Forum | Merseyside Dennis Dart Website

There is a few user worked level crossings in that area as well between Hoylake and Manor Road , a bit different to the level crossings at Hoylake and Leasowe .

The honour of last unit standing with the older purple interior has gone to 508136. Both 507017 and 508111 were in service on the Southport line this afternoon having been refreshed. In true Merseyrail fashion, they've left a scruffy one till last!

Indeed 508111 had new "old style" seat moquette throughout put in not so long back. Compared to the rest of them, it was smart.

How are Merseyrail coping with the Grand National starting yesterday? I see they made headlines on the Liverpool Echo Facebook page yesterday due to an extremely large volume of racegoers queueing up at Aintree station yesterday.

If you think Thursday queues where big just wait for Saturday , an added problem not encountered before is that the Grand National this year is after 1700hrs which is a change on the years before meaning the extra trains may have to run later than expected .

There doesn't seem to have been much problem with the enhanced service , apart from one cancellation after the racing finished on Thursday , which was caused by a unit failure.

The race service plan seems to work well these days .

They seemed to do respectably well today, including the usual 7 of 10 Southport diagrams worked by six car sets as well as the Ormskirk and Aintree pairs. It was apt to see 507021 used on the raceday trains over the last few days with its Red Rum nameplate.

It was nice to see 'Remembering the 96' messages being displayed on station caption boards today. Like Arriva's Liverpool depots, a good effort.

I don't think it has been mentioned yet that there is now an additional afternoon six car service on the Southport - Hunts Cross line booked on weekdays. The 14.28 Southport - Hunts Cross and 15.36 return is now a pair, with the units then forming the 16.43 from Southport. This appears to have been the case for several weeks now, and I can confirm 507012 and 507025 were working the 14.28 today, the first time I have personally seen the service since the upgrade.

I noticed them as well and it I thought it was an excellent gesture from Merseyrail

I was travelling with Merseyrail this afternoon and after we pulled up at a station it was announced over the station's tannoy system that a minute's silence was to be observed - it was on the most part apart from a few other passengers very disrespectfully continued their conversation which in my opinion was nothing other than absolutely shameful. At the start of the minute of silence the driver shut down the unit and restarted it once we were ready for departure towards Central

507020 has at last been reunited with its 'John Peel' name. This was the last of the outstanding Merseyside Legends names to return. Just the 'Capital of Culture' plate remains, although realistically it probably won't be returning.