Der Geist Zug (The 3 o'clock Ghost Train)
The 3 o'clock to Stalybridge
She is not any common earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlins Isle of Gramarye
Where you and I will fare
The Traveller was early. He sat alone on Platform 3a at Stockport station, a sort of half forgotten accent to the main-line platforms, gloomily remembering what the lady in the ticket office had said when he bought his one pound 75p single to Stalybridge "How long does this train take?", "let me see."
The service did not appear to be listed in the usual timetables, and the queue behind him got more and more restless so that when she finally said, " Ah here we are," the Traveller would not have been that surprised had she announced she had found it in the Book of Kells.
"Twenty minutes"
"Can I have a return?"
"Well you can, but that'll mean you catch a train into Manchester, then another back. This train does not return"
"Popular is it?"
She looked at him for a moment, ignoring the sarcasm. "You could be the only one on it," she said bleakly. A light rain as becoming mist as, on other through, platforms some admirer or Lord Haw-haw called people with somewhere to go to, and places to see, to exotic Stoke and legendary Cardiff. But on 3a, where the line ends, the Traveller stared at the weeds and the rusting rails beneath him, and felt like a man at the edge of the world. Ten years ago there was an hourly service throughout the outer suburbs of Manchester from Stockport to Stalybridge. Now there is just one train a week. This leaves Stockport every Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock, and does not come back. Or rather. it does but then no passengers are allowed on it. Every week they disappear into Stalybridge, and what becomes of them is of no interest to the railway company.
You will not need reminding that there were trains like this in Hitler's Germany and in Stalin's Russia and it does not help that the Stockport to Stalybridge is known in the railway press as a "Ghost Train". But to North West Trains the company responsible for it, the service is known as a "Parliamentary Service". By running it once a week the company is able to avoid the lengthy, and costly, bureaucratic procedures which amend the closing of a line, even one that has outlived its commercial use.
There are two main stations in Manchester, the one on the main line south, the other on the main line to the Northeast and, until the late 1980s anyone needing to cross the Pennines, from London to York, say, had to change trains and cross the city in the process. The Stockport to Stalybridge, each on a station on the respective main lines, was a link service between the two, enabling travellers to avoid Manchester altogether. But for 10 years now there have been through trains from the south on England to the Northeast, which is how a busy suburban line became a "Parliamentary Service". When this happens you enter a world meaningless to anyone who is not a lawyer or an accountant, for there is no obligation on the railway company to make a profit such a line: a profit might even be an embarrassment. All it has to do is provide a service which passengers could use if they choose, and the company has no interest in attracting them to something which long ago disappeared into the small print of railway timetable footnotes.
Even finding it in these is something akin to the three-card trick. Now you see it, now you don't... Thus North London Railways has take up the rails between Watford Junction to Crosley Heath, so their Ghost Train is not a train at all but a bus service which runs once a week at twenty past six in the morning.
And there is one beyond this again. The 06.48AM Derby to Sinfin Central train service, which once carried factory workers, is not even a bus. It is a taxi. These moments of lunacy at dawn should long ago have been immortalised in film comedy, for you can imagine what the late great Will Hay, playing a taxi-driver would have made of the farce enacted once a week at dawn on the forecourt of Derby station. "Sorry, sir, you may not hire this taxi. Yes I know the law, too, and of course it is your privilege to report a taxi for refusing a fare. But this is not a taxi. It was a taxi five minutes ago and it will be a taxi again in half an hour, but at the moment it is a train. It became a train at 18 minutes to seven, and no, my name is not Cinderella, sir. I know it doesn't run on rails.
But that's what it is, a T-R-A-I-N. And puff, puff to you too, sir, if you don't mind me saying so." But the extraordinary thing is, apart from some local people and rail enthusiasts crazy enough to get up at these ungodly hours, nobody knows about the "Ghost Trains" of old England, even when, as in the case of the Stockport to Stalybridge, this is a ghost at tea time.
