How can it take more than two hours to travel 20 miles? Our writer experiences Lancashire’s answer to the Orient Express

I love trains, in spite of the exorbitant ticket prices, the awful food, the absurd lack of luggage space, the depressing tea trolley, the tedious delays, and the constant changing of liveries that leads only to rebranded decline and newly upholstered despair. Well, maybe not love, after writing all that, but I do like them. I was born a mile away from the fabled Liverpool & Manchester. I dreamt about the Rocket in my pram. It was my destiny.

I also appreciate a slow train. I was put off TGV-type speeds by a queasy journey through Southern France a few years ago. Cud-chewing kine, dreamy flora, lofty chateaux and vine-filled vales were reduced to a blur worthy of a sozzled Impressionist. If I want to be shot through space on a missile, I’ll take a plane. Call me romantic, but I enjoy the der-dum-der-dum of creaking bogeys, the clattering of windows, the juddering stopping and wheezy starting at remote rural halts.

I am, however, in awe of the emphatic slowness of one of the railway services currently available through my local supplier, Northern. To put it into context, there’s only one train from my nearest station, Clitheroe, anyway, which goes to Manchester Victoria – stopping nine times and taking an hour and a quarter. The line was re-opened in 1994 after a 32-year hiatus, a closure predating the Beeching cuts. Small mercies. The jogging Sprinter passes for a “commuter train” in long-suffering Lancashire. We have no services to Preston (18 miles to the west), none into Yorkshire (10 miles to the east) and nowt going north either. 

I lie – there’s a once-weekly service from Clitheroe to Carlisle and back via the scenic Settle line, operating on Sundays from mid-May to early September. The snag is, the mighty Ribblehead Viaduct is better to look at than to go across, so unless you’re really desperate to spend four hours in Carlisle, it’s a service mainly for spotters and nostalgists. That train takes two and a half hours to cover 100 miles. 

Neither of the above are remotely slow compared to the service of which I speak, and which I discovered when planning a family visit. It started with a pleasing discovery. While travelling home through Blackburn station, I spotted a train to Rainford, a village in West Lancashire (sometimes dubbed Merseyside) that I used to call home. My sister still lives there. 

I was genuinely surprised, even shocked, to see a connection, because Rainford has long been ignored by the Department for Transport, having only daylight-hours services to Wigan and a risible diesel train to Liverpool that involves a single-track line (the driver grabbing a token) and a change at Kirkby for the electric coach-on-wheels to the city centre. 

As soon as I got home, I jumped on the National Rail website to look up the Blackburn-Rainford train. It turned out the service, while regular (departing every hour or so), took a whopping two hours and 10 minutes – at best. I double checked the distance as the crow flies – just 21 miles. That works out at 9.7 miles per hour. Slower than a bicycle. Slower than a fit long-distance runner. A third of the speed of a restricted moped. 

Spain’s Ave trains travel at 193mph; they would cover the distance in 6.6 minutes. I know, I’m not comparing like with like. But I am comparing trains. The Rocket could do 30mph and averaged 12mph. The Victorian prototype I dreamt about as a two-year-old was faster than this 21st-century train.

The reason for the tortuously slow service was that the Blackburn-Rainford line, in order to turn that short distance into a vast undertaking, travelled first to Walsden Valley, then into Yorkshire and, finally, all through Greater Manchester on a massive 24-stop loop. Intriguingly, its journey was only made possible in 2015, when a 1,000ft bit of track called the Todmorden Curve was reinstated after a 40-year gap. I know, another great moment for rail fans. 

I decided to take a ride on the line, not least because I’m currently researching the history of the north west and the train seemed to stop at every textile town on the map. It also passed through some lovely moorlands, across several rivers, popped into Manchester city centre, and Salford, and Rochdale.

I saw mosques, churches, at least one cathedral, several chimneys, glimpsed a couple of beacons, and re-familiarised myself with the varied topographies and civic architecture of the region that was the crucible of the Industrial Revolution. Conclusion: I shall definitely make use of the line to visit Queen Street Mill museum, the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, Rochdale’s Co-op museum and Ancoats’ historic terraces. But I probably won’t use it to visit my sister.

It could be argued that this line is not actually intended for me, but for people from Accrington and Burnley who want to get to Manchester. But, in my defence, it is the only direct service available to Rainford. 

Is it the slowest train in Britain – in terms of time taken to get from A to B? I really think it might be. As you’d expect the Scottish Highlands has some leisurely rail services. Scotrail’s 12.34 weekday train from Wick to Inverness, a distance of a wee bit over 100 miles, stops 26 times and takes 4 hours 32 minutes – arriving at Inverness at 17.06. But that’s an average speed closer to 25mph. 

A 2017 Press Association survey found Wales and Scotland had the worst commuter lines. Travellers between Cardiff Central and Bristol Temple Meads faced average journey times of around 30mph, between Leeds to Sheffield of around 42mph and Edinburgh to Perth of around 25mph. By contrast, the fastest route was the London Paddington to Reading leg of the Great Western line, on which trains cover the distance at an average of 93mph. Home Counties residents also have Crossrail now, which travels at an average speed of 60mph but often hits 90mph. 

Slowness is in. Domestic holidaymakers love canals, river cruises, the ever-evolving Slow Ways network of footpaths, and buses like the Dales services that criss-cross North Yorkshire and travel epic distances to ensure people from Preston can see beauty spots like Hawes and the Ribblehead Viaduct – this time from below, as is proper. They also pay dearly to travel on vintage steam trains like the Royal Scotsman, delighted to be nudged into a siding while a local train goes past, there to feast on Arbroath smokies and Macallan 15 Years Old.

But I need to get around my region quite a bit, and speedily. So I’m not sure whether to be delighted or disconsolate about my local train. Is it the future or the past, is it a classic case of levelling down or should I just enjoy the ride? 

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