain? Of course not! Anyway the Borderlands Rail Study is complete. It has to be said that we were a bit miffed not invited to its launch in March. However, the Welsh Assembly's Rail Infrastructure and Improved Passenger Service Committee soon published the study's "Executive Summary" on its website and it forms one of the appendices of this newsletter. Could Do Better... It is not perfect. For a start it states that "extending the current diesel operation to Birkenhead North does not generate an economically viable scheme". Anybody who experienced that service in the 1970s knows for sure that it was a lot more "economically viable" than the service as it now is. Over 300,000 more passengers changed trains in a year at Birkenhead North than did so at Bidston shortly after the service was truncated. The line's greatly increased catchment population, the opening of Conway Park station in central Birkenhead, the tendency of commuters to travel much further than they did in 1978 and the recent increased general use of rail all contribute to the possibility that a similar number of passengers could be attracted back to the service. "Doubling the frequency of the current diesel operation between Bidston and Wrexham would perpetuate the current very tight turnrounds at both terminals. These present a significant reliability risk to both the Borderlands service and to Merseyrail Electrics. This would be unacceptable with a more frequent service" is another of its challengeable statements. The only reason that the "turnrounds" are so tight is that the service is operated at present with insufficient rolling stock. The two-unit hourly service was a failing experiment rendered permanent by being written into the franchise on privatisation. Despite the phrase "reliability risk", the commercial effect of having over a third of our trains in 2005 being late, cancelled or late-and-aborted-half-way seems not to have figured in their estimates at all. You cannot base any calculation on the patronage of a rotten service used only by people who have no alternative. Where our line has competition, train use collapses. Upton, Heswall and Neston all have frequent buses to Birkenhead and Liverpool, leaving the mid-Wirral Borderlands Line almost bereft of passengers to the two present-day principal destinations. The same thing would happen
at the stations south of Shotton if they had similar rival bus services
there. The 300,000 lost passengers were only those through Birkenhead North:
how many hundred-thousands of new passenger journeys would additionally
be generated in (and into) Wales if the service were to became reliable
once again? Nobody can say for sure that the extra cost of a three-unit
hourly service - the greater part of one million pounds annually - would
be covered by extra revenue. Assuming this to be around £3 per single
passenger journey, the mathematics would make it a definite possibility,
except for one thing: single-car class 153s would not be able to cope with
the demand at times. As for doubling the service
as mentioned in the report, any other line with an end-to-end journey of
nearly an hour would have a half-hourly timetable operated by five train
units. In our case, the resultant adequate "turnrounds" would accommodate
not only the occasional recovery from delay but extension to Birkenhead
North too - not to mention a little flexibility to optimise connections
at Shotton and Wrexham.
What about Chester? Hopefully, though, this will all be academic, because electrification does seem to be a stated objective of all the relevant authorities nowadays. It still depends on the figures adding up, however, and the fact that the words "Flint" and "Chester" are absent from the Executive Summary is not a good omen. It is a mystery why express buses are not already operating between these two destinations via the newest Dee road bridge. The study proposes a new station at Deeside Industrial Park, and it would be ideally placed for a co-ordinated express bus service running to Flint in one direction and Chester in the other. Neglecting such potential could put much-wanted development at risk. If only this study had happened just a couple of years ago when trains to Chester Northgate (behind the Arena with mainline platforms underneath) were still a physical possibility...!! Sadly, the commercial property whose acquisition would have allowed this to happen has just been replaced by a block of luxury flats. Isn't that frustrating? There is a positive dynamic, however, around the site of Chester's Liverpool Road Station. If it were still functioning today it would probably have been renamed Chester University. Lots of buses still pass the site. It is as close to the city centre as is the surviving (General) station. Its residential catchment population has mushroomed, mostly on former railway land. Its proximity to the Countess of Chester Hospital is ever more important in the age of choice and specialisation in the NHS. Sadly though, the recently
created need for a embankment and a long new bridge deck over the main
road at Sealand is another new obstacle separating us from Chester. This
should not have prevented comprehensive analysis of the city's enormous
potential for our line however, whether it is served by bus, train, or
a resurrected alternative project for the Dee Marsh - Mickle Trafford route.
Chester is, after all, our catchment population's most important destination.
The market is there - it's just not catered for.
