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Recent travel miscellany

June 19, 2025 by Neil Turner

Disembarking a Jet2 aeroplane at Athens Airport

This is the fifth and final blog post about my trip to Athens – bearing in mind that my trip was only for three and a half days. This is where I want to write about everything else that happened whilst not in Athens – i.e. the journey there and back. Here are the links to part one, part two, part three and part four.

Ibis Budget hotel at Manchester Airport

As I mentioned last Monday, my flight was a 6:30am departure from Manchester on a Sunday morning. With this in mind, I booked myself a room in the Ibis Budget hotel at the airport, and then got a train over on the Saturday night.

Now, if you’re staying in a hotel with the word ‘budget’ in its name, you need to manage your expectations. The rooms are small – there’s space for a double bed, but no bedside tables. There’s a small and narrow desk, a blind instead of curtains, and quite a thin mattress. But as I only needed the room for about seven hours, it was fine. There was free Wi-Fi, and most importantly it was in very easy walking distance of Terminal 2, where I needed to be for my flight. I didn’t want to stay somewhere that required a shuttle bus transfer which may or may not turn up at stupid o’clock in the morning. And the room was significantly cheaper than almost all other hotels at the airport.

A photo of the inside of Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport

Manchester Airport at 5am on a Sunday

Speaking of an early start, you would not know that it was only 5am on a Sunday once you were through security and in to the duty free bit before the gates. It was like the Trafford Centre on a Saturday afternoon – all the shops were open, all the lights were on, and it was heaving. There was a lack of seating, although Terminal 2 is being renovated at present which may explain the lack of capacity.

Judging by the airlines and destinations, it was mostly package holiday flights taking advantage of off-peak slots.

Flying with Jet2

Indeed, my flight to Athens was with Jet2. Jet2’s selling point is that they’re a budget airline, but they’re not as stingy as some of their rivals *cough* Ryanair *cough*. You’re allowed one standard cabin bag, and one small bag as standard, although you can pay extra to ‘guarantee’ space for your cabin bag in the overhead locker. My carry-on case was quite a bit smaller than the maximum permitted size and so I didn’t bother, and indeed had no issues with space. As with my trip to Dublin, I only took carry-on luggage with me.

If you want a meal on the flight, you have to pre-order it when checking in online. It is, of course, extortionately expensive for what it is, but the food was fine and rather welcome considering my early start. If you don’t pre-order food, the cabin crew may be able to offer any food that is left over after the pre-orders have been given out.

On more than one occasion, staff wished me a good holiday. I didn’t have the heart to tell them I was travelling for work.

Flying with KLM

My flights back were with KLM, the Dutch flag carrier, and so this meant a connection at Amsterdam. I honestly expected more from KLM – after all, Jet2 is a budget airline and so I didn’t expect any niceties like in-flight entertainment or Wi-Fi. But I didn’t have those with KLM either, and both planes were also a bit shabbier and care-warn than Jet2’s plane. They were all variants of Boeing 737 planes, if you’re interested.

KLM did include a ‘snack’ on each flight though. From Athens to Amsterdam, we were all offered a Beemster cheese sandwich with a honey and mustard dressing, which was actually quite nice, and a small piece of cake. Drinks were also offered. Meanwhile, for the much shorter flight from Amsterdam to Manchester, we just got a packet of Mini Cheddars and a more limited range of drinks.

My flight back to Manchester also appeared to be a late aircraft swap. When I checked in at the gate, I was given a new boarding pass with a different seat number, having been moved from row 29 to row 22. Indeed, there was no row 29 on this plane. Amsterdam Schiphol Airport is KLM’s hub, and so they must’ve decided to swap the planes as the flight was under-booked.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

After Dubai, Schiphol is the second busiest airport that I’ve been to. My brief layover there on Tuesday is, to date, the only time I have been in the Netherlands, and I don’t think it really counts as I spent my entire time ‘airside’. Unlike other big airports, Schiphol has just one massive terminal, arranged in a horseshoe shape. Thankfully, my arrival and departure gates were relatively close to each other and so I didn’t have to walk too far. Like in Athens, there were lots of food and shopping brands familiar to Brits. Although, unlike 5am in Manchester, by the time I got to Amsterdam at close to 9pm local time, many of the places to eat were closed. I ended up spending €10 on a WHSmith meal deal for some sustenance.