"It's worth going on, if only for the station buffet at Stalybridge" says Pip Dunn of Rail magazine. "Fair enough, but can you imagine anyone writing 2,000 words on a 20-minute train service?" "We do that all the time here" says Mr Dunn belithely. You will gather from this that the idea to ride the "Ghost Train" did not originate with the Traveller. This was something he agreed to do, then put off until finally it became an embarrassment. And so it was that, having driven 250 miles, he sat gloomily on Platform 3a, watching as the rain thickened and the tower blocks of Manchester went out one by one.
"Afternoon" He was in his late thirties a thick-set man in a leather jacket and jeans, a haversack over one shoulder. The Traveller had company on 3a. "Excuse me asking, but you wouldn't be taking the 3 o'clock to Stalybridge?"
"I certainly am" said the man, sounding like Oliver Hardy "What for?" And this is the Policeman's story. He was travelling through Manchester, he said. He had time to kill and, for old times sake, wanted to see what had become of a train he had last seen 20 years before. No, he hadn't told anyone of his plan. People would think him mad, said the policeman. One odd thing, though, there were just two stations on the route, and, even when he had used the service regularly, he had never seen anyone alight as Reddish South or Denton. "Just one question, do you love railways?"
"Oh yes", said the policeman. It was five minutes to three now, and an elderly lady and what looked her son had turned up. A guard came, his two flags protruding from a satchel. "No sign of the train is there" he asked "I don't know where it's got to."
Three o'clock came and went. At four minutes past three there was an announcement. "For all those awaiting the 3 o'clock to Stalybridge, we are sorry for the delay" Nothing unusual about that, it was came next which was so strange "The full extent of the delay will be given as soon as possible."
All other announcements about delays had given reasons and times. "Due to signalling problems the so-and-so is running 10 minutes late. We apologise." But the station authorities themselves did not know what had happened to the Ghost Train.
"Is it usually late?" the Traveller asked the Old Lady, "Yes" she said. And this was her story. It was all her fault, she said. Her grandfather had had a model railway in his garden with trains big enough to sit on so, when she had a family of her own, her idea of a day out was to take her two boys on a train. It did not matter much where the train went, nor did it so any of them now took her. Her bearded son listened impressively. She had passed her enthusiasm on to them, she went on, and his brother was even keener than he was.
Most summers they went the to Stalybridge at least three times, in winter less. Why, they had even met a lady on it once who actually moved to Stalybridge, someone with a suitcase. "You haven't been before?" she asks the Traveller. "No"
"So you haven't been to Stalybridge Buffet?"
"No" She and her son exchanged glances and the two smiled. Stalybridge Buffet, the Traveller gathered, seemed to be some rite of passage awaiting him at the end of the line.
"Here she comes" shouted someone and, out of the mist came a fussy little diesel, not only 20 minutes late but a train out of time altogether, the line never having been electrified. The Traveller had not seen one in 20 years. It stopped and some 12 people, most of whom he had not noticed on the platform before, who seemed to have been suddenly beamed down like the crew of the Starship Enterprise, did not get on the way people normally do, they piled on board, the old lady among them, like children on a school trip, or soldiers going on leave, as though terrified they might be left behind.
The Traveller found himself in one of the two elderly carriages with three men who, to his amazement, told him they actually worked for the railways. One was a signalman, another an engine driver and the third, a younger man, was just about to join. All had come along way for these 20 minutes to nowhere, one from Accrington, another from Reading, the third from Swindon. "Why?" echoed the Engine Driver. "For this. Listen." He lifted his hand. The little diesel was shifting from side to side like a sprinter in the blocks, every bolt vibrating. "Oh, you old mechanical thing." he said fondly. "That's why I come, because this is real. This is one of the last Class 101 DMUs (diesel multiple units) in service. I come for this."
"So you've been before?" All three grinned. "We come as often as we can." said the Signalman, a sharp man, his hair in a pony tail, not at all the sort of chap you would expect to spend his day off crossing England to travel 12 miles on an old train. It was then the Traveller realised he was in the company of a species he had thought extinct, railwaymen who loved railways. He had met one or two in the old days, rural stationmasters who spent their lives growing roses on their platforms, ticket collectors more immaculate than Guardsmen, but had assumed their pride had been destroyed by privatisation and by its bleak new ruling class of accountants and PR men. So it had survived, not at the top, but as Rome in its decline had survived, its centurions still at their post peering across some frontier. As the poet Robert Greaves wrote "A rotten tree lives only in its rind."