Ask a silly question... ...and you get a silly answer. If you want the right answer you have to ask the right question. If you need the best answer, you have to ask ALL the questions. Chester's two failed Dee Marsh to Mickle Trafford projects - tram and guided bus - exemplify perfectly what happens when any study fails to look at the whole picture and all the options it contains. There was another study some years ago into electrification from Crewe to Holyhead which didn't even mention the presence of another rail line at Shotton. This was despite its key attribute of then being the shortest route (by road or rail) from north Wales to the heart of Merseyside. The project, as it was defined, only marginally failed the feasibility test. It is perfectly possible, therefore, that if the scheme that was studied had been electrification of the coast line from both Crewe and Bidston, we would already be travelling on dual-mode Merseyrail trains to Llandudno. Similarly, the latest study doesn't make a clear-cut case for electrification to Wrexham. It states:
Electrification all the way
to Wrexham is given a BCR (Benefit to Cost Ratio) of 1.25.
Park-and-Ride Also apparently ignored by the Borderlands Rail Study is the A55 North Wales Expressway, despite it crossing our line next to an existing road interchange. With our present service, a park-and-ride facility at this location is obviously a non-starter. However, when we first adopted this idea as WBRUA policy in 1992, it was in the context of trains being restored to Chester and introduced to Llandudno via the most attainable Shotton chord (for west to south trains, but built mostly on old trackbed north of the main line). Well, if Chester trains are no longer a factor in this regard, a direct half-hourly electric service to Liverpool is now an official aspiration which was never part of our original justification for the A55 Parkway. We have already encountered official resistance to this idea, with the Hooton facility being cited as competition. However, ALL Merseyrail's park-and-ride sites seem to fill up these days and there is no reason to suggest that one of these at the A55 for Wrexham, Liverpool, Rhyl and beyond would be any different. It wouldn't have much of a pedestrian catchment, but like the Deeside Industrial Park station, it could also be a park-and-ride site to boost the use of express buses to Chester which are also timed to connect with the Liverpool - Wrexham train service. The only danger regarding park-and-ride exists at Woodchurch Road in west Birkenhead where the study wisely proposes a new station. If a free car park is provided there, it will certainly be filled up, but not just by the vehicles of Merseyrail users: buses already reach Birkenhead and Liverpool centres faster and much more frequently than the proposed half-hourly trains. The bus operators will be delighted if Merseytravel provide their passengers with a big car park free of charge. Any station site has what you could call a "catchment-destination-competition value". This means first, who can get to the station and how? Secondly, to where do they want to go? This can refer to a cumulative total of multiple destinations, each with their own attractiveness ratings. Thirdly, how else could they travel? Trains from Heswall and Neston stations would beat the competing buses to Liverpool but by the above criteria, the real strength of Woodchurch Road would come from through journeys to Chester, north Wales and the Midlands. And London? (Don't mock too soon!) There is a concept in space travel called the "slingshot effect" in which the gravity of a large planet is used to propel a craft to somewhere vastly more remote. We may find an analogous situation in which the BCR of electrification beyond Shotton is declared inadequate simply because the benefits of a restored New Brighton - Chester diesel service, for example, have not been included. The WBRUA, despite its name, has never seen what is now branded as The Borderlands Line as a single corridor. In fact, the route only exists in its present form through a quirk of history: it is entirely possible that if the survival of passenger traffic on the lines from Dee Marsh to Wrexham and Bidston been anticipated, then the busier services from both ends to Chester Northgate would not have been withdrawn. Only an incomplete study would analyse development of the surviving service in isolation while neglecting the line’s former attributes and unused present-day potential, such as through trains to Birmingham. You can read for yourself the many positive aspects of the Executive Summary. Before getting too excited, however, we should remember Merseytram. If funds for electrification similarly fail to materialise, the report dismisses the value of the reinstated diesel service that gave our association its name. Apart from this, we enthusiastically welcome what we know of the study's findings. Despite our quarter-century of devotion to the cause, we have yet to be furnished with the full report. If, despite its limited remit, the Borderlands Rail Study should prove enough to bring about electrification of the whole line, we would be ecstatic. * * * * * The Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railway The decades of ridicule that the WBRUA endured from the powers-that-be over any suggestion that Wrexham should be anything more than a declining rail backwater are hard to shake off even though the Chester-Shrewsbury line is now a long-distance route with nearly all of its trains successfully extended to Cardiff, Holyhead or Birmingham. We have yet to see an infrastructure to match the restored status of the service. The 1980s mentality of railway decline allowed the upgrading of the A483 to reduce the integrity of the available corridor to just single-track width at one point northeast of Wrexham. As a result, redoubling the track will be rather expensive but it is a high-priority project for the Welsh