Just a reminder that the FOWS Annual General Meeting will be held in the Walkden British Legion club on Wilfred Street this Wednesday (4th March) at 7pm.
We have guest speakers from Northern Rail, GMPTE and Salford City Council.
Please come along (entrance is free !) and find out about our progress in 2008, and help us decide our priorities for 2009.
FOWS are delighted to announce that Duffy’s cafe have joined Cafe Chino in offering discounts to passengers on production of a valid ticket.
Duffy’s is very close to the station (turn left out of the station entrance) and opens at 7am weekdays.
For details of the discounts please call in to Duffy’s or Cafe Chino – you’re assured of a warm welcome and great choice of drinks and refreshments in both !
FOWS would like to thank Cafe Chino and Duffy’s for participating in this innovative promotion, and helping to improve the lot of passengers at Walkden.
Of all the facilities that passengers would like added to the station I’m guessing that ugly 6-ft advertising boards were quite a long way down the list.
What a contrast these eyesores form to the improvements recently made at other stations along the line – a car park for Daisy Hill, electronic sign boards and tannoy systems for Atherton and Hag Fold, what looks like CCTV at Hindley.
What has Walkden – now one of the busiest stations on the line – got to do to see any kind of practical improvements from Network Rail or Northern Rail ?!
Congratulations to Merseyrail who have just become the first UK rail company to achieve “Secure Station” status for all stations on their network. This is a tremendous achievement - something people said couldn’t be done, but that has been achieved in just 4 years.
Secure station status means the station has CCTV and a variety of other design features and facilities intended to make the station as safe a place as possible for people to wait.
As users of the Northern Rail network around Manchester will be only too keenly aware, Northern Rail’s own efforts to improve station security lag some considerable way behind Merseyrail’s achievement. Even today no date has been set for installation of CCTV at Walkden.
Read more about Merseyrail’s success on their website News page.
The date for our 2009 Annual General Meeting has been set for Wednesday 4th March at 7pm in the Concert Room of Walkden Royal British Legion (Wilfred Street, 5 minutes walk from the station).
The meeting is open to the general public (you don’t have to be an FOWS member) and we welcome anyone with an interest in the improvement of the station.
The agenda will include a review of activities over the past 12 months and setting of priorities for the year ahead.
Guest speakers to be announced shortly …
You may have seen the parents of Simon Slade interviewed on TV recently on the second anniversary of their son’s death at Gidea Park station. Simon, a fit, young Police Scene of Crime officer fell between the platform and train and lay unconcious on the track for 45 minutes before he was noticed – tragically it was too late to save his life by then.
The family have set up a safety campaign – Mind That Gap - to try and force the government and rail authorities to take the issue more seriously. It’s thought that 2 people died nationally as a result of similar accidents in 2008.
FOWS are aware of at least 2 incidents of passengers falling between the train and platform at Walkden in the last few years. Thankfully neither resulted in a fatality but the risk is there for all too see – except that is the railway safety bodies who insist that nothing can affordably be done.
FOWS deplore the attitude which continues to put passengers – particularly the frail and elderly – at risk. After our campaign to have the platform raised or tracks lowered failed, Northern Rail did at least promise to paint warnings on the platform edge, but one year one not even this has been done.