And the Traveller started to suspect that he might enjoy his afternoon. The brakes were released and, with a lurch, they were off. The Traveller, peering into the murk, felt a hand on his shoulder. "You do realise you are on one of the highest viaducts in Britain" said the Old Lady. "In a moment you will see the Pennines." The two of them stared out together.
"Ah," she said, like Tommy Cooper when one of his tricks had gone wrong. "No you won't." They came to a station and one of the railway men opened the window, something you can still do on this train. "Anyone getting on?" asked his friends. He shook his head. "No" he said, as happy as any man confirming an article of faith. "Hang on, though, the guard has just got out." They watched him standing in weeds which were waist high, an explorer in some lost city of the Incas. In all the years they had travelled the line, they said, no-one had ever seen a living soul on Denton station. People can grow up in Denton and not even know they have a station. The Traveller's own cousin among them.
"Are you sure you didn't dream this journey" he said. The green was all round them now, and deepening, overhanging trees, overgrown verges, a world of willow and elder, where the Traveller had not a clue as to where he was or, later where had been, when he retrieved his car from Stockport and drove between factories to Stalybridge - a journey which, curiously, took him over an hour
. "See that?" the Signalman was pointing to a signal box. "That's Denton Junction, that is, until 18 months ago the last signal box in Britain with gas lighting."
"Have you ever tried to explain to anyone your fascination with railways?"
"No." said the Signalman. "That would be pointless."
"Put it this way," said the Engine Driver "This train might be noisy and rattly to you, but that's why we've come. We work in an industry that's done away with smoke, and which is now trying to do away with sound altogether. Everything has to be silent and brilliantly white. We are here because all modern life is wrong." The train pulled into Stalybridge but, when the Traveller looked back, once through the train he saw that he destination indicator on the front cab said Ormskirk. Ah well, fair enough.
By that stage he was not prepared to believe anything for, by the time he turned round again, most of the passengers had vanished, apart from the Old Lady, her son, and the Signalman, who were hurrying towards the station buildings.
The buffet at Stalybridge is one of the few free houses on the rail network. A narrow little room, it has not changed much since it was opened in the 1880s and still has an open fire. But that was not the first thing the Traveller noticed. On the bar was a barrel of home-made perry. Perry is his favourite drink but, in 40 years of perambulation through licensed premises, he has not seen it for sale anywhere outside the pear orchards of Herefordshire, even then never in a pub.
"Oh, we always have a barrel of perry." said the Licensee. The Traveller had a pint, and it smelled of elderflower. The next time he went to the bar he saw they were also doing wheat beer. Wheat beer is that lovely white beer brewed in Belgium and Germany which, in this country, is difficult to get outside London. Wheat beer, his second most favourite drink, is something for which he has often driven 20 miles. "Wheat beer, please"
"Which kind would you like?"
"Which kind would I like? How many kinds have you got?"
"Eight." Men have always fantasised about Journey's End, the great good place where all wishes are met. As different times, and in different cultures, this has been the Happy Isles, the Land of Cockayne, in Welsh Afallon, the Isle of Apples, Brigadoon, the Blue Rock Candy Mountains, it is just that no traveller who looks for it can find his way there. But say there was a train out of pace and time, a train that went nowhere and never came back. "Guest beers?" Oh, about 20 a week." said the Licensee.
"I knew you'd like it here." said the Old Lady. Here at the quiet limit of the world.
Saga Magzine August 2000
Fred Wood
Fred Wood |
An heroic signalman who saved hundreds of lives has been honoured with a Blue Plaque. And where more appropriate for the plaque to go than the Buffet Bar at Stalybridge Station?
Back in 1909 the late Fred Wood, from Stalybridge, was working at the Dukinfield West signal box when couplings broke on a mineral train travelling from Birmingham to Leeds. It was fast approaching Stalybridge Station heading straight towards another train. Numerous attempts to apply the brakes were made but all failed. More than 50 heavily laden wagons thundered past Fred's signal box and he realised he had to act fast.
