I was quite surprised on my recent first visit to this station that it's all errrm well a bit crap really! Wooden platform, some sort of odd concrete block device holding up the ramp to platform 1 (at least it has step free access) and not much at all in the way of existing facilities. Given this is the station with the fastest and long distance services - and only real eastward service from the town I had expected it to be better than Burnley Central, not worse!
Anyway things appear to be on the up. A ticket office was under construction as well as a refurbished car/bicycle park I think and one of Northern's horrible Parkeon machines too has been installed, better than nowt (I can't believe everybody had to buy a ticket on the train here until recently!). Can anyone tell me when the wooden platforms and horrible looking ramp thing to P1 were installed? They don't exactly look original to the station, which Wikipedia suggests was 1860. Is what's there now from the 1986 date they give?
Also; it seems the station is being re-staffed after all these years then? Surely that's got to be one for the books? How many stations have been re-staffed since privatization? I know there were some de-staffings recently on LM, one I remember seeing first hand was Lye.
Anyway things appear to be on the up. A ticket office was under construction as well as a refurbished car/bicycle park I think and one of Northern's horrible Parkeon machines too has been installed, better than nowt (I can't believe everybody had to buy a ticket on the train here until recently!). Can anyone tell me when the wooden platforms and horrible looking ramp thing to P1 were installed? They don't exactly look original to the station, which Wikipedia suggests was 1860. Is what's there now from the 1986 date they give?
Also; it seems the station is being re-staffed after all these years then? Surely that's got to be one for the books? How many stations have been re-staffed since privatization? I know there were some de-staffings recently on LM, one I remember seeing first hand was Lye.