Tickets Please

Nostalgia is a terrible disease that runs right through the railways. "Oooh, it was better in the old days!" is a curse. There is always someone to point at steam trains, or third class tickets, or British Rail, or train doors you have to hang out the window to open, and say "that's so much better than what we have now". You can sit on an air-conditioned, electric train, almost silent as it glides along, with power sockets and tables, and there will still be a railway fan who will say "I used to like it when you could open the window to hear the screech of the rails and choke on the diesel fumes. Bring that back!"This post is going to come with a tinge of nostalgia, and I apologise in advance. But I'm using that nostalgia as a way of asking a question about Merseyrail's future. My question is: what happened to all the ticket collectors?When I first moved to the north - bloody hell - thirty odd years ago, I lived in Ormskirk. Every time a train pulled onto the platform there, a man…