Being a local man, he knew "that a workers train" travelling from Stockport to Stalybridge was due along the same line at any moment - and that it would be packed with hundreds of people.
And many of the miners, mill and factory workers heading for their morning shifts at work could have been his friends. Without hesitation, Fred, who was then 31, turned the points, forcing the runaway train onto a separate track, avoiding tragedy by just seconds. The goods train eventually collided with buffers at the end of the track.
So great was the impact, three wagons leapt over the buffers and were hurled into the air - but miraculously nobody was hurt. Fred, who was hailed a hero, was awarded a medal by the railway firm for his actions. It read: "Presented in recognition of his prompt action in averting a great disaster."
His daughter Ellen Bate performed the official unveiling at Stalybridge Buffet Bar, platform one, on Friday 15th March 2002 at 12.30pm. She was joined by the brass band from West Hill School in Stalybridge. The medal, letters and newspaper cuttings of the time are the only reminder that Ellen, then 73, has of her father's heroism.
She was just five years old when he died of a brain haemorrhage in 1934. When he was alive she knew little of his remarkable actions and how he probably saved hundreds of people. Ellen said: "My mother showed me the medal when I was older and it's still hard for me to think that my father prevented what could have been an awful train accident."
"I think about what he did, especially when I hear of tragic accidents that are still taking place today."
"A Tribute to Fred Wood" was written by Katie Hopton - Tameside Reporter
The Rail Ale Trail
|
reproduced from THE TIMES Saturday November 17 2001
Stephen McClarence reports.
MAKE MINE A PINT TO GO!
The Rail Ale Trail, combines northern railway pubs with outstanding beer.
At the end of the Rail Ale Trail, Sylvia Wood knows how passionate drinkers can get about their beer. When British Rail announced plans to close her bar a decade ago, Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale, raised a 15,000 signature petition to save it. And won.
Forget the train timetable and sample the beer at Stalybridge Station Buffet, one of three buffets on the Real Ale Trail, famous for its black pea suppers |
"It's amazing how loyal people can be and....". The rest of her sentence is drowned out as the 15.19 from Middlesbrough to Manchester thunders past.
Wood runs the Station Buffet Bar at Stalybridge, in mills-and-moorland country a few miles east of Manchester. Most of its fittings are preserved intact from 1885, and it is famed for its "black pea suppers".
This is emphatically, not your average station buffet. No Brief Encounter here with teabags dunked in polystyrene cups and scones hard enough to shatter granite. The Stalybridge buffet has a marble-topped bar, a glimmering fire and even more glowing regulars. It's one of three buffets on the Rail Ale Trail, which weaves a merry way across the North of England on the Newcastle-Manchester-Liverpool line.
The trail, which includes three rather more orthodox pubs, was devised by Tony Brookes, director of The Head of Steam, an enterprising Newcastle based company that aims to exploit the leisure, tourism and drinking potential of train journeys. We meet at the start of a long day that will take me on a grand tour of the Northern rail network, an ambitious jigsaw of a journey that, with just on missed connection, could fall apart at any moment. Brookes has drawn up my timetable. He is an enthusiast for real ale (a Camra member since 1974) and for railways. He wants stations to be destinations in their own right. "All too often they're regarded as places to walk through as quickly as possible" he says. "But there are lots of beautiful stations with empty spaces in them that could be exploited for the benefit of passengers, tourists and townspeople."
We meet at his Head of Steam pub in Newcastle, well before opening time. "It's a fashion pub," says Brookes, pointing out an exhibition of Cuban paintings, the debris of a jazz-and-poetry night and the three Czech lagers on draught. "It's a kind of cult place." From here the Rail Ale Trail is an Odyssey of Original Gravities (measures of beer strength). It starts on the 11.30am from Newcastle to York, with a warm welcome from Abdul, the customer services advisor for the "on-train team" who enthuses about his all-day breakfast baguettes. There are glorious views of the Tyne Bridge, Antony Gormley's Angel of the North sculpture and Durham Cathedral, crowning a hillside criss-crossed with terraced houses.