Getting home

I think some colleagues at the summit were a little concerned that my journey home to Sowerby Bridge consisted of two flights and then three trains. As it was, both flights were only delayed very slightly, and all my trains were on time – a relief as I had to change at both Manchester Oxford Road and Victoria, and the connections were both around five minutes. Not only that, but my train from Victoria to Sowerby Bridge was the last train of the night, so I was very relieved to make that connection.

Recent days out

March 6, 2026January 22, 2024 by Neil Turner

A model of an armoured elephant at the Royal Armouries museum in Leeds

Although it’s currently the bleak midwinter – and I mean bleak, with sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures last week and Storm Isha this week – we have managed a few days out. Some of these were in the first week of the year, as our eight-year-old didn’t go back to the school until the following week.

Here’s where we’ve been:

Manchester Science & Industry Museum

A photo of Stephen Hawking's wheelchair, currently on display at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester

The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester is somewhere that we typically end up at least once a year. This time was mainly for the Food, Poo and You exhibition, which features content from the presenters of Operation Ouch (including Dr Chris, writer of Ultra-Processed People). It didn’t take much convincing our eight-year-old to go to an exhibition about poo, and it’s well presented. Just be aware that, whilst the rest of the museum is free, this is a paid-for exhibition and you’re advised to pre-book. My wife happened to be working that day and so I expect we’ll be going back before it finishes in June, after which it’ll probably go to the Science Museum in London.

Also there at the moment is Prof Stephen Hawking’s wheelchair. I was naturally more excited about this than our eight-year-old was.

What isn’t at the museum at the moment is, well, about three quarters of the museum. It’s just what’s available in the ‘New Warehouse’; a huge restoration programme means that the other buildings are closed. The Power Hall should be open again next year if all goes well.

Eureka

Considering how often I pass Eureka, and the fact that we have a young child, it’s perhaps surprising that it’s been almost seven years since my last visit. And like that time, it was partly due to some Tesco Clubcard vouchers expiring. The museum hasn’t changed much in that time; the main difference was that the car garage is now a community area with a bus and a smaller electric car exhibit.

It’s still a good museum for half a day, and at eight years old our child isn’t too old for it. There’s a new Eureka, focussing more on science for slightly older kids, in Wirral which we need to visit at some point.

Royal Armouries, Leeds

A disarmed AK-47 rifle that has been covered in sprinkles and Love Hearts sweets

The last time we went to the Royal Armouries was for Thought Bubble, back in 2016. Museums about war and armour aren’t really my thing, but our eight-year-old had read a library book about them recently and so it was an opportunity to see some of those things in real life.

The Reloaded exhibition is interesting, as it looked at guns as gifts and objects of desire. There were also a couple of commissioned art pieces, such as an AK-47 covered with sprinkles and Love Hearts. It’s always fun to see the elephant armour too.

We have a few more busy weekends coming up, so I doubt we’ll be going anywhere else for a few weeks.

Manchester Airport Runway Visitor Park

December 29, 2024July 14, 2017 by Neil Turner

Planespotters can be viewed in several ways. I think most people would bracket them with trainspotters and busspotters – eccentric, but harmless.

Greece, not so much – in 2001, a group of planespotters were arrested for spying. Ultimately, they were acquitted.

Manchester Airport, however, saw planespotting as a way of making money. So the airport’s Runway Visitor Park isn’t just a handy viewpoint for the runway – it’s a fully-fledged visitor attraction. We called on the way back from Quarry Bank Mill; I’d seen it signposted and figured it would be a good opportunity to snap a few shots of planes.

As you’d expect, there are three raised platforms to watch the planes from, one of which has a ramp. But there’s so much more; plenty of picnic tables, a café and bar, and a children’s funfair is open on summer weekends. Plus, there are several disused aircraft that you can book tours to see, including Concorde, and a shop that sells plenty of model planes.

