[gynn]

Thanks to Atarah and Shillelagh for the pictures on this thread. Very interesting.

I spent many hours on Accrington Station in the 1990s waiting for the Preston bound express. It was always due a few minutes before the slow stopping train from Colne, and if it was running more than 5 or 10 minutes late, the train from Colne came in first. It was always a dilemma whether to let the slow through and wait hopefully for the express, or to jump on the slow train to await the express at Blackburn. In the absence of any form of announcements at Accy, the best option was always to get the slow train to Blackburn, where the information boards would indicate how late the express was running.

At Blackburn, if you were lucky, there was enough time to get off the slow train and change platforms via the underpass in time to meet the express coming in behind. On many occasions, the express was only just behind the slow train, and it became a race for time to reach the platform before the express left, and it was often a race that was lost, and the express came in an out of Blackburn in super quick time.

It was something that went on for the 14 years I was doing the journey, and it never ceased to amaze me that the staff at a station like Blackburn, which only has about 4 trains an hour, never ever cottoned on to the fact that, if the slow train came in just before the express, there was likely to be a stream of passengers in transit between platforms. They seemed to take a mordid delight in getting the express away as quickly as possible!

Happy Days, long since behind me!