Just before Christmas, both Northern Rail and London Midland introduced new services which greatly improved the number of trains in the North Staffordshire area.
Northern are running an hourly local service from Stoke to Manchester and London Midland are running a service from Crewe to Euston via Stoke. The service to Euston means that Stone station reopened to trains for the first time in 5 years! You are also able to use Alsager or Kidsgrove stations to go directly to London as well!
BUT, Longport seems to have missed out on all these new trains and Barlaston and Wedgewood stations remain closed to trains, but not the replacement bus service! Norton Bridge is also still closed to trains and will almost certainly be completely closed in the near future.
So the three all but closed stations and Longport are ignored again. These stations are being closed by stealth and will mean the overall service is even worse as time goes on. It seems the DfT is determined to ruin local rail travel in the majority of North Staffordshire!