One of the aircraft, an AVRO RJX (I’m not a plane geek, so this means nothing to me) is open all of the time; it’s a small aircraft that was used briefly for testing and only flew for a couple of years before being retired. The others are by guided tour only; I was only dropping in for a quick visit and so I didn’t book on for one this time. I’d definitely like to take a look around Concorde some time, as I never got to go on one when they were in service.

The park is surprisingly close to one of the taxiways, so it’s perfect for photography. A handful of people with big lens cameras were there, but I think most people had come to spend a sunny afternoon there. The food from the café looked rather expensive and uninspiring, but, as long as it’s a nice day, there’s nothing stopping you from bringing your own food and eating it outside. Just don’t feed the birds.

Entry to the site is free, although it costs money to park. It’s £5 for two hours, £10 for 2-4 hours, and £12 all day, making it relatively cheap for a car full of people. It’s served by a local bus service, and if you arrive by bus, on foot or by bike, there’s no parking charge. Be aware that on sunny days, like last Sunday, the car park may be full. And, being so close to Manchester Airport, security is high as you would expect – there lots of CCTV cameras everywhere.

I commend Manchester Airport for having such a good place to watch planes. I’d like to say our toddler enjoyed it too, but they were actually asleep the whole time. I expect we’ll be back – they’ll enjoy the funfair, and I might get the chance to look inside one of the bigger planes.

Making Victoria Posh

December 29, 2024July 6, 2015 by Neil Turner

Manchester Victoria station has had a rather large makeover. It’s not the dark, dreary place that it once was, and now sports a new roof that lets in far more light. And not before time, too.

One of the worst

Back in 2009, Victoria was named as one of the worst railway stations in Britain. The roof over platforms 1 and 2 and the Metrolink platforms was in a poor state of repair, following damage sustained in the 1996 IRA bomb attack that was never fixed. It leaked, and was partially covered in tarpaulins which made the station seem dark. To prevent fare evasion, ticket inspectors had erected temporary barriers around the platforms with confusing one way systems. Platforms 3-6 were now underneath the Manchester Arena, and were poorly-lit with a confusing layout for the footbridge.

It wasn’t a very inviting station to spend any time in, especially at night.

Management

To understand why the situation at Victoria got so bad, it may be worth looking at the management of the station over the years.

When the railways were privatised in the 1990s, the running of most smaller and medium sized stations was taken over by the largest train operating company (TOC) that called there. Control of major stations was passed to Railtrack, and then Network Rail when Railtrack went bust in 2002. Many of these major stations underwent major regeneration work, which usually involved massive expansion of retail space to bring in more rental income.

Manchester Piccadilly is the biggest station in Manchester and so Railtrack managed it, but management of Victoria has always been with a train operating company: since 2004, this has been Northern Rail. Northern Rail’s franchise was let on a ‘no growth’ basis and so very little investment has been made in either trains or infrastructure, despite Victoria being a major hub for Northern Rail.

Capacity

Victoria was once a much bigger station than Piccadilly, with 17 platforms at its peak. But in the early 1990s, the decision was made to re-route most trans-pennine services away from Victoria to Piccadilly, which is on the West Coast Main Line. Previously, passengers travelling from, say, Leeds to Stoke would have to take a short shuttle service between Stalybridge and Stockport – now they could simply make one change at Manchester Piccadilly. This shuttle still runs, albeit only once a week.

Victoria was subsequently downsized to 6 rail platforms, and 2 platforms for the then new Manchester Metrolink tram system. The now disused platforms on the north side of the station were demolished and the land sold off to build the Manchester Arena which sits above part of the station.

At the time, re-routing services to Piccadilly made sense, as the railways were in a period of managed decline. But following privatisation, passenger numbers have rocketed to record levels, and now capacity at Piccadilly is becoming an issue. Those trans-pennine services have to cross the paths of mainline trains from London on flat junctions, which limits the number of trains that can depart and arrive from Piccadilly station. And of Piccadilly’s 14 platforms, 12 of them are bay, or terminating platforms. Any train that needs to pass through Manchester has to use the two through platforms, numbered 13 and 14, which are now full to capacity. Work is planned to add an additional two through platforms, but in the meantime there can’t be any additional services that cross Manchester city centre via Piccadilly.

