We aim to deliver a world class customer experience for everyone who needs assistance during their journey with us. Whether you book in advance or not, our friendly team are here to help. We aim to support customers at every stage of their journey with us.
Whether you are travelling with a pram, young children, have limited mobility or just need a little bit of help in using our services we aim to provide the information you need to use our network with confidence.
Our journey planner will help you understand our timetable, plan your journey and can be found here.
Our station accessibility map below will show you which of our stations have step free access and the average step you will need to make to get on to the train at each of our stations. This will help you to decide whether or not you require assistance making your journey.
Should temporary issues arise which significantly impact on the accessibility of any of our stations or your journey with us we will update our website within 24 hours. This information is viewable by selecting the station you are travelling from or to on our interactive accessibility map or visiting our stations acessibility page.
If we have your contact details because you have booked a journey and will be affected, we will endeavour to contact you by telephone or email to advise you of temporary issues. Where possible this will be at least 24 hours in advance of your journey or as soon as is possible dependent on the circumstances.
We will contact you;
- Where stations have a physical constraint preventing use by some disabled people
- Where significant temporary work affects station accessibility
- Where changes to stations make them temporarily inaccessible (e.g. all lifts or all station toilets out of order);
- Where changes to train facilities materially affect disabled passengers – e.g. the temporary use of inaccessible trains and emergency engineering work.
- As we do not sell tickets online we don't currently offer the ability to buy a ticket as part of your Passenger Assist booking. You can buy a ticket by visiting one of our station ticket offices and calling us to arrange your Passenger Assist separately.
Unbooked Assistance - travelling from a staffed Merseyrail station to a staffed Merseyrail station.
- We know that modern life is busy and often customers need to travel at short notice or don’t have an opportunity to book their journey in advance.
- At the vast majority of our stations we have staff located in our booking offices that will be able to help. Just approach them and let them know you need their assistance and they will do their best to make sure you get on the next available service and will also be able to answer any other questions you may have.
- Our team will also let the station you are travelling to know that you are on your way so that staff at that station can be ready to meet you when you arrive.
- During busy times please be aware that services and stations can be busy and you should always allow extra time in case the train you want to catch is busy and you need to wait for the next one.
Unbooked Assistance - travelling from an unstaffed Merseyrail station to a Merseyrail station.
We have four stations on our network that do not have booking offices and are unstaffed. These are:
- Overpool
- Little Sutton
- Bache
- Capenhurst
We also have one station that is open from start of service till 2 pm each day; Ellesmere Port
If you arrive at one of these stations and require assistance to travel you should press the button on the help point located on each platform. Our control room team will arrange for you to receive the help you need. At Ellesmere Port station, when the booking office is closed, please follow the above procedure. You should allow extra time when travelling from these stations as staff may need to travel from another station to assist you or arrange for alternative transport to the next staffed station.
Unbooked Assistance - travelling from a Merseyrail station to a station outside of the Merseyrail network.
We work with Network Rail and the other UK Train Operating Companies to help customers that need assistance to plan their journey to any UK rail station to or from stations on our network.
In these circumstances, we would always advise that customers who need assistance request it in advance as described above, so that we can better plan with the other companies involved and make sure everything is arranged for your journey.
If your journey is starting off the Merseyrail network, the customer should contact the relevant train operating company, who is responsible for your journey and they will make the arrangements or by contacting National Rail Enquires here.