Assembly. However, in recent months another long-distance development which we simply could not have anticipated has occurred: Wrexham could soon have five trains a day to London. Those of us who grew up using much the same service when it ran every two hours to Paddington (from Birkenhead Woodside) know how thoroughly viable this would be. What leaves us delighted is the positive use of imagination in contrast to the scorn we know we would have received from other companies had we suggested this service ourselves. When the West Coast Main Line was first electrified in the 1960s, the Birkenhead - London trains were replaced by alternate trains from Liverpool running via Birmingham. London-bound passengers from both sides of the Mersey avoided them like the plague and all WCML trains soon became direct. Nobody thought to restore the original service from Birkenhead and a buoyant market had been soundly torpedoed. Until now. The singled Chester section and Merseytravel's penchant for building stations that prevent the reinstatement of extra tracks on the Hooton line mean that restoring the service north of Wrexham is out of the question. However, this has not prevented Renaissance Rail in consortium with Chiltern Railways forming the Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railway Company. These are not amateurs. Renaissance set up Britain's first, and highly successful, open access rail company, Hull Trains. (This is now part of the massive First Group.) Chiltern are part of the multinational construction/transport conglomerate Laing. They transformed the fortunes of the shortest Birmingham - London route which, because of its lack of other large cities, had previously been run down to little more than a rural single track. The Shrewsbury - Marylebone part of the service is looking very promising already. The hope is for Wrexham to become the northern base of the company with principal maintenance being undertaken at Wembley. Passenger journeys will not be scheduled to call routinely at Wembley Stadium but timings will allow for this stop to be inserted for big events. The Wrexham facility, however, needs some start-up investment to come from the Welsh Assembly. WSMR is only the company name: the brand name will be something snappier but has yet to be decided. The effect on our line will be significant for the number of Saver tickets to London which would be generated. At present, London trains are two changes away from all our intermediate stations except Shotton. Even in this case, the ridiculously bad service through the low level platforms causes computerised information services to recommend changing at Flint or Warrington for some single-change journeys to the capital. Most people are perfectly prepared to change trains once on a long-distance journey, but few are prepared go in the wrong direction in order to avoid doing so twice. WSMR's short but speedy trains will not call at Birmingham despite their need to squeeze through New Street Station. The phrase "open access" is not quite accurate: direct duplication of franchise services is not permitted and this includes Arriva's service to Birmingham. It would really excellent for Wrexham if this new venture comes to fruition. The benefits for Borderlands Line passengers are reduced, however, by the late arrival of our first southbound train into Wrexham at 0830: it will miss the planned first two trains to London. WSMR tell us that if successful, they will look at expansion: we would suggest our line as such a possibility for the first train of the day in any case. The early-morning fares to London from Lime Street are prohibitive for non-business travellers and we have no connection into them. An 0630 from Bidston to Marylebone would have would have the Merseyside early-bird leisure market all to itself. * * * * * Present Imperfect The rosy future of rail in our area makes the disgusting quality of the present-day service very difficult to tolerate. Arriva have been a disaster for our line and no mistake. The only tangible benefit has been their obsession with branding, hence the application of an unprecedented quantity of paint to our stations in order that they conform with the turquoise company image. So at least the stations are looking smarter. The reliability of the service itself has been simply terrible. In the official figures, the Public Performance Measure (PPM) is the percentage of scheduled trains which are deemed "successful": that is, within five minutes of time. The average annual figure for December 2004-5 was just 64%. That's right, less than two in three. The figure has improved lately, but Arriva's methods for achieving this represent pure contempt for the passenger. In the PPM, a cancelled train is no worse than one which runs six minutes late. If the average falls below a certain target - which, last year, was just 83.5% - the company has to pay financial penalties. When a train unit is delayed on our line, however, the lack of turnaround time at the termini can perpetuate the problem throughout all its subsequent journeys until the evening peak - in which both units have a quarter-hour of breathing space. Therefore, it PAYS Arriva to abort late-running northbound journeys at Shotton. Pity the poor guard who has to break that news to Liverpool-bound passengers, who - like the southbound travellers waiting at Bidston, Upton, Heswall and Neston - end up delayed by an hour. ATW play another rotten trick on passengers who change from Merseyrail trains. If the electric is running just four minutes late, Merseyrail informs Arriva Control in Cardiff who then refuse to hold the diesel at Bidston. In this case, the passengers who are once again delayed by an hour do not even show up in the statistics, because both trains are deemed to have run "on time". Our sole remaining founder Committee Member, Mike Barber, told the company's representative at our last Liaison Meeting that Arriva had "murdered the commuter market" on