The Northern Hub

The Northern Hub project is a Network Rail initiative to improve rail capacity in the north of England, and it’s focussed on Manchester. Part of this will involve a new section of track, called the Ordsall Chord, which will allow trains to leave Victoria going west, and then loop around to Piccadilly. At the moment, most trains that call at Victoria terminate there, even though 4 of its 6 rail platforms are through platforms, which is a poor use of capacity. Upgrades at stations such as Rochdale and Stalybridge will allow trains that currently terminate at Victoria to continue, in turn allowing more trains to stop there. Last year, a new direct Liverpool to Newcastle service started calling at Victoria, and this is likely to be the first of several new long-distance services that will call at Victoria, rather than Piccadilly.

Making Victoria Posh

Eventually, money was found to refurbish Victoria and bring it up to the same sort of standard of other major stations. The old roof is gone, and has been replaced with a new ETFE roof. New flooring has been lain on the concourse, automatic ticket barriers have been installed, and a new footbridge has been erected to improve access to the Manchester Arena. New shop units have been opened and the existing ones refurbished – the old first class refreshment room is now a Starbucks, but retains its original tiled interior.

Meanwhile the Metrolink platforms have also been rebuilt, and expanded from two to four, albeit with only three tracks. Some trams will call at both platforms B and C – they’re lettered to avoid confusion with the rail platforms.

Together, these projects have been branded as ‘Making Victoria Posh’ a pun presumably inspired by Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham.

A separate project has seen the lines coming into Victoria from the west electrified for the first time. This means that electric trains can run from Victoria to Liverpool Lime Street – these services started earlier this year. Eventually electrification will extended eastwards towards Stalybridge.

The works still aren’t quite complete – there’s a little bit left to do, and only a couple of the retail units are occupied (both of which are coffee shops). But the station already looks so much better than before. No longer will it be an embarrassment to the city.

Combining travel discounts

April 27, 2025June 19, 2015 by Neil Turner

Tomorrow we’re off to the Trafford Centre to buy a washing machine. You may wonder why we’re travelling all the way to the far side of Manchester for something that we could buy more easily locally. As it happens, we have loads of John Lewis gift vouchers left over from our wedding, plus some more from completing online surveys from Valued Opinions and Ipsos i-Say, so in all it’ll work out cheaper. And we’ll be making a day of it.

Because we don’t drive, we’ll be taking public transport – a train to Manchester, and then a bus, as the trams haven’t made it that far yet. In all, this would normally cost around £30 – £21 for return train tickets and around £8-10 for the bus tickets. But, by combining discounts, we got the lot for £12. Here’s how:

Two Together Railcard

Because Christine and I travel together by train a lot, we have a Two Together railcard, which means we get a third off almost all train fares provided we buy the tickets at the same time and travel together. It costs £30 a year, although there are plenty of discount codes bringing it down to £27, and you can exchange Tesco Clubcard vouchers for one as well.

It’s one of the newer railcards, having been launched last year, and we’re on our second card. We got our money’s worth on one journey alone, when we went to Nottingham, and use it regularly.

Advance purchase tickets

Northern Rail, who operate the trains between us and Manchester, have only recently introduced discounted advanced purchase tickets on some routes. If bought before 6pm the previous day, you can get a significant discount on the cost of tickets versus buying them on the day. By buying advanced purchase tickets with our railcard, we got the price of our train travel down from £21 to £8 – not bad.

Plusbus

Plusbus is a not particularly well-known add-on for train tickets, that allows you to purchase discounted bus travel at your destination. You buy it as part as of the same transaction as your train tickets, and it essentially gives you unlimited bus travel at your destination for one day, on participating routes and operators.

I’ll be honest – this weekend will be the first time we’ll be using it, and I’m still not 100% convinced that it will be accepted on the buses that run between Manchester city centre and the Trafford Centre. But, it only cost an additional £2 per ticket, thanks to a special offer that is only running this month, so if it doesn’t then we’re only out of pocket by £4.

