Accrington Railways - Robert Kenyon

draft of the report. They also said that they would arrange for a follow-up meeting to be held early in the New Year, and as yet no further meeting had taken place. There was much-a-do in the local press at the moment about the state of the local train services. Someone with too much time on his hands had discovered that it takes 39 minutes to travel between Blackburn and Colne in today’s timetable, exactly the same time that it took in 1955 during the steam era. We still have a train service, which was more than a lot of communities could say, even though it hadn’t progressed in quite the way we might have hoped. The reasons why the times have not improved are quite obvious. Fifty years ago all the stations on the line had booking offices, so people could purchase their tickets before they got onto the train. Only the stations in Accrington, Blackburn and at Burnley Central were now staffed, and the one in Accrington not all of the time. The compartment stock, which is what most local services were made up of, had a guard who had no responsibility for issuing tickets. Just what the mindless brigade would have got up to unsupervised in this type of stock, heaven only knows. Very often the delays experienced at particularly busy times now, were because the beleaguered conductor/guard was at the wrong end of his train collecting fares when it arrives at a station platform. There was then an enforced wait whilst he made his way through the carriages to operate the doors. With just as many stations on the line, many within a couple of miles of each other, there never will be any possibility of speeding up the service to any significant degree, unless of course some are missed out or closed. It was unrealistic to expect anything more than just the amount of investment necessary to keep the local service ticking over. Where it might be improved was by cascading newer stock to replace the refurbished but never the less ageing stock. But this of course would depend on substantial investment by the Train Operating Companies on another part of the system. Where the East Lancashire Line had a value was as an alternative mode of transport to the car and to a lesser extent the bus. It also provided a direct link to the much-improved timings of the trains passing through Preston and a one-train link to the coastal resorts on the Fylde. This was not to overlook the service that runs across the Pennines, to give further main line connections in Leeds and York. Therefore the utmost should be done to retain the infrastructure of the line and hope for better things in the future. The needless knocking of the service didn’t do this cause any real good. Although the ‘Pacer’ Class 142 units, dubbed ‘Nodding Donkeys’, were much maligned, it is my honest opinion that they were partly instrumental in preserving a train service when they were first introduced, as it was at a critical time when the future of the East Lancs Line was very much under speculation. July The plans drawn up by the ‘experts’ for the revitalisation of the East Lancashire Line, did not contain any revelations or even surprising suggestions. Most of the points under consideration had been mulled over time and time again. One such was that, “The quality of the trains should be improved, ditching the old rail buses”. Another rather bland statement was, “The line should primarily provide an inter-town service with connections to the West Coast Main Line”. Well it had done that for a century and-a-half and still does today, so much for stating the obvious. Two suggestions were just repeats of theories put forward some time ago. “Trains should miss out some of the less well used stations at off peak times”. I can’t imagine that this suggestion would go down well with the schedulers and compilers of timetables, never mind the communities whose stations are singled out. The savings in time would be marginal, as the trains that suffer most from delays are those which ran at peak times anyway. Another suggestion was that, “Trans-Pennine Trains should stop at Rose Grove, to provide a connection with the Colne branch”. Which of course they once did until the stop was deleted from the timetable, probably on the grounds that it was poorly patronised and slowed the service down unnecessarily. Another thought was that, “Park and ride facilities should be improved at the bigger stations”. In Accrington, where parking is free and relatively unsupervised, there was a possibility the majority of cars parked on the Eagle Street car park belong to people who are not using the trains. The CCTV cameras monitoring this car park had not appeared to be in use for some time. ( I suspected that Railtrack had no jurisdiction over this land anyway! ) Was there anything new in these proposals? One thing which might be helpful if implemented was that - 1) “The line should be given a name under which it can be branded, a properly marketed throughout the North West.”

423