Round the corner from York station, its great glass canopy billowing like clouds, is The Maltings, a solid 1842 pub voted the first British Cask Ale Pub of the Year three years ago by the trade magazine The Licensee and which won it again last year. It has attractive tiled floors, exposed brickwork, plenty of old enamel signs, no unnecessary airs and graces and a satisfying line in jacket potatoes. Shaun Collinge, the landlord, pulls a half of Outlaw Macduff ("It's only light") and outlines what makes a good pub. "A quality pint is a major factor; price is less relevant," he says. "And the atmosphere. We don't have telly's or loud music. The atmosphere is from the conversation and people come because they feel safe and comfortable."
On to the 13.19 to Dewsbury, where the station's West Riding Refreshment Rooms have won accolades from every magazine from What's Brewing to Loaded. It's a cosy retreat from the drizzle, with a Victorian tiled fireplace, a blazing fire, vases of carnations on the tables and a wry owner in Mike Field. "When I first applied for a licence, it was like going in front of the Plymouth Brethren," he says. "Now they hand licences out like toilet paper." The bulk of his business is local, although real ale fans have turned up (by train) from as far as Liverpool and Darlington - and a couple of years ago we had 33 Jehovah's Witnesses from Utah".
So what makes a good pub? "Ultimately the customers. All you can do is put everything else in place and hope for a good atmosphere that isn't intimidating. Here's your train. Just check it's the fast train, not the stopper."
Sylvia Wood at the Stalybridge Station Buffet Bar. Sausage & mash, black peas, a glowing fire and even more glowing regulars! |
It is the fast train, the 14.37 to Huddersfield, a stately home of a station with grand pillars, a proud portico and another Head of Steam outlet, very different from Newcastle's. The walls are packed with rail memorabilia, there are 50 vodkas, it's open for breakfast at 9am and it doesn't close until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. It hosts jazz and blues nights and festivals and has staged a pub opera.
On to the 15.55 to Marsden, where the Riverhead Brewery Tap is an uncluttered community pub and brewery in a converted grocery store. "There are no discos, no flashing lights, no slot machines, no jukebox," says Philip Holdsworth, the owner. "The locals use it to get away from the noise in their own pubs." He pulls a half of his Redbrook Premium. It is as rich as sherry. Someone said: "Why don't you put it in optics and sell it at two pounds a shot?"
It is almost the end of the trail. The mists come down on the dry stone walls as the 17.08 pulls in at Stalybridge, where Wood presides over Wagon Wheels and chocolate marsh mallows, staples of a 1950s childhood. But this is no place for nostalgia. Not with 22 guest beers in this week. "Sold out of Carping Coriander and Tubby Tangerine," says Wood. "And Little Red Rooster. All gone. Look, let me get you some black peas." Black peas are really brown. They are dried, soaked over night, doused with salt and vinegar and traditionally eaten with a teaspoon. They are delicious, a sort of chunky Lancashire pate. But even at the end of the Rail Ale Trail, I can't see Celia Johnson ordering them at the great Brief Encounter buffet in the sky.
Rail Ale Trail information on: 0191 239 9777 or
Train times and fares: 08457 484950 |
Birds Of A Feather
Inside The Buffet |
Helen Catlow reveals how the residents of Stalybridge have played a leading role in wildlife conservation.
Photographs: Rob Auckland
An industrial suburb near Manchester is not the place you would expect to find one of the first ever RSPB bird reserves, nor to produce one of the UK's leading botanists. But Stalybridge, which lies east of Ashton-Under-Lyne, is full of surprises and contradictions. It has a splendid railway station with an original Victorian buffet bar, which in addition to serving tea and crumpets has also become something of a Mecca for real ale and folk music enthusiasts.
The Q Inn on Market Street has its own art gallery and is certified in the 1995 Guinness Book of Records as having the shortest pub name in the UK. And if you visit the Roe Cross Inn you will find a mysterious Toad in the Hole - but don't look on the menu because this has nothing to do with sausages or Yorkshire puddings. This town definitely has a strong nonconformist streak, which could have something to do with it being in border country - historically, it lay at the junction of four shire counties. Its municipal map was redrawn in cavalier fashion by Ted Heath's Government in 1974, the tangle of boundaries being tidied up under the banner of Tameside, Greater Manchester.
