How about creating such an entity as you suggest and call it Northern Trains?
It was the whole system of devolved government I was talking about, not just the railways.
(Obvious) cultural differences aside, there is a probably optimal size for a conurbation, which may be much smaller than what you are suggesting.
The reason that the thought occurred was that Merseyrail "City Line" services (which these days are just like any other trains operated by Northern but were once allocated yellow pacers in theory) continue on to become Manchester suburban services (Bee Network as it will be known). Leeds on the other hand is physically separated from Manchester by the Pennines. We could definitely do with some more integration in the North West.
Most people who live on the Liverpool side want to travel into Liverpool. Most people who live on the Manchester side wanted to travel into Manchester. The number of people who want to travel from, say, Cressington to Mills Hill is minimal.
Cressington isn't on the "City Line".
The point that I am trying to make is that this is not one conurbation.
Was it one of the original stations on the Garston and Liverpool Railway?
Newton-le-Willows is in Merseyside, yet has more than twice as many Manchester-bound passengers as it does Liverpool-bound. You have to go as far west as Lea Green before you find a station where there are more Liverpool passengers than Manchester. The boundary between the two cities is far more blurred than "people from Merseyside go to Liverpool, people from GM go to Manchester". Then there's the question of Warrington. It's not in Greater Manchester, it's not in Merseyside. It's heavily tied to both cities but its transportation is integrated into neither (save for the Wayfarer ticket). There needs to be more cooperation in the north west.
No idea. These days it forms part of Merseyrail's Northern Line.
Things don't neatly fit into hard boundaries between different city regions and travel-to-work areas. It's simply not the case that where the streams flow west off the Pennines, everyone commutes into Manchester and where they flow east everyone commutes into Leeds. From Marsden there is significantly more commuting into Manchester than into Leeds. We need more integration across the GM/WY boundary too.
Things don't neatly fit into hard boundaries but that doesn't mean that it is best to one massive conurbation "the North".