Additional discounts

We bought the tickets online at First Transpennine Express, even though we won’t actually be travelling with them at all. I chose them for three reasons:

They offer Nectar points at a rate of 2 points for every pound spent on train travel, so I earned 16 points for the £8 spent on the train tickets. I can then use these points for money off cinema tickets or shopping, for example.
They offer cashback via Quidco (referral link) – it’s only 1%, but that effectively saves a further 12p off the cost.
There are no additional booking, card or postage fees – you just pay for travel.

Disadvantages

The only downside to choosing an advanced purchase ticket is that it restricts us to travelling on certain trains. If we miss these trains, or want to vary our travel plans, then the tickets will no longer be valid and we’d need to buy new ones, probably at full price. Buying on the day costs more, but at least the tickets are fully flexible.

Normally one advantage of buying an advanced purchase ticket is that you also get a confirmed seat reservation as well. Northern Rail don’t offer seat reservations (despite running some long distance services) so the only real advantage of buying tickets in advance is the lower cost. Other operators do include seat reservations, so you could have two passengers: one who paid, say, £12 and got a guaranteed seat, and another who paid £80 on the day and who may have to stand.

And finally, before you ask – we’ll be having the washing machine delivered. I don’t think we’d get it home on public transport.

Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

December 23, 2024March 10, 2014 by Neil Turner

On Saturday, whilst Christine was working, I took myself off to the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester. I’ve been meaning to go for a while, but the recent opening of Queens Road Metrolink station nearby has made it somewhat easier to get to. Although railway engineering works, and the temporary closure of the Metrolink platforms at Victoria station, meant that it was still something of a trek taking a couple of hours each way from Sowerby Bridge. Normally, it’d take around an hour.

Anyway, the museum. It’s in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester, to the north of the city centre, and is housed in the back of what was the Queens Road tramshed for Manchester Corportation Tramways – now used by First buses as a bus depot. It’s home to a wide variety of buses that operated in or are linked with Greater Manchester, plus a few other bits and bobs. But mostly buses – other forms of transport were not very well represented.

There are three trams, only one of which is complete (a horse tram). Of the others, one is Metrolink 1000, a half-tram mock-up of what would become the production T68 tram series. The T68s have only recently been retired from revenue service in Manchester and I imagine that a production model may enter the collection when one is preserved. The other bit of tram is the lower passenger compartment of what was originally a double decker tram, in the process of being restored.

There are also re-created transport offices, as well as an extensive collection of bus tickets, roller blinds and old signs. But, buses form the main attraction here.

On the whole I found it interesting but it’s not as good as other transport museums – particularly the excellent London Transport Museum. You definitely need to be more of a transport geek to enjoy it, and I’m sure Christine would have been bored stiff by it had I dragged her along. (I very nearly did last summer, but we ended up going bra shopping instead.)

The museum is open three days a week – Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, or all week in August. Entry is only £4 for adults, and free for accompanied under-16s, which is good value for a museum that can keep your average transport geek occupied for a couple of hours.

Photos from my visit are available on Flickr.

Manchester Beer Festival 2014

December 23, 2024January 27, 2014 by Neil Turner

On Saturday we went to the Manchester Beer & Cider Festival, one of the largest beer festivals in the UK. It took place at the Manchester Velodrome, which is part of the National Cycling Centre and was a major venue for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

The beer festival was the largest I’ve been to. Admittedly I haven’t been to many beer festivals, but with 300 beers and 75 ciders and perries (pear ciders), this was an order of magnitude bigger than anything I’d seen before.

Except, we went on Saturday, which was the last day – the festival ran over four days. The previous three days had been ‘unexpectedly popular’ and so by the time we arrived, around three quarters of the beers had been drunk and were sold out. Still, with 70-odd beers to try, there was still much to drink. At least until 3:30pm, by which point all of the beer had been consumed, leaving just a handful of ciders and perries to try in the half hour before time was called at 4pm – three hours earlier than planned.

Still, it was a really good day out, and it was good to visit the Velodrome, which will be 20 years old this year. Admittedly it wasn’t the best venue for a beer festival – the main festival floor with the bars was in the centre of the track, and most of the seating was around the edges of the track. To get between the two, you were required to descend three flights of stairs, pass through a subway and then ascend another flight of stairs. But it offered some great panoramic photo opportunities, as shown above.

