Hidden behind the bus stop ...
I stayed at the Premier Inn on Wednesday night ... in the corner of the junction between two Motorways, and just a couple of miles to where I was training. If you travel on business, you'll know the sort of location - the hotel is attached to a popular pub, there's a car dealership just across the road and a couple of office block. And looking just beyond the office block, you can see Sainsburys. The constand buzz of traffic outside is shielded from you when inside by efficient double glazing.
The hotel's literature rack contains all the usual sorts of thing, and a folder that's been lovingly put together by one of the staff. Vicki, on reception, asks if she can help me with local information and I compliment her on the folder. "Not me" she says, but you can tell she's pleased. "I'm interested in the local railway station" says I, but Vicki tells me that there isn't one. Vicki - sorry - there is a station ... and it's within a hundred yards of this hotel and pub, and within two hundred yards of Sainsburys. It's down a flight of steps just behind a well-lit bus stop at which four routes regularly call. Snag is - only one train a week actually calls there.
I had heard of Denton station, and its token service of one train, in one direction only, per week, before. It's sometimes referred to as a "Parliamentary Service" - a term that has a long story behind it but, in its modern form, means a service that is reduced to such an extent that the service is un-usable, but one that isn't actually closed. And scattered around the UK, there are a number of lines and stations that have been degraded in similar ways.
What use is the current service? Why not simply shut the station, then?
The answer to the first question is "the current service is of no practical use". But there are safguards in law against a service being withdrawn, and a station closed which call for various evaluations and enquiries - quite rightly the law protects - so the station cannot simply be shut. Unfortunately, the law does not properly protect lines and stations against service reductions ... nor against all sorts of other wheezes and devices to drive traffic away - call it a "softening up" process if you like. British Rail, later the Strategic Rail Authority, now the Department for Transport, are all (in my view) guilty of service reductions and retimings which have had the effect of driving traffic on the line down to effective zero. In effect, they HAVE shut the service down without having had to account to the electorate through the proper legal process. Frankly, I wouldn't object to anyone who describes what's happened as morally corrupt.
These are strong words from me, aren't they? Yes - they are. And I feel that I should give the people that I'm saying have sabotaged the service the benefit of the doubt it I can. Perhaps no-one wants to travel to where these stations are? Perhaps it's not cost effective to provide a service and there are good alternatives? Perhaps people don't actually WANT to go from Denton to Stockport - perhaps that's simply not a destination of choice?
Sadly, my chat with Vicki revealed that I'm being too generous to the decision makers behind this current service level. People do want to travel to and from Denton; the bus services show us that, the triving hotel and bar and supermarket, the offices which (surely) are staffed from somewhere, the health and fitness club, the warehouse. Alternatives? The parallel motorway is clagged, I didn't see buses runing along that route, and Vicki tells me that there is NOT a long-standing feud between the people of Stockport, of Denton and of Stalybridge which supresses travel demand. The sad truth is that people don't use the station because there are no trains. "If it was a reasonably frequent service, and people knew about it, I'm sure it would be used" says Vicki, and I can't help feeling that she's right.
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