Alderley Edge Railway Station

For as long as I can remember, Alderley Edge station has seemed very much abandoned & in disrepair, OK northern rail have re-painted the boarded up walls purple & re-supfaced the floor on the bridge. But the station needs more than that!

The bridge is made of concrete & looks terrible! The ticket office is not the nicest, its very bear with not much of a view of the railway. Disabled access seems to be another problem. Other than going over the road bridge & crossing the road twice, there is no other way of getting from platform to platform without leaving the station.

The railway station is the first thing many people see when coming to Alderley, and its not exactly representive of Alderley at all. The stations needs to be brought into the 20th century & heavily re-furbished in my opinion. I’m sure many others too think the same.

So what are peoples’ opinion on this?

Well George, bringing it into the 20th century would be good….we could have old steam trains from the 40’s & 50’s running through & maybe a payphone that took threpenny bits & sixpences? Personally I believe bringing it into the 21st century would be far more benificial though. I agree about the concrete bridge. Maybe this could be replaced by a giant rollercoaster with wheelchair clip-on access so disabled folk could enjoy getting from one platform to the other as well?

The Parish Plan group considered a range of improvements that could be made, including improvements to platforms, provision of cycle stands etc; however, none of these have yet been implemented.  I have recently become aware that Northern Rail are reviewing the viability of retaining Alderley Edge as a staffed station and was alarmed to discover that whenever I purchase a train ticket online, or on the train, the revenue is not credited against the actual station of departure.  As more and more people book tickets online these days, this effectively serves to make staffed stations such as Alderley Edge, seem unviable.

We travelled from Alderley Edge station to Manchester yesterday, the first time for about 30 years.  It’s true that the station is rather shabby, but the staff were very helpful and full of good advice.  However, they agreed that there was no easy way to access the platform for trains to Manchester if you are disabled.

The walkway bridge is impossible and the road bridge has a whole raft of problems to contend with.  Firstly, it’s a long walk from the car park, over the road bridge and round to the far platform, secondly, to walk via the road bridge, reaching the pavement requires one to cross busy London Road twice at a point where the view is obscured by the ‘hill’ in the road - or walk in the road and risk annihilation by speeding traffic, thirdly, if you should need to negotiate all of this with a wheelchair, the situation is further complicated by kerbs.

I’ve only started to think about disabled access relatively recently, when a member of my own family acquired a disability.  Given the massive support given to Paralympian athletes, perhaps we might extend the admiration we expressed for them to other disabled people who live with us.  Some of their lives require every bit as much determination and effort as the incredible Paralympians themselves, and they should not be disadvantaged!  There is an enormous amount of disability legislation and I’m pretty sure that some of it relates to access to public buildings, such as railway stations.

So, Northern Rail, give this some thought please.