I think it will be a while before I visit such a big beer festival again. The ‘big daddy’ of beer festivals is The Great British Beer Festival at Olympia in London, which usually coincides with a very busy period at work, although it’s earlier this year so perhaps not.

We also popped in to The Moon Under Water pub in Manchester, a Wetherspoons pub which holds the Guinness World Record for being Britain’s’ biggest pub (and rumoured to be the biggest in Europe). It can hold 1700 people and is even important enough to have its own Wikipedia article, which explains the origin of its name.

Metrolink to the Trafford Centre

April 27, 2025January 21, 2013 by Neil Turner

Greater Manchester’s Metrolink network is undergoing a period of expansion at present. Last summer I wrote about the new line to Oldham, which has now been extended a little further to Shaw and Compton, and the new line between Piccadilly and Droylsden is due to open imminently. Further extensions will see it reaching Rochdale, Ashton under Lyne, Wythenshawe and Manchester Airport over the next 3-4 years. But one key destination that’s missing from that list is the Trafford Centre.

A bit of history

The Trafford Centre is one of Britain’s largest shopping centres; indeed, it is third largest by floor area. Its lavish mock baroque design was intended to attract more upmarket brands, such as Selfridges and John Lewis, who have large anchor stores there. Its location in south-west Manchester means that it is easily reached from Cheshire, a largely affluent county which is home to, amongst others, a number of millionaire footballers who play for teams like Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool.

Consequently the centre provides ample car parking and is located just off the M60 motorway. This is essentially Manchester and Salford’s outer ring road and connects with all of the major roads going into the city, so getting there by car is quite easy.

However, if you’re not a car driver, and need to use public transport, then buses are your only option. There is a bus station with 16 stands at the Trafford Centre. But it’s almost an afterthought – it’s located at the far end of the site, accessible via one of the car parks. It’s rather open to the elements with just one canopy providing some shelter for the rain.

No railway station

Unlike other big shopping centres, like Meadowhall in Sheffield and the MetroCentre in Gateshead, a railway station was not built at the same time. In fairness, those two shopping centres already had railway lines nearby – the Trafford Centre does not, so any requirement to build a station would also require a new railway line at a considerable extra expense. A light rail link, however, would have been cheaper. When the Trafford Centre opened in 1998, Manchester Metrolink had been running for six years, with construction already underway on the second phase to Eccles.

So why wasn’t a Metrolink line included in the building project? The simple answer is that the plans to build the Trafford Centre pre-date Metrolink. The original planning application was submitted way back in 1988 – a full 12 years before the Trafford Centre opened, and indeed 8 years before construction began in 1996. The 8 year delay was due two public enquiries, a rejection of the planning permission by the Court of Appeal in 1993 and eventual intervention by the House of Lords.

By comparison, work to build Metrolink only started in 1988, and it would have been premature to require the construction of a tram line for a system that didn’t exist at the time. And considering the battle that the developers faced in getting it approved, I doubt that they would have been receptive to demands to change the planning permission to include such a line. So, in summary, the developers of the Trafford Centre, Peel Holdings, were under no obligation to provide a Metrolink station.

Section 106

The Trafford Centre expanded in 2006, after Peel Holdings were granted planning permission in 2005 to build Barton Square. This could have been an opportunity to force the developers to build a tram line, using a ‘Section 106′ agreement. Section 106 refers to a section of Town and Country Planning Act 1990 which allows local authorities to include extra conditions when granting planning permission, usually to insist on associated infrastructure improvements. For whatever reason, this never happened; the only transport-related improvements that Barton Square brought was yet another car park.

Essentially, plans to build a new Metrolink line to the Trafford Centre were at an impasse. The local authorities, represented by Transport for Greater Manchester, were keen for private sector funding for the new line. And the private sector owners of the Trafford Centre weren’t particularly willing to pay for it; after all, they’re a more upmarket shopping centre aimed at affluent people who can drive. So the plans were essentially shelved and have not formed part of Metrolink’s recent expansion plans.