the Bidston-Wrexham line and how right he was. What used to be the most important train of the day - the evening commuter train from Bidston - is particularly vulnerable to this problem, because the connecting train from Liverpool can be delayed by its very popularity. Prior to departure, the 1745 to Wrexham moves into the siding at Bidston - which should make the connection more dependable. Passengers on the electric, however, have been forced to watch the diesel move into their path and off to Wrexham as they sit at the red signal outside the station. This has happened even when the Merseyrail train would only delay the progress of the Arriva unit out of the siding and not affect its departure from the platform. Since the Wrexham train picks up relatively few passengers en route, it is one journey that can be completed more quickly than usual and even if delayed slightly at Bidston, it would reach Wrexham on time. To add insult to injury, it then kicks its heels in Wrexham for about 50 minutes before heading off to its depot in Chester. All those hours of the passengers'
otherwise perfectly good lifetime have been wasted for nothing.
Just cross your legs... When our Chairman wanted to monitor the popularity of our new Sunday service on two consecutive weekends he bought a 4-in-8-day Coasts and Peaks Rail Rover and spent the two Saturdays in Derbyshire and north Wales respectively. On the latter day-trip he got talking to two young ladies from Taiwan who, in the UK for the first time, asked him for ideas. When they heard about his plans for lunch in Llandudno and an afternoon on the Conwy Valley line, they decided to join him. He writes:
Some days, both the units on our line have had their toilets locked for the same reason. The crews are not pleased, because another consequence of the minimal turnaround times on our line is the need, sometimes, for the staff to use the toilets on the trains - which often turn up first thing in the morning obviously uncleaned. (If you like clean trains,
head for Glasgow, where First Scotrail's conductors on the suburban network are drilled to put any litter they find into the bins provided. This, of course, encourages
the passengers to do the same. It just proves that it can be done on
local trains.)
Train failures and the resource-led timetable Two years ago, we advertised the start of the summer Sunday service with a half-page full-colour spread in the Wirral Globe, specifying six particular day tours using connecting trains and buses from our line. Two of these started with a journey on the 1032 from Bidston which had a fantastic connection at Shotton to the coast: Upton to Rhyl in 54 minutes! shouted the heading for one trip. The following Saturday our observer parked at Neston and took the incoming train to Bidston in order to monitor the success of the promotion. The guard was already having a little trouble with one of the doors; a tiny wheel occasionally came of its runner and prevented the door closing until poked back into place. Unsurprisingly, the guard reported the fault at Bidston while dozens of passengers boarded the class 153 railcar - only for them to be ejected again when Network Rail, quite rightly, banned the unit from service. A few people had already been waiting on the southbound platform at Upton when the train had headed north but we have no way of knowing how many were there when it shot straight past them, empty, about fifteen minutes later. Let's just say we have had a good response there to previous WBRUA initiatives. Now faults and disruptions happen. This is not what we are complaining about. To be fair, Arriva did take strong action to try and overcome what appears to have been a recurring design fault in all class 153s. What outrages us is the fact that the unit was not replaced until five hours later - the 1532 departure from Wrexham. On another Saturday in March this year, the National Rail live information on the internet was showing several cancellations on our line so our Chairman phoned the enquiry line to find out what the problem was. It was yet another door failure. Arriva's 'strong action' has not been altogether successful. A call to Arriva elicited the information that the replacement unit was being sent up from their depot at Canton in Cardiff. This is very difficult to tolerate, especially for those of us who remember when the depot for our line was on the site of present-day Tesco superstore at Bidston. Not only this, but it was a door failure and Merseyrail trains have doors. Merseyrail also has an engineering depot precisely one mile from our northern terminus. Was it really not possible that a Merseyrail fitter could have fixed the problem with nothing more than his own equipment and expertise? If spare parts were needed and since it is a problem that occurs repeatedly, does it take much enterprise to give Merseyrail a supply of the offending components and contract them to help when necessary? Altogether that day eight journeys were cancelled or shortened while the other unit ran successively later all afternoon. Our line's tight timetable does not allow for large numbers of people actually to use the trains and remain on time. This is what happens when running a resource-led timetable with inadequate resources. Arriva Trains Wales have simply not got what it takes to run the Borderlands Line. Or to be more precise, they choose not to have what it takes. They tell us that they cannot get the rolling stock for a spare backup unit for our service. More accurately, they calculated their tender for the Wales and Borders franchise on a certain allocation of trains and the Borderlands Line is not important enough to warrant the acquisition of further units for the purpose of making it dependable. We are told that the financial
penalties for poor performance are imposed line-by-line but clearly these
are not severe enough between Bidston and Wrexham to force ATW to devote
extra resources to avoiding them.
