Merseyrail football special to Sandhills

[JBuchananGB]

Today (19 September) I turned up at St. Michael's station on Merseyside at about 13.55 to travel to Birkdale (on the return half of an off-peak day return Birkdale to Halewood).

The departure display in the ticket hall showed the next train as the 14:02 to Ormskirk. When I reached the platform the display there said the next train would be the 13:58 to Sandhills. I boarded this train, travelled to Sandhills to change for the Southport service.

The train I had used then departed out of service in the direction of Kirkdale. Sandhills was heaving with security people/stewards and every train coming in was disgorging hundreds of people for the match Everton against Ipswich.

Out of curiosity, I later looked on Real Time Trains to find out what was going on. But that train, the 13:58 from St. Michael's to Sandhills does not appear. I didn't know MerseyRail ran football specials, and I don't know why they don't show on RTT.

 

[childwallblues]

As the Hunts Cross to Ormskirk service is booked for 4-car trains extra non timetabled services are probably put on as crowd shifters.

Your train would almost certainly have started at Liverpool South Parkway were there is a crossover, the line past there to Hunts Cross being single track from Hunts Cross West Junction.