Station to Station

A list of wonderful, but long departed, terminus stations that I have visited comes to mind - Liverpool Central High Level, Liverpool Exchange, Bath Green Park, Birkenhead Woodside, Leeds Central and Manchester Central amongst them.

There is a sadness associated with the loss of railway edifices like these. Each one had its own atmosphere. I wish I had savoured them more and sat for longer to take in their sights, sounds and smells. I was too fidgety to sit anywhere for long. It would have been more of a quick prowl around and then off to the next venue.

Liverpool Central HL was where I was offered one of my rare cab rides – in an ex-LMS tank up the tunnel to Brunswick and back. My most striking memories of Liverpool Exchange are of Patriot Class No. 45512 Bunsen at the buffer stops and Clan Class No. 72000 Clan Buchanan at the other end of the station, at the head of an express to Glasgow Central in the summer of 1960.

I only ever spent about an hour in total at Leeds Central station. It was not enough. I don’t even know for sure exactly when I was there, as my notes do not give it away conclusively. Possibly, it was a day loosely described as Leeds and York in my notes and dated 7/3/64.

What I do know is that by the time I got there the Deltics had beaten me to it. I liked Deltics. Their impressive overall size and their high-set front windows and enormous snub noses gave them a certain authority, emphasised by a noisy, dirty, near-vertical exhaust when preparing for take-off. They certainly boomed out their presence under an overall roof.

D9008 at York, 6/6/63.

I returned to Bath Green Park more recently and enjoyed a lager in the bistro which occupies the main part of the old station building. I told the girl serving at the bar that I had last been there forty-six years previously and she feigned polite interest. My wife and daughter motioned me outside to the tables spread out on the concourse before I bored her any longer, and so I shared my reminiscences with them instead. They were rather drowned out, however, by the continuous clatter from the resident skate boarders. It is gratifying to find that at least some of these old cathedrals of steam have been saved and allocated new uses, Green Park serving as a regular market site in the daytime. The Manchester Central Convention Complex also survives, of course, opposite the excellent Midland Hotel, where Rolls first met Royce.