Accrington Railways - Robert Kenyon

minimum amount of property. One of the advantages of establishing a new site, would be the old railway station could have remained functional until the new one was operational. December Lancashire County Council had made an award of £30,000 to Rishton Prospects Panel in order to fund a much-needed facelift to the town’s railway station. The station would benefit from some new flowerbeds, a cleaned and repainted shelter and the refurbishment of the old station sign set in cobbles on the westbound platform. The Panel would also be expected to report every two weeks on their progress, but with other amenities to look after in the town they were desperately short of helpers to do the work and maintain it to the specified standards. On the railways, trains will terminate early or be curtailed short of their ultimate destinations on Christmas Eve. There would be no trains on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Some early morning services were cancelled on Tuesday the 27 th . But from mid-morning up to the early evening of Saturday the 31 st , services would run ‘as normal’. Quite surprisingly following some early cancellations, there would be a ‘normal’ service on New Year’s Day, which would continue on into 2006. The Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, has assured concerned rail users in East Lancashire that their railway line was safe. There had even been a hint that the service could be improved, although much of the £87 millions that the Government poured into the railways every week was invested in the south. Hailed as the saviour of the branch line network when they were introduced some twenty-five years ago, the ‘142’ Pacers were now well past their sell-by date according to the MP for Blackburn and Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw. Some of the units had even had the toilets removed as an economy measure, and despite refurbishment were now showing their age. This was revealed in the stark fact that the journey from Colne to Blackpool was slower now than it was fifty years ago! Although passenger numbers continued to grow on the network overall, it was thought that the condition of these particular units put people off using the railway. Along with Friends Of The Earth, who saw an expanded rail network as a step in the right direction towards improving the environment, Mr Straw has called for the units to be replaced with something more comfortable and modern. Nigel Barber, of Northern Rail, stated that his company, whilst always looking for ways to improve the service on the East Lancashire Line, had no plans to replace the 142s at this moment in time. 2006 January It had been calculated that since the rebuilding of Blackburn Railway Station passenger numbers had grown by 8% and this was mainly attributed to the modern facilities now available there. Now Blackburn (with) Darwen Unitary Council had joined forces with Greater Manchester to try to attract more money to spend on upgrading the line between Bolton and Blackburn. The services had been dogged by permanent speed restrictions and single line sections, which cause both delays and frustration to passengers whilst restricting the service to a one train per hour frequency in each direction. It was estimated that as many as 9% of people in work, travel from East Lancashire into Greater Manchester every weekday and if a further £6 millions was spent on upgrading the line to remove some of the restrictions the frequency of the service, could be doubled to half-hourly. It was estimated that the line could be doubled throughout as it used to be, with an investment of £30 millions and allow three trains per hour to operate. All in favour of spending money on improvements to the services in the region, it was felt that an investment of this magnitude could be put to better use on the East Lancs Line. Here it could improve the facilities at more stations and iron out some of the obstacles that slow trains down whilst shortening the journey time to Preston, where it was now possible to change onto trains that reach London in just over two hours. Hardly had comments ended about the possible misdirection of investment in the area’s railways, when the evidence to substantiate this theory became apparent. A fault in a cable caused a power failure, the consequence of which was a massive points failure. For two days the Colne  Accrington  Preston  Blackpool South local service had to be replaced by coaches on the sections east of Blackburn. The situation was made worse, when demand exceeded capacity on some of these coaches, and because drivers would not allow standing passengers some customers were left stranded. The journey time between Colne and Blackburn increased from its usual 45 minutes to almost 2 hours, as the coaches were obliged to call in at all the stations en route. The Trans-Pennine services did however fare a little better, with delays of around half-an-hour in each direction. The fault had become apparent on the night of

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