"But now I don't do that because I just work for the freight company, and when the other companies need help with passengers, they use taxis instead."He goes on to explain how there were two locomotive depots at Crewe. "Often, when I didn't have much to do, they would use me to bus passengers around who had missed connections and the like," he says. Here unfolds the tale of a railway where separate and competing companies charge one another for their services, so multiplying bureaucracy and inefficiency.A young driver for one of the freight companies explains how his job has already changed for the worse, and how lots of money is being wasted. With the green hills and their dumb sheep running away from the trains on one side, and the beaches and marshes on the other, it is a journey on which you could do with two window seats.At Crewe, as expected, there is again no shortage of complaints about what one worker, referring to the breakup of the railways, jokingly calls the "disintegrated" railway. At Llandudno Junction, I pick up the Northwest Express to Crewe for a real train journey: old coaches, with well-padded seats, tables for every seat and wooden panelling throughout, all hauled by a locomotive, not one of those sprinter trains that, to many rail enthusiasts, resemble buses.There are few such trains left on British Rail since the advent of "multiple units" which have their traction underneath and are, of course, much cheaper to operate. Meanwhile, there were trains stacked up behind it."I am heading for Crewe because it is the heart of the rail network in the North.

"A couple of weeks ago, we had a broken down train and there was a mail train locomotive nearby, but instead they sent one all the way from Crewe because it would have cost too much to hire the rescue one. You had one hand for yourself, one for your job and one for your mate." He draws away theatrically: "Now it's all for yourself - or rather, your particular company." Fred explains how "in the old days" if a train broke down, and there was another locomotive at hand, it would be called upon for rescue work immediately Now, it depends what company the locomotive belongs to. Take the man at Llandudno Junction with over 30 years' experience of standing on platforms flagging and whistling the trains away. "Fred", as I had better call him since BR is rather sensitive about their staff talking to journalists, only needs the word privatisation to set off on a long journey which he had taken many years before: "The railway used to be a family It was a way of life. In three days on the railways, I must have struck up conversations with 30 railwaymen - not a single woman in what is still a male world - and they all shared the same fear and loathing of the onset of rail privatisation. Scratch a railwayman and it all comes pouring out. What next, then? Fruit machines and Sky TV?Perhaps, though we'll all miss you, you're better off out of it See you in Blackpool, chuck.HELEN BIRCH.

Over the years you fought tooth and polished nail to get and keep your name above the Rovers' door, only to find that, in true Nineties style, both Rita, one of your oldest friends, and your beloved adopted granddaughter, Vicky, refused to help you out because, they said, the Rovers was not a viable business. While tears flowed, mascara ran, tea stewed in the back parlour and friends and lovers came and went, the Rovers remained the only constant in your life. And you belonged there - the brisk, brassy barmaid of archetype, the forerunner of EastEnders' Sharon and the Street's own Raquel. But we also knew it wouldn't stop you going for broke the next time.No, not respecting closing time was your undoing. When, for example, you got off with a Stetson-wearing trucker who looked like Sean Connery, we all knew it couldn't last, particularly with the hard-boiled and considerably more youthful Tanya scheming in the wings. You sounded wise in your role of matriarch precisely because you spoke from experience.