The situation today

This leaves the present situation where the quickest way to get to the Trafford Centre from central Manchester is actually by bus, using the X50 service from Manchester Piccadilly station. This, however, takes around half an hour, and costs £3.90 return. Alternatively, it is possible to get a tram to Stretford Metrolink station, and then catch a connecting shuttle bus (the ML1) to the Trafford Centre. The trams also serve Victoria station, but it’s slower, requires a change of mode at Stretford and is more expensive at £4.40 for a return ticket.

Stretford isn’t even the closest Metrolink station to the Trafford Centre – it’s around 2.5 miles away. The nearest tram station is actually Eccles, which is a little under 2 miles away. But it’s at the very end of a line which takes a rather slow and circuitous route around Salford Quays and therefore not ideal. Trafford Park station, on one of the national railway lines between Manchester and Liverpool, is also a little under two miles away. But with trains every two hours and no Sunday service it doesn’t compare favourably with Stretford’s 10 trams per hour from Manchester. For now, at least, the X50 and the shuttle bus service from Stretford probably provide the best compromise.

A future Metrolink station?

There may, however, be some hope in the future. In 2011, Peel Holdings sold the Trafford Centre to Capital Shopping Centres (CSC), who own many other shopping centres in the UK, including the MetroCentre and the large Lakeside centre in Kent.

As an aside, CSC is rebranding as ‘intu’, which will see all of its properties gain the ‘intu’ prefix, so later this year the centre will become the ‘intu Trafford Centre’. Personally I doubt anyone will use its new name in casual conversation.

Perhaps the Trafford Centre’s new owners may be more amenable to part-funding a new Metrolink line. Although the plans are on hold, it is still a long-term aim of Transport for Greater Manchester to get trams running out there. We shall have to see what the future holds.

Update: In June 2013, it was announced that funding should be available for the extension to the Trafford Centre to be built. It’s currently in the planning stage and you can view the route on Transport for Greater Manchester’s web site. It is likely to be at least 2018 before the line is open, however.

People’s History Museum

August 26, 2024January 6, 2013 by Neil Turner

Today we took the time to visit the People’s History Museum in Manchester. I actually hadn’t heard of it until yesterday, when we were looking for something to do as a couple having spent all of yesterday playing games (me, World of Warcraft; Christine, Guild Wars) and not really spending much quality time together.

The museum has been around since 1990, and was originally called the National Museum of Labour History. Indeed, there is a large focus on the history of workers’ rights, the rise of trade unions and the foundations of the Parliamentary Labour Party. That being said, it covers a wide range of subjects, especially the history of democracy in the UK. And Manchester is an ideal place for it, as it was the scene of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, and the historic home of the Co-operative movement is nearby in Rochdale.

It sits in two buildings: the first is a modern extension, opened in 2010 and housing the main body of the museum. The other is the older Pump House building which was one of the three pump houses for Manchester’s Hydraulic Power system, for which there is an exhibition at MOSI about it. The Pump House holds the two temporary exhibition spaces, and when we visited there was a photography exhibition about the Oldham Road, and a special exhibition about the Temperance movement – again, a political ideology with strong northern roots. Pleasingly, the museum’s café stocks a range of temperance drinks, albeit alongside beer.

I found it really interesting, although it does have a rather left-wing political agenda. To me that’s not a bad thing but I could imagine some Tories feeling uncomfortable there. I actually learned a surprising amount of things that I wish I’d been taught at school, about this country’s history.

The museum is free to enter (donations welcomed) and is open most days of the year, although I’d advise against visiting next week as one of the permanent galleries is closed to rotate some of the exhibits. For once, I’ve already uploaded the photos to Flickr, as well as others that I took elsewhere in Manchester today.

Manchester Metrolink reaches Oldham

April 27, 2025June 18, 2012 by Neil Turner

I’m going to engage my public transport geek mode once again and talk a bit about the latest extension to Manchester’s Metrolink tram network.

Firstly, a bit of history. Metrolink first opened in 1992 and took over operation of two formerly ‘heavy rail’ (regular train service) lines, combined with track through Manchester city centre. Manchester has two main railway stations in the city centre – Piccadilly and Victoria – and the tram service allowed these stations to be linked together.

