Vera recalls a busy Southport Meols Cop station during war

MEOLS Cop is Merseyside’s forgotten railway station, according to concerned campaigners – without staff and bereft of basic services.
But one Marshside pensioner has many fond memories of working there during the Second World War, when it was a bustling transport hub for the area’s effort to defeat Nazi Germany.
Vera Johnson, who is now 93, was forthright in summing up the changes Meols Cop has undergone since her service there as a porter from 1940-46.

“It’s a skeleton of a station now compared to what it used to be,� said Mrs Johnson, who lives in Connell Court Methodist home in Weld Road, Birkdale.
During the years of her service there, Meols Cop station was operated by LMS (London, Midland & Scottish Railway company) and was a busy stop on the line between Southport and Crossens.
Many of those using it toiled at the Brockhouse munitions factory in Crossens, and Mrs Johnson remembers: “The trains were that packed you could hardly shut the doors.�

It was the misdemeanour of one munitions worker, who lived near the station in Blowick, that earned Mrs Johnson – then known by her maiden name of Rimmer – an appearance in the Southport Visiter.
A court report headlined ‘Out-of-date rail ticket’ explained how Mrs Johnson helped alert police to a female worker using a lapsed ticket, who was subsequently fined £2, plus 15s 6d costs and two guineas advocate’s fee.

Other memories Mrs Johnson has include helping mums with their prams up and down the station steps, the paperboy (she believes he was called Jimmy Boden) meeting the locomotive from Manchester at 6am to collect the morning editions, and the station layout – complete with a central booking office and waiting rooms with toilets on each platform.
Before her work as a station porter Mrs Johnson was employed at the William Ashton & Sons factory in Tulketh Street (where the former Waitrose building stands now), which counted carrier bags for Max Brewer’s confectioners among its output.

But her home was always in Marshside, having been born in the building housing her grandfather’s grocery and shoes shop at the corner of Shellfield Road and Marshside Road.
Her husband, Harry Johnson, whom she married in 1947, was also a Marshsider.
His army service included four years as a prisoner-of-war in Austria, and after demobilisation he was employed by local coal merchant George Watkinson.
Mrs Johnson was widowed in 1973. With Harry she had one son, who is now Methodist minister the Reverend Maurice Johnson in Derbyshire.