When you have strong links with Lancashire, think you live in Cheshire and are told you are an appendage to Big Brother Manchester, it's a sure recipe for breeding independence of mind and spirit.
The connection with the country's biggest wildlife charity dates back to the early 1930's, when Stalybridge benefactor Agnes Cheetham, left a 12 acre section of wooded valley to the RSPB. The bequest came at about the same time as a gift of 250 acres at Dungeness in Kent, and marked the beginning of a shift in the society's approach to conservation, from employing Watchers to protect endangered species, to acquiring land to preserve wildlife habitats.
Miss Cheetham was part of the same social set as Mrs. Williamson of Didsbury, the founder of the RSPB, then known as The Society for the Protection of Birds. Nature conservation was a relatively new idea and protecting birds was written off as 'something that women did' but those determined females were no soft touch and campaigned vigorously to stop the trade in plumes from abroad. At the same time, hats decorated with ostrich plumes and other exotic feathers were all the rage, and hundreds of tons of feathers were imported each year.
The River Tame |
Andrea Falcon, the RSPB's regional public affairs manager said; 'These ladies helped to change fashions and influence thinkers of the day, It was a conservation issue every bit as serious as those which concern us today.' Agnes Cheetham obviously had similar stamina to the Queen Mother living to the ripe old age of 98, and her obituary in the local paper in June 1981, described her as the 'oldest resident in Stalybridge'.
Her family were wealthy cotton pioneers and the land for the nature reserve was only a small part of what they gave to their home town. Agnes' brother John F Cheetham bequeathed Eastwood house and its extensive grounds to be used as a public park and he built and equipped Astley Cheetham Library. A relative Mrs. Wimbush gave the Priory family estate, which also forms part of Cheetham Park.
A local mill worker and keen naturalist Dick Wolfendale helped to put the RSPB on the map. He spent his winters managing Eastwood and spent his summers as a Watcher on the Suffolk coast, helping to protect rare birds, such as the avocet, which was later adopted as the RSPB logo. Dick lived in Stalybridge all his life and died in 1994. Eastwood is now managed by the Cheshire Wildlife Trust and is open to the public on Sundays. It has a feeding station, which attracts a variety of birds throughout the year, including the bee creeper, greater spotted woodpecker, nuthatch and willow warbler.
In and around the town there are a number of heritage sites identified by Blue Plaques, which show that Stalybridge spawned some influential figures and has connections with some famous names. Beatrix Potter's mother Helen Leech, came from Stalybridge and the artist L S Lowry lived at The Elms, Stalybridge Road, Mottram, from 1948 until his death in 1976. The Lancashire dialect poet Samuel Laycock who wrote about working class life in the cotton industry, was librarian at the Mechanics Institute.
The celebrated botanist John Bradbury, was born at Souracre Fold in 1768. He was also a writer and intrepid explorer, who travelled across America. Jethrow Tinker, who lived on North Britain Farm, in the Brushes, now part of Stalybridge Country Park, was also a famous naturalist, but he stayed at home researching the flora in his local area until his death in 1871.
Botanical societies flourished in Manchester and surrounding towns and there were a surprising number of working men whose knowledge of flora and fauna was so great, they could talk on equal terms with eminent scientists and university professors. Societies usually held their meetings in rooms of public houses, where they kept their microscopes, books and collections of species. Stalybridge used to have a botanical society at the Hare & Hounds, Millbrook, and a Hygienic and Botanical Society at the Royal Oak Inn, in Vandrey Street.
Such men were no doubt very interested in the discovery of a toad contained in a sealed stone, which came to light when the road to Woodhead was cut through a rocky hillside in 1826. How the toad got into the stone is a mystery, let alone how it survived, but the place is marked in green and white in the wall at Roe Cross, just above the Roe Cross Inn.
