We were pleased to note the letter in last week’s Salford Advertiser expressing Greater Manchester’s Chamber of Commerce’s frustration at the lack of investment from GMPTE in stations like Walkden, and the lack of clear commitments on spending plans for future years.
The letter shows that the lack of investment is viewed as a problem by the business community at large, and not just the passengers who face years of waiting for substantial improvments.
Passengers are warned that at least one of the newly amended train times does not appear to be in effect yet.
The 20.21 departure from Victoria is still showing on platform screens and leaving at the old time of 20.20.
FOWS are featured in an article entitled “Walkden: from neglect to nurture” in the Winter 2007 edition of Northern Rail’s stakeholder magazine “Connections”.
Both litter bins have again been ripped off the wall in the last few days. Replacements are on order.
Evening services from Manchester to Walkden have steadily become busier over the last couple of years as more and more people discover the convenience of travelling back by train from nights out in Manchester, particularly from the big shows at the MEN Arena. Unfortunately some of these services are “victims of their own success” as the over-crowding problems that blight rush-hour services are being seen more and more frequently on the last two evening trains.
Last night mayhem erupted on the 22.34 waiting to leave Victoria when the guard announced that two of the crowded four carriages would not be making the journey due to technical failure. This triggered a rush onto the two operating carriages: the train was delayed 15 minutes, not all passengers were able to board, and those that did were terribly over-crowded – a dismal experience unlikely to encourage people to rely on the service in future.
Longer, more frequent, more reliable trains will be needed if the welcome growth in evening passenger numbers is to be sustained.
The winter timetable – running from Sunday 9th December through to 17th May 2008 – includes no major improvements to services from Walkden.
The number of trains is unchanged in both directions, and connections from Salford Crescent to the Airport do not appear to have improved (for example, the 06.29 still misses the Airport connection from Salford Crescent by 3 minutes).
Many trains – particularly Manchester bound – are timed to depart a couple of minutes later, but passengers should check the departure time of their train carefully as a few trains depart slightly earlier than before.
This week saw the first ever barrier ticket check at Walkden, part of Northern’s on-going crack down on fare evasion.
FOWS believe fare-dodging pushes up travel costs for all legitimate passengers, and undermines the station’s passenger-usage numbers which can negatively affect how the station is prioritised for future investment. We applaud Northern’s effort to tackle this menace more vigourously than First North Western did.
Users of Walkden station will undoubtedly have noticed the unusually high step from the platform into the train doorway. Previously FOWS have written to GMPTE, Northern Rail and Network Rail themselves to ask Network Rail (the owners of the station) to fix the problem. Since Network Rail have refused to take remedial action, FOWS have escalated the issue to the Office of Rail Regulation, the government-appointed body with overall responsibility for rail safety.
FOWS believe the situation is not only highly inconvenient but also presents a serious danger to passengers. In the past few years passengers have fallen into the gap between the train and platform on at least two occasions. We understand that a possible solution would be to take out some the ballast (the stones) from beneath the track, but Network Rail declined to do this when the line was closed for engineering works earlier this summer.