That phrase 'resource-led'
timetable takes some swallowing because it means the alternative 'market-led'
one - in which the potential passenger actually counts for something -
has been abandoned. It is bad enough when the resources are sufficient.
If they are inadequate, as ATW's clearly are in terms of both rolling stock
and depot facilities, then the situation becomes intolerable.
Rail replacement buses Sometimes you would think, from the way Arriva Trains Wales (ATW) behaves, that there is some sort of event always being held on the platform at Bidston station, attended by Merseyrail or Arriva passengers who turn up on their respective trains, socialise with each other and then go back whence they came. ATW happily sells many tickets to and from Liverpool but takes no responsibility for actually getting their customers there. We should make it clear that we are very pleased to see so much engineering work happening on the railways these days, because it represents a real investment for the future. What appals us is that when this involves cancellation of the last train of the day each way, the replacement bus from Wrexham terminates at Bidston long after the last Merseyrail train for Liverpool has departed. All we get from Arriva's Stakeholder Liaison Manager is silence and a blank look when we suggest better solutions. If nothing else, these should include the extension of the last northbound replacement bus to Liverpool and a deal with Merseyrail to staff Bidston station until the bus has arrived. In practice, most passengers on the dark, unstaffed intermediate stations do not get to know about the alterations - which have been happening on Mondays to Thursdays as well as at weekends - and when their expected train fails to turn up, they make other arrangements involving friends or taxis. The only contract ATW managers seem to want to honour is the one to operate the franchise. If they can wilfully strand a fellow human being at a deserted station on Bidston Moss at midnight, the contract they have with the passenger in the shape of a Liverpool ticket obviously counts for nothing. Perhaps you thought "disgusting" was too strong a word. Bet you don't any more. * * * * * Liaison Meeting The latest WBRUA Liaison Meeting in May with Arriva and the local authorities was not as fruitless as the previous two, mainly because we turned up with twenty A4 sides of evidence to back up our input. It was still quite negative overall but at least we were able to prove some points. At last October's meeting our Chairman commented, not for the first time, that the Welsh-language parts of nearly all the signs at Shotton station contained spelling mistakes - only to have someone patiently pointing out in response that some Welsh words are supposed to mutate. Yes, but this much?
"Do you honestly think" said Malcolm at the May meeting, armed with the notated photo,"that I would comment on Welsh spelling mistakes if I didn't know something about the language?" This and a similar sign are attached to both sides of the bridge in Shotton high street at the station entrance. Believe it or not, they have managed to misspell the Welsh word for Wales no less than five times on signs around the station and most of the errors have been in place for over ten years. It would be nice if our verbal
contributions were to be taken seriously without the need to prove them
all. We rarely suggest anything without having studied it in depth, usually
surveying and often photographing the possibilities on site. Sadly, the
presence of a single 'serial rubbisher' is enough to bring progress grinding
to a halt these days, the other representatives seemingly unprepared to
break ranks in front of us, the amateurs. It is years since we heard the
magic phrase "I agree with the Association".