Passengers travelling from Stalybridge Station are more fortunate than most. If their train is late they can enjoy a wonderful view of the hills and check the time on a splendid station clock, which is a faithful replica of the original displayed in the Railway Museum at York. Or they can slip into the Victorian buffet bar for some unusual refreshment and entertainment. There are up to 10 beers on pump at any one time and well over 1,500 guest ales have been featured since Christmas '96. No wonder it has earned a star rating among real ale lovers. Folk nights and jazz events and Bank Holiday specials such as the recent Pint'z n Pudding'z weekend ensure a lively programme of events.
Lancashire life - 1999
Stalybridge Life
From days at the mill to nights at the pictures, Stalybridge and Dukinfield's older generation have a hatfull of memories to share. Dereck J Southall's book 'Voices of Dukinfield and Stalybridge' paints thumbnail portraits of the towns in times gone by.
Words: Rachel Dearden Photographs: Neil Hickson
DIP into this book, and you can almost hear the clattering of clogs on the towns' streets. But while Old Father Time has moved on and the younger generation prefer trainers to clogs, the historic buildings are a reminder of the past.
Stalybridge Station whets the thirst of trainspotters and real ale buffs alike. The quirky Platform One buffet dates back to 1885, and the original conservatory still stands. Hosting an ever-changing selection of real ales, the bar is an interesting watering hole for both passengers and rail enthusiasts.
Stalybridge Station
Although the Manchester Metrolink tram network does not extend as far as Dukinfield or Stalybridge, Ethel Anderson recalls a time when trams were the preferred mode of transport. She says 'There were trams of course, when I was a little girl. There used to be trams coming up Tame Street, which crossed out street. We used to go and put pins on the tramlines and stand back a bit until a tram passed and flattened them. When we had clog-irons on, all the time apart from when we went to church, we used to strike sparks from the tram lines.'
The Q Inn (pub with the shortest name in Britain)
Nowadays the area is popular with commuters, and has not escaped the property boom seen throuhout the North West. A 1930's three-bedroomed semi detached home can now sell for upwards of 120,000 pounds but in the 1920's and 30's when vast areas of Stalybridge were cleared as part of the slum clearance, families moved out to new estates in droves.
Joyce Hall recalls her family moving to one of these homes when they were first built. She tells of the shame her mother felt when, like all the other families who were moving out of the slums, their furniture, clothes and possessions had to be fumigated before they were allowed into their new home: 'That lorry went to Stalybridge market grount and they put fumigating stuff inside the lorry and it was all sealed up. It was all fumigated, on chance you had fleas or bugs. It as a showing up, but everyone had to have it done. That left the only thing that wasn't fumigated, us, with the clothes that we were wearing. You were not allowed into your new house, you couldn't have a key, until you'd been fumigated. we went to some place - I can only remember that it was up High Street - and we went into this room and some men said 'Go in there; take all your clothes off and put them in in this drum, your clothes, your shoes, turn the drum round.' Then there was a big bath filled with hot water, and soap. I had only ever had a bath in a tin bath. I thought it was was wonderful. We got in this lovely warm bath. My mum was sitting on a little seat, crying; she was feeling the shame' But she says, moving into the new home, with hot water, an inside toilet and views across the moors was like going to live in Buckingham Palace.
Older Dukinfield residents remember the days when the town boasted three cinemas. But in these days of multiplexes and entertainment complexes, only the single-screen at the Palace as survived. The red and white building in Market Street is something of a relic in these times when no cinema is complete without a garish display of neon and mirror glass.
Fred Travis remembers going to the pictures as a boy: 'As a child I used to go to the Princess on a Saturday afternoon. We saw a lot of cowboy things. Thre used to be a man called Brown, who was the attendant on a saturday afternoon. As the cinema was filling up he'd come down with a torch. 'Two on a seat there!' he'd shout. We'd try to avoid him. He wanted to make us double up so he could get more in, we didn't like that. The Palladium was on Crescent Road. It had a bit of a low tone, some said. I remember my boss saying to me once, 'Have you heard? They want to turn the Palladium into a swimming baths.' 'I haven't heard that' I said. 'How do you know that?' 'Well theres so much breast stroking goes on in the back row', he said.
