Photo-a-Day  (Friday, 6th April, 2018)

Ince station is just a skeleton towards it used it be, Proper brick waiting rooms with a roaring coal fire, luggage area, station master and toilets and a great atmosphere that you felt safe. But after saying that, most small station are sadly the same. Good one Mick.

Is this line due to be electrified?

Half a day at Southport two or three times in Summer was all the holiday we knew when I was a child. We went from this station and walked along this walkway, which was uncovered planks of wood in those days and it was terrifying seeing the ground so far below between the planks. The roof was covered, not open as it is now. My Dad bought little cardboard tickets from the ticket-office and there was a tiny waiting-room with leather seats and a coal-fire which remained unlit on those warm June mornings long ago. And oh! the excitement when the train pulled into the station with its heady smell of steam. We sat in long carriages with windows that could be held open by means of a leather strap, and when we passed the bone-yard in Appley Bridge the "thump-thump" of those windows being shut along the full length of the train was like machine-gun fire! Happy, happy days!

Remember it well. It was a dark passageway and mothers with prams/buggys, the old fashioned type were prepared to walk to Wallgate rather than face the stairs down to the platform.

Not moved very far from yesterday, Mick.

Very nostalgic description Irene as usual. We didn't get fancy holidays then - Southport, Blackpool and New Brighton kept us going. The train journey was enough excitement then - all that hissing steam and clanging doors and windows! I remember the 'poky' waiting rooms and old leather seating and the old fashioned fireplaces too. Also the posters advertising train journeys to Cornwall - which seemed like an exotic faraway land to me then!

The train carriages with the long bench seats and the doors at each side, with pull up and down windows, they always had photos of trains in the compartments. Telegraph poles and signal boxes dotted everywhere. Great memories of good old British Railways.

I remember photos of holiday resorts, Garry, (black-and-white, or even sepia), up near the luggage racks. And the clickety-clack sound the train made on the tracks, and my Dad used to recite all the stations to Southport, "Gathurst, Appley Bridge, Parbold" etc.etc.

Irene , I had just one half day holiday to Southport my entire childhood . In the school holidays we played in the local fields and woods ( now concrete)I had the most wonderful time ,so beautifully describe by DTease on a previous post . Children now travel the world , but playing in the fields with my friends is a lasting memory I will never forget . I didn’t lose out , I won , big time !
Thanks Mick.

I need a sherry Irene x.

The architecture is typical Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway - much like Daisy Hill station travelling in the opposite direction from Southport.
The company made a profit all the way to the merger with LNW in 1922 and the L&Y lines were still profitable for a few years after nationalisation in 1948.
However losing money by 1958/59 - nothing spent on the station buildings.
Irene, Anne, Veronica - lovely memories. But Veronica, New Brighton was positively exotic - almost abroad!!

Garry I think you formed an attachment to your roaring fires in the waiting rooms on the station! Sherry came later!
Gary you are darn right about New Brighton- it was my first ride on a donkey there too!

As kids we would walk the mile or so to Daisy Hill station , catch the train and get off at Ince then walk to Springs Branch for a full day of train spotting, they can't take your memories away from you thank goodness.

As a kid, I remember spending an entire 20 minute annual holiday sliding down the grass embankment on the East Lacs Road at Pewfall on an opened up Spel box, whilst my elder brother prepared Spam fritters on on a Primus stove. Following our sumptuous repast, the family then hiked up to the Rainford bypass to spend the rest of our 24 hour holiday sheltering from the torrential rain in a workmen's hut in the middle of the carriageway. On returning home by air ambulance the following morning, I cycled down to the Lyme pit in Haydock on my three wheeler and bagged 16 tons of nutty slack from a railway wagon for delivery to the flats in Gillmoss. I was only about eight, but I'll never forget that holiday as long as I live.... Especially the Spam fritters. Happy days.

Veronica and Gary, I have a book about New Brighton in its heyday and it shows an advert for a New Brighton Café in the fifties or sixties advertising fish and chips "with bread and butter cut corner to corner"! That must have been a sign that it was rather upmarket! Pour me a sherry, Garry!

I only went the once Irene - I think that's why I remember it! It was something new going on that big tug boat!

You was lucky Ozy, our 24 hour holiday only lasted 8 hours

I remember passing this station at least twice a week,as my Grandma and my Aunty lived nearby in Christopher Street. Also of course, passing it on the way to Church.

Elizabeth and Irene,isn't it lovely when you see something from your past..that's what is great about this site.We would never have seen these photos otherwise.

You are right Maureen. Our family have never been the best at keeping photos, so it's great when you see places from childhood.