After recently moving into the area my wife and I took the opportunity to travel to Manchester by train from Alderley Station. Initially impressed with the £3 parking for the day and a £1 refund on our tickets, but as soon as we walked through the gate onto the station we were appalled that Cheshire's premier village has a station that looked like a slum.
Peeling paintwork, weeds everywhere including on the bridge, overgrown and unkept flower tubs, litter. The list can go on.... What's happening at our station, do we need to ask Network Rail, is it being left to fall down, close and decommission the line or what?
Would love the new local councillors to continue their flower tubs effort on the high street, down onto the station concourse and the station itself.
Can they put pressure on the relevant people to tidy the place up and maintain it?
I'm sure other Cheshire villages take a little pride in their main transport connection and volunteer to look after their own stations (Chelford) and I think their must be a "Best kept station award" somewhere we could motivate the village to win
The village doesn't appear to be short of a few bob, so when the visitors to our shops, bars and restaurants roll off the trains at the weekends, let's ask them to contribute to try and do something about giving them a fantastic first impression of Alderley Edge.
Comments
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I certainly agree that the station gives an appalling first impression of our so-called wealthy village
But a friends of the station could make a difference like at handsforth.
I pay £1800 a year to travel via the train to Manchester, it's a shocking service for the money but I'd rather have a nice station to wait on.
Any one interested in forming a friends of Alderley edge station ?
0-8-0 SuperD shunting in the goods yard. Happy days.
Rather than "apprehending" people like me who once received a "pardon" for not paying a fare to Poynton.
Northern Rail loses huge sums from local people who simply haven't any way to pay these incompetent business people.
And by the way - a few friend and I reckon we could sort out the station appearance over a weekend - for a fee...
http://bit.ly/1VwLrQk
http://bit.ly/1EBK9iK
Look no further than Handforth to see what can be achieved.
Watch this space ! A few people are interested in forming a group to improve the station.
That way train conductors and station staff at the destination could avoid robotically trotting out "you need to be buying a ticket before you board the train", and I could avoid my smiley but sarcastic retort "well you need to open up your ticket office up occasionally or install a ticket machine then don't you [name on name badge]"