* * * * * Tocyn Taith One thing that was revealed to us at the October Liaison Meeting was the introduction by Taith of a new unlimited-travel bus-rail ticket with zones roughly corresponding to the county and county-borough areas. Once again, it was a fait accomplis announced to (but not discussed with) us. What we did not pick up when we were told the pricing structure was how weird this actually is. For, example, a two-zone ticket costs £6 but one for four zones costs £15. So why would anybody buy the four-zone version? We would have sent you the leaflet for this ticket - in which the prices are shown under the less-than-grammatical title of What's It Cost? - but the figures will have to change once the anomaly is recognised. You would think so, anyway. * * * * * Clwydian Ranger For the last few years there has been a wonderful network of leisure bus services branded Clwydian Ranger running on Sundays and Bank Holidays in the summer stretching all the way from Chester to Llandudno, Snowdon and Barmouth. Last year a day ticket cost a bargain £3.50. It was FREE for Cerdyn Cymru holders and just £1.75 for seniors from outside Wales. Some of the Clwydian Ranger routes were specifically operated as part of the promotion while others were included from year-round services like the X94 from Wrexham to Barmouth or the 10X from Chester and Shotton stations to Moel Famau viewpoint. The latter calls en route at Loggerheads Country Park where, during the Clwydian Ranger season, it interconnects most effectively with a selection of other rural buses. It was also timed to connect at Shotton with Bidston journeys in both directions, but unfortunately our Sunday morning trains only ran for a few weeks in high summer while the Clwydian Ranger buses ran from May to October. Very frustrating is that the roles are now reversed with our Sunday train service now year-round but the Clwydian Ranger drastically cut back to start in July. There was a combined rail-bus ticket for Merseyrail passengers, but only via Chester and it proved very difficult to find a station booking clerk who could actually succeed in issuing it. Although the Clwydian Ranger booklet was simply superb, this too was very difficult to find on Merseyside where the greatest market is to be found. One of our spies made a phone call to the tourist information office at Woodside Ferry in Birkenhead where a helpful lady did manage to find a box of the booklets under the counter - but none had been on display. Let's face it, it is not something that most people would know to ask for. We would suggest that, in future, our new Sunday train service - which is wholly financed by three of the local authorities who support Clwydian Ranger - should become the foundation on which the leisure bus network is based. The Borderlands Line is Merseyside's greatest escape route with the countryside starting at Woodchurch Road, just seven minutes from Bidston. There are an awful lot of empty seats on bus and train which would generate income if Clwydian Ranger tickets were valid on our line too. Once this is done, recruit Fred Talbot to cover it on Granada Reports. When you link up the product with the market, the sky's the limit. This year's booklet is not yet available but do look out for it - there will still be some blissful car-less days out made possible by this excellent venture. Postscript (August 2006) for internet readers: This year's Clwydian Ranger booklet is now available for downoad in pdf form by clicking here. The adult price for a Clwydian Ranger day ticket is now £4.00 and the network has been reduced dramatically. It no longer includes Snowdon Sherpa services and the White Line circular service which served the beautiful country lanes around Moel Famau has been withdrawn. Worst for us is that while the booklet shows the 10X (Orange Line) connection to Moel Famau from Shotton Station, perfectly timed at 1033 from opposite the Clwyd Hotel, the rail arrival time now has a footnote saying "Please note that there is no convenient return connection from Shotton in the evening." In a classic case of unacquainted left and right hands, Borderlands train times have changed while the Orange Line bus times have not - despite both being paid for by some of the same local authorities. So our recommendation is to get a day return rail ticket to Wrexham on the 0957 from Bidston, but alight at Shotton; take the aforementioned 10X (Orange Line) Clwydian Ranger bus to Loggerheads; change to the Blue Line bus over the Horseshoe Pass to Llangollen or Bala and then use your ticket for unlimited journeys on the X94 between Wrexham and Barmouth via Dolgellau. The only saving grace for the new location of Wrexham Central station is that it is closer than it was to Wrexham Maelor Hospital where the 1835 bus from Barmouth arrives at 2053. The last Sunday train to Bidston leaves Central at 2113. It is still a great day out, but what a shame it is that so many other great options are no longer available. * * * * * The New Community Rail Officer Back into the realms of the positive, we cannot speak too highly of our Acting Community Rail Officer for the Borderlands Line Community - Rail Partnership, Jamie Sant. We did not even know that he was taking the job on until he was already doing it and, for a while, we feared that the position was going to remain vacant when Michael Clutton retired. Consequently, some continuity was lost in the transition and Jamie had to hit the ground running with the deadline looming for the publication of the winter mini-timetable. However, he found his feet very quickly. He has got his priorities absolutely right in spending much of his budget on signs and displays which will make the use of our trains much easier for the new users of our line that we will all try to attract once it is restored to reliability. He is also very quick to take action when a deficiency is pointed out. For example, when we sent him the photo of the misspelt Shotton station signs he immediately investigated the situation and e-mailed us back to say that new ones had been ordered. After more than a decade of attempting to get something done about this, it is incredibly refreshing to find someone who realises that pointing out an error is actually a very positive thing to do. We very much hope that his
position will be made permanent in the not-too-distant future.
