I went to this.
It was mostly a brief to local businesses and local government to support the Northern Hub and other local/regional rail investment in the HLOS/CP5 round.
Three local MPs (Maria Eagle, Esther McVey, Louise Ellman), all with transport briefs in the Commons, spoke very well about supporting the Northern Hub, HS2 and the HLOS process, and knew their stuff.
There were short presentations by NR, Northern, Freightliner and Peel Ports about local investment.
Apart from rail the focus was on the Atlantic Gateway (upgrading the port infrastructure to capture more international traffic).
I didn't learn anything knew that couldn't have been gleaned from other sources, but it was interesting to hear the slant that non-railway public and private interests had.
Typically, the questions from the floor were rather odd-ball and difficult for the panel to answer. Like when will the Liverpool-Ormskirk-Preston service be improved, or why has Manchester got HS2 and we have nothing.
An ex-BR engineer said Northern Hub wouldn't work without more through platforms at Manchester Victoria.
The rep from Warrington Council said he wanted to support the proposals, but Northern Hub would deprive them of connectivity to the North-East, and Port Salford would cause huge traffic jams in Warrington with the canal swing-bridges forever opening for the new barge traffic.
Of the politicians, Maria Eagle thought she was in the Commons and gave a party speech on why Labour would be doing different/better.
Esther McVey gave an impressive rallying cry for Liverpool to overtake the south-east in port traffic.
And Louise Ellman told everybody in her quiet way that the time to lobby MPs in favour of these schemes was now, as there was real danger of cuts to the Northern Hub plans in the CP5 round.
The politicians seem to take it as read that devolution of rail budgets would be coming in the new white paper - cue battles between Manchester and Liverpool (not to mention Leeds and Newcastle) over spending priorities.
The only north-east representation I could detect was from a group called "Mytholmroyd Station Partnership"!
Another pair of delegates were from: "FF Commercial Cleaning and Feather Flickers" (they were the ones complaining about Ormskirk-Preston).
Otherwise it was mainly local councils, chambers of commerce across the north-west, consultants (eg Arup) and some rail user groups (eg North/Mid-Cheshire).
The final question was predictably why had it cost £423 FC return to get to the conference from London. "You can get to Dubai for that".
Cue much squirming from the panel.
At one level, it was just a Liverpool lobby group having its say (eg you could feel them wince whenever Manchester Airport was mentioned).
But at another level it served to motivate local business and government to support rail in the next funding round.
Certainly worth the cost of attendance (free!).
heh... 
