At long last!

(Image courtesy of A Little Bit of Stone)

Over the years I have been extremely active in campaigning to get trains back at Stone station. It has been a long long saga. Our stopping trains vanished in 2004 and for a long time we thought we'd never see a service again from Stone. However some very strong campaigning took place and I was privileged to be a member of the North Staffs Rail Promotion Group whose campaign undoubtedly won the argument. In December 2008, London Midland began a Crewe to Euston service stopping at Stone. And the rest, as they say, is history! It has been spectacularly successful proving the merits of the argument that there were hundreds of potential passengers in the area eager to use trains.

However, the one continuing niggle has been the fact that  there was no real time information available to passengers using the station. A Help Line telephone was installed on Platform 1 but never worked. We were promised electronic information boards from the outset but they never appeared. Numerous enquiries always received a standard response that they would be installed 'in a couple of months'.

Imagine my excitement then when I received a call from the Station caretaker, Greg, a couple of weeks ago to tell me that workmen were on the platform putting up the boards! I immediately went down and sure enough boards had appeared on both platforms. But they weren't working!

But last Friday I went to the Station for an evening function and, lo and behold, they were operating properly! The Help Line is still not working but at least the patient passengers will now be able to see, in real time, up to date information about their train.

It's taken a long time but well done London Midland!