Of the two heavy rail lines converted, one was the line from Manchester Victoria to Bury; this used electric trains built in the 1960s and non-standard electrification equipment that wasn’t used anywhere else in the UK. Furthermore, this equipment, and the trains, were life-expired, so this was a good opportunity to upgrade to newer equipment. The trams could use the same track, but instead run from overhead electric cables.

The other line went south of Manchester towards Altrincham. This line had a lot of stations over a relatively short line, so using heavy rail trains wasn’t particularly efficient, so putting trams on this route made sense, on the whole. That said, not all trains called at all stations and this lead to some of the faster services being diverted through to Stockport, which now has capacity problems. This is because, unlike on other light rail networks such as the Tyne & Wear Metro in the north east where trains and light rail vehicles share tracks in places, Metrolink is kept separate from the National Rail network.

So that was the first phase. Its success spawned a second phase – a new line to Eccles, opened in 2000. This didn’t follow any existing railway lines, and served Salford Quays which has seen a lot of regeneration recently.

Getting the third phase – known as ‘The Big Bang’ due to it almost doubling the size of the network – built has been more of a challenge, due to money. It was denied central government funding in 2004, and so was split into two small phases – 3a and 3b – with work eventually starting in 2009. The first bit to be completed was a short 360 metre spur from the Eccles line to the new MediaCityUK complex in Salford which also better serves The Lowry and the Imperial War Museum North, and last year the first phase of the South Manchester Line opened to Chorlton-cum-Hardy – eventually, this will reach Manchester Airport. Although the South Manchester Line does follow the route of an old railway line, it was one that closed many years ago, as opposed to an existing line that was converted as with the lines to Bury and Altrincham.

The next bit to open was the line to Oldham, which I alluded to in the title of this post, and it is this particular line that I’m going to focus on. Like with the Bury and Altrincham routes, this follows an existing railway line that was converted – in this case, the Oldham Loop Line, which ran from Manchester Victoria to Rochdale where it met the Caldervale Line and looped back to Manchester. (I wrote about the Caldervale Line a couple of years ago – this is now the line I use to go to work every day, although not this particular bit)

The railway line closed in October 2009, and so it has been almost three years since Oldham had any public transport other than buses serving it. Opening last week, trams leave from a temporary station at the site of Oldham Mumps railway station, and head towards Manchester Victoria – they’ll then head through Manchester city centre and onwards to Chorlton-cum-Hardy. When the project is complete, trams will also serve Rochdale, new stations in Oldham town centre and continue through to Manchester Airport.

Trams will run roughly every 12 minutes – or five each hour – initially, but will increase to ten per hour (a tram every six minutes) in a few years time, once a second line through Manchester city centre has been built. This compares favourably with the old heavy rail train service, which ran four times an hour (but two of those only called at key stations), and once complete it will serve more destinations – there will be direct links to Deansgate railway station and Manchester Airport for the first time, plus there are extra stops on the new line serving places like the new Central Park development. The existing stations have all been rebuilt to be wheelchair friendly, and the trams can be boarded by wheelchair users without assistance, unlike the trains. And the trams are electric, so they won’t emit diesel fumes like the trains they replaced.

But arguably it’s not a complete improvement. The extra stops and slightly longer route means that the service is slower than the old heavy rail service, even with the improved acceleration offered by the trams over trains. The trams are smaller and have fewer seats that the trains, although they will run more frequently, and do not have toilets on board. Bikes also cannot be carried on board the trams, unlike on trains.

Tickets on Metrolink are not integrated with National Rail, so it’s no longer possible to buy a through ticket from, say, London to Oldham. And although the trams will serve more places than before, this does not include Manchester Piccadilly station, although they do call at Market Street which is somewhat closer than Victoria where the trains previously terminated.

On the whole I do hope it’s an improvement in service for the people of Oldham, and it will hopefully relieve pressure on the Caldervale Line which has been taking the strain from passengers displaced by the closure of the railway line. Issues like integrated ticketing with National Rail could be solved with computer and ticket machine upgrades, and there should be cycle storage at tram stops for cyclists. But converting lines to light rail like this, although providing many benefits, can also make things worse, especially for some groups of passengers.