Merseyrail's grand Grand National

Unnoticed by most of the industry Merseyside operator Merseyrail pulled off quite a coup over the extended Grand National weekend.

This from PR man Rudi...

For us of course, it was our opportunity to show to the casual user what we are about.

Eye readers may be interested to know that we doubled services on the Aintree route to 8 trains an hour in each direction.

We also laid on all sorts of entertainment such as Juice FM broadcasting their programmes from the station and entertaining the waiting hordes, give-aways (remember the flipflops for ladies day?), extra toilets (with dedicated cleaners to keep them salubrious) etc etc.


Over the 3 days we had very little delays and even fewer trains failing PPM; in fact on Saturday, in spite of all the extra trains and the crowds, our network PPM was 93.95%...

And here is our MD Bart Schmeink's thank you to staff:

Hi all,

Thank you so much for another great Grand National performance by you all over the last three days.

We've had more passengers than ever before, even more then in our record year 2008.

First indication is that more than 100.000 passengers travelled with us over the three days.


The whole system worked as smoothly as a swiss watch with all our units in service and every station chipping in.

Our overall performance, including our showbiz X factor at Aintree, has pushed our reputation on Merseyside to new heights.

I know I shouldn't push it, by saying I'd like to have the Grand National every day but then again these 3 days seem to get the best out of everyone.

Thank you so much for a great performance, a great day and another truly remarkable grand national event.

All the best Bart

Good effort.