A SPECIALIST group which aims to improve Lostock’s rail service is officially up and running — and ready to take action.

Angry members of the Lostock Residents’ Association decided to form a rail sub-group after wide-ranging timetable changes left them with a reduced service.

More than 50 people, including councillors and prospective parliamentary candidates, packed an upstairs room at Lostock Community Centre as the group called its first meeting on Tuesday night.

Six residents volunteered to form a committee, and the group will now petition rail bosses and the Government in an attempt to improve services from Lostock station.

Residents in the area are furious after they spent eight years campaigning to have the station’s car park expanded, only to see their timetable “decimated” when the work was finally completed.

Residents’ Association chairman Roy Walmsley pledged that the group would achieve some of its aims by December 14 this year, the first anniversary of the timetable changes.

The group’s main objectives are to get more trains to stop at the station and more carriages at peak times.

Mr Walmsley said: “I think it’s causing an awful lot of strife, and not just locally, as people travel to Lostock station because it’s more convenient than Bolton.

“By preventing trains stopping at Lostock, it’s going to increase road congestion into Bolton and into Manchester, and it’s already terrible into Manchester.”

Labour candidate Julie Hilling said the group should identify a few key priorities and campaign to obtain them.

She said: “We need to decide what issues are the most important and campaign on those.”

Liberal Democrat candidate Jackie Pearcey said local services were losing out because of the Government’s drive to increase long-distance intercity services.

She said: “It doesn’t help that most of the decisions are made in London.”

Train company Trans-Pennine Express last week admitted Lostock’s direct train had been cut at the expense of more profitable long-distance services.

But Northern Rail, which provides the bulk of the station’s trains, insisted it was now providing a better service that saw more trains calling at Lostock — although most now head for Manchester’s Victoria Station instead of more commuter-friendly city centre destinations.