Article taken from Cheshire Life August 2003
A Brief Encounter
Brian Howes discovers the delights of one of Britains best preseved railway buffet bars
The hectic hustle and bustle of Manchester quickly faded into the distance as my train snaked slowly out of Piccadilly station, and within minutes of my departure the ugly cityscape I had left behind had been replaced by the remote hills spanning the upper fringes of the Peak District National Park. One stop down the line lay Stalybridge, a former mill town where, at a house on Corporation Street, Jack Judge composed that popular wartime standard It's A Long way to Tipperary. Open, exposed and overlooked by bleak moorland, the station stood in eerie silence once my train had sped off into the distance, and I braced myself against the cold winter wind in a scene reminiscent of Oh, Mr. Porter, that marvellous old Will Hay classic set in a remote railway station in the middle of nowhere, where the last train had always gone and nobody seemed to know, or really care for that matter, when the next one would arrive!
Railtrack Heritage Award 1997
With little sign of life I followed signs pointing towards the station 'buffet' which, I had been faithfully informed by numerous railway buffs, was a grade two listed gem, well worthy of a long distance rail journey to discover. My initial fears of lukewarm tea stirred with the end of an old pencil and stale buns stood in cobweb-covered cabinets quickly evaporated as a couple of cast iron plaques on the outside wall informed me that this was, indeed, an establishment of considerable merit, recognised as a building of outstanding interest by Tameside Borough Council in 1994 and, more recently the worthy recipient of a prestigious Ian Allan 'National Railway Heritage Award'. Rebuilt to replace an earlier refreshment room in 1885, this cosy time-capsule is less reminiscent of a Will Hay comedy and more evocative of Brief Encounter that ever-popular British screen romance of the 1940s. High ceilings and leatherette benches, wooden chairs, exposed floorboards and a long bar counter coated in layers of thick maroon paint and topped with slabs of shiny grey marble create an atmosphere belonging to a bygone age. As trains en route to Leeds and Newcastle rumble loudly through the station, rattling the stained glass sash windows, you can imagine Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson talking quietly over cups of tea in the cosy little snug where posies of fresh flowers stand in jam jars on the tables.
  
Fresh flowers stand in jam jars on Victorian sewing machines...
the ideal place for a Brief Encounter
Reminders of Britain's rich railway heritage are plentiful. "All stations to Manchester! proclaims an old wooden board next to one of those old fashioned carriage prints showing a passenger train hauled by the locomotive Blackburn along the West Lancashire Railway. Another picture shows a train travelling along the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, while obsolete maroon enamel signs from Hazel Grove and Ashton Charlestown stations evoke memories of the post-war period of railway nationalisation.
  
The world famous "Joyce Whitchurch" station clock.
The original now stands in the National Railway Museum, York
Desperately seeking sustenance, two weary walkers emerged from the nearby towpath and ordered pints of beer and pots of black peas. "It's a popular local dish around here," said the barmaid. adding that "we used to feed them to the pigeons when we were kids."
Other local delicacies available on the menu include sausage muffins, toasted crumpets and steaming hot mugs of Vimto which, no doubt, provide a warming treat for commuters during the cold winter months. Many Locals have fond memories of the Redfern family who held office here for upwards of 20 years from the early 1970s. Dorothy Redfern was, by all accounts, quite a formidable character who stood no nonsense from the odd rowdy football supporter foolish enough to break the house rules. Dorothy's son Ken then held the reins until 1991 when, quite incredibly, it could have been the end of the line for this marvellous historic building following plans by British Rail to turn it into a trendy wine bar. However a 15,000-signature petition organised by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, saved the day and made sure that Britain held on to one of the best-remaining examples of what is now an enlarged species across the rail network. Support for the petition came from far and wide, with signature from far and wide, with signatures from distant well-wishers and protesters living in all areas of Britain. Sadly, my brief encounter with this atmospheric time-warp, noted for its folk music sessions every Saturday evening, came to an end all too soon as I crossed the line to board a Manchester-bound train and begin my long homeward journey. I felt happy however, that safe in the careful hands of licensee John Hesketh, the unique Station Buffet at Stalybridge looks to have a healthy future and will hopefully continue to offer good old-fashioned hospitality to rail travellers in the North of England for many years to come.
Best of British January 2000 |
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