Beware – bus replacements on the last train next Monday to Thursday

According to National Rail the 23.20 from Victoria to Walkden will be replaced by a bus next Monday to Thursday (3rd – 6th August).
Unless you enjoy slow journeys without toilets we suggest you avoid this service on these days.
Please note this is a change to previous National Rail advice which indicated the bus replacements would only run Tuesday-Thursday.

Congratulations Marion !

Congratulations are due to Walkden’s very own Marion Bainbridge for being Highly Commended in the Frontline Employee Of The Year category at the National Transport Awards in London this week.

To achieve recognition at the highest national level, singled out from tens of thousands of staff working on bus, rail, plane and ferry services, is an incredible achievement !

We always knew we were lucky to have Marion in the Ticket Office at Walkden … now the whole country knows it too !

Sunday services come a step closer

At a meeting last Friday GMITA’s Train & Metrolink Committee gave its support to a proposal to introduce an hourly Sunday service from Wigan to Manchester via Atherton, Walkden and Swinton.

This is an exciting step forward, and one which FOWS are very grateful to the committee members for taking, but it doesn’t mean the service will necessarily go ahead … the budget has yet to be approved by a separate committee.

The story is featured in today’s Boton Evening News, including quotes from one of the councillors (David Wilkinson) who supported the proposal and FOWS chair Peter Aust.

So we can’t count any chickens just yet, but fingers crossed we may be getting closer to Sunday trains running again from Walkden !

FOWS would like to express their thanks to staff and councillors at Northern Rail and GMITA who have supported our campaign and worked hard to bring the Sunday trains proposal so much closer to fruition.

Engine falls off Northern Pacer

One passenger was taken to hospital with whiplash injuries when a Northern Pacer (class 142) train derailed last month at Broad Green in Liverpool. The cause of the accident has been revealed as the engine having fallen from the underside of the train.

Incredibly this is not the first time the engine has fallen from one of these trains which have long been the focus of safety concerns: in 1995 another Pacer derailment on the Cumbrian coast line was caused by exactly the same failure.

Despite their unpopularity among passengers, Pacer trains are used on around half the services through Walkden.

Another station hump installed

The fibre-glass “hump” trialled on the low platforms at Harrington (Cumbria) last year is now being tested at a busier, suburban station in St Albans. This is thought to indicate Network Rail’s trial means of affordably raising the level of a platform section worked well enough at a relatively quiet, rural station to be tested in a busier, suburban environment.

Passengers at Walkden will continue to watch the results of Harrington Hump trials with interest, as it is thought to offer our best hope of fixing the historically high and dangerous platform gap at Walkden.

FOWS have written to Network Rail to request that Walkden is prioritised if and when the “hump” is approved for national use.

Northern Rail keeps up satisfaction ratings but value-for-money falls

The Passenger Focus Spring 2009 passenger survey shows overall satisfaction among Northern Rail passengers holding steady at 80%, a percentage point up on the same time last year. In the context of other rail operators Northern is virtually identical to the national average (81%) but worse than the average (86%) for Regional (i.e. excluding long distance and London area) operators.

January’s above-inflation fare rises hit the value-for-money rating of most operators, Northern included. Its figure this spring shows just 54% of passengers believe their ticket offers good value for money, falling 8% from the previous survey in August last year. The national level of dissatisfaction is so high that Northern’s score remains one of the best in the country: the overall average is a dismal 40% (down 6%) and for regional operators it’s 55% (also down 6%).

Sunflowers suffer at the hands of vandals

Sadly, the sunflowers on the Manchester platform have suffered an attack of vandalism.

Click here for a reminder of how lovely they looked on Sunday.

We can only feel sorry for passengers who have enjoyed the sight of these beautiful plants surging toward the sun, and also for the individual responsible who clearly has some issues if they enjoy attacking pretty flowers !

FOWS fresh up flower beds at Walkden

We’ve been unable to attend to the flower beds for a few weeks due to holidays and commitments, so there was quite a bit of weeding to be done at the station this morning.

We also put in some new bedding – Busy Lizzies and Pansies – to brighten it up, and some beautiful begonias kindly donated by Peter Hope (who also gave us the wonderful sunflowers now shooting up on both sides of the platform).

A special thank you to Frank Bridge too, for repairing the wooden kickboards at the west (Wigan) end of the Manchester platform, unfortunately they’d been kicked once too often !

Hopefully this year we won’t have any plants nicked and they will give pleasure to station visitors all summer long.

Government U-turn on carriages means more over-crowding on Walkden trains

As reported in last week’s Manchester Evening News, the Department of Transport appear to have reneged on their commitment to provide Northern Rail with 180 new carriages in the next couple of years. According to transport chiefs at GMPTE the government are now saying only 106 carriages will be provided – that’s a reduction of over 40%.

This is bound to adversely affect Northern Rail’s ability to introduce new trains on routes around Manchester which, like the Walkden line, are suffering overcrowding in peak hours and also off-peak sometimes too.

We urge anyone concerned by this let-down to write to their MP asking him or her to protest to the Department of Transport and fight for the full allocation of desperately needed new carriages for local train services.

Serious accident at Walkden station

According to the Bolton Evening News, a man was struck by a train at Walkden on the evening of Friday 19th June.

We understand the injuries sustained were serious but not fatal.

The cause of the accident is not known, nor whether the large platform gap was a contributing factor.