I joined this group
http://www.facebook.com/groups/101152796684234/ about
Little Sutton station on the Ellesmere Port line. The group is hoping to make people aware of the station and how it needs restoring. I mean, it isn't on falling apart but it needs things doing to it as MRail and NR won't help as it isn't a well used station.
Little Sutton is my local station and has official annual footfall figures of about 36,000 (2009/10), i.e. 100 per day, which I am sure is a serious underestimate. I would guess it is at least double that.
The ticket office closed in 1992, before the electric trains arrived. It is now a "penalty fares" station with the one ticket machine sited in the open on the Ellesmere Port platform and difficult to read in the sun.
The station suffers from a total lack of car parking with many potential passengers driving instead to nearby Hooton which has a huge, reasonably priced car park, direct trains to Chester and cheaper and more frequent trains to Liverpool.
Merseyrail have invested a fair bit at Little Sutton in recent years installing information screens, seats & the ticket machine. But they invest less in their Cheshire stations than in their Merseyside ones whcih are all permenantly staffed. The station is reasonably tidy and the friends have done a good job planting flowers and removing litter. All credit to them.
The Ellesmere Port area, disgracefully, has no bus services at all on Sunday evenings and only one hourly route on other evenings which misses much of the town. So the railway line is in many senses its only connection with the outside world.
Ellesmere Port must also be one of the biggest towns in the country not in the PlusBus scheme, which is also a disgrace.