* * * * * Bus-Rail Integration One thing Jamie is very interested
in is integrating the trains with local bus services and, of course, so
are we. Sorry to repeat ourselves, but punctuality is vital. We can make
countless suggestions of how our line can become a major transport artery
for much of Merseyside, Cheshire and north Wales if co-ordinated with the
bus network, but late trains render the whole notion worthless. Even the
Buckley Shuttle in its Borderlands Line livery buzzes off at times before
the train has arrived.
If our trains were to be included in Arriva's bus ticket network (like the Conwy Valley line became an honorary bus route under the Red Rover scheme) then we would have some fantastic journey opportunities raised from the road services that Arriva provides in any case, with no timetable changes made at all. For example, Arriva 437 buses run every ten minutes from Upton station to Birkenhead Market and Liverpool on weekdays. Lots of Arriva buses - especially the quarter-hourly 10 - travel from Shotton station to Chester in a little over twenty minutes. They also operate the TrawsCambria X94 express from Wrexham to Barmouth. It has to be said that Tocyn Taith covers buses into Chester and trains south of Hawarden Bridge but Hawarden and Buckley have cheaper express services to the city in any case. From other stations it generally costs less to get a return to Shotton and then a local bus ticket to complete the journey to Chester. What we would really like to see is Arriva Bus's £3.50 North West Day Tickets - which also cover Deeside and Mold - being accepted and sold on our trains from Hawarden northwards. This would really fill up the empty seats which we find on the northern section of our line. We have, of course, subjected ourselves to the customary ridicule by making this suggestion at the first of our Liaison Meetings after Arriva were awarded the Welsh rail franchise. We may have more luck with subsidised bus services like Merseytravel's 112/113 at Heswall which would give the town centre perfect connections to and from Bidston and beyond if the whole of its hourly timetable ran eight minutes later. Jamie has suggested this to Merseytravel, but with no joy as yet. * * * * * Just A Thought... Does anyone know whether it is possible for a rail franchise holder to contract out part of their network if they find that both they and another operator could benefit financially from such an arrangement? We already know that two companies can form a third one to run a specific open-access rail service, as Chiltern Trains and Renaissance Rail have done with WSMR. Serco-Nedrail run both Merseyrail and the Northern Trains service into Chester from Manchester. Consequently they could maintain our preferred class 150 units in Manchester (Newton Heath) and clean them at night on spare unelectrified track at their Birkenhead North depot with passenger journeys via Chester and Wrexham linking the two. For a start, stabling at Birkenhead North would make possible a much earlier first southbound train - you would not believe the network of Merseytravel Joblink buses to Deeside that has become necessary to plug this ridiculous gap in the market. Alternatively, WSMR want to create a new base at Wrexham. By hiring some Nedrail-Serco facilities, could they brand themselves 'Borderlands Trains' in order to operate both the new London service and, under contract to Arriva, an improved Wrexham - Bidston service too? Everyone involved could make or save money. In a word: they could PROFIT. * * * * * Administration Just a reminder that this year's membership renewal form is enclosed with this newsletter. The membership year still runs from April to March to reflect the financial year. Newsletters will now appear in June and December (in theory) to coincide with the rail industry's new timetable periods. This one has been slightly delayed by the anticipation of more news (some of which has arrived and been included), a couple of computer problems and a tremendous amount of other deadline-meeting activity on behalf of WBRUA members by your Committee. Because we are not spending money on promoting the service at present, we can afford to furnish you with copies of the Borderlands Rail Study Executive Summary and our input to the Welsh Assembly's Committee on Rail Infrastructure and Improved Passenger Services both of which are included as appendices to this newsletter. (The Rail Committee is chaired by one of our most loyal and long-standing members, Dr John Marek AM.) The first appendix is our submission to Arriva Trains Wales after we were sent the draft version of the summer timetable. We were quite impressed to receive a reply from Ben Davies, ATW's Stakeholder Liaison Manager for North Wales, within an hour of submitting our aspirations by e-mail late one Tuesday evening. We were less pleased, however, to find that most of our suggestions had already been dismissed out of hand, including the vital first one which we had described as "urgent". Just one more thing: the date for our AGM will be Saturday 14th October, starting at 2.30pm. We will confirm the venue nearer the time.
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