It was a journey Ellen Coss Brown had travelled many times before - a train from Manchester Piccadilly to Holyhead, then back home to Dublin by ferry.

As her sister Bertha waved her off from the station platform on a chilly November afternoon back in 1999, she thought little of it.

Sadly it was the last time her sister, or anyone else, would see Ellen.

That was 20 years ago, but Ellen’s family have never stopped looking for her.

The search for the missing mum, a Dubliner who had been staying on a Greater Manchester council estate shortly before she vanished, has spanned two countries and two decades.

At one point Ellen’s sister and son Peter Coss even travelled to Bournemouth to identify a body that turned out to be unrelated to them.

This Sunday, November 3, marks 20 years since Ellen’s disappearance.

And Peter, who has just turned 50, will spend the day alone thinking about his mum.

“I have seen a lot of things on television about people who have been missing for a long time,” he says.

“They often feel like they can’t get in touch with family because they are ashamed.

"But if she’s still alive we would just be relieved she is okay and would just say to get in touch.

“First and foremost we would want to know that she is okay and we would love to see her again.

“Or, if the worst has happened and anyone who knows her or has information, then please just get in touch with the police.”

Ellen was 51 when she went missing.

She had been staying with her sister Bertha in Langley, Middleton.

The mum-of-one had been suffering from depression after the death of her mum and family say she was struggling.

Nevertheless, it was out of character for Ellen to disappear and so, when she failed to return home to Dublin, her brothers Thomas and James called the police.

“Mum didn’t like to fly when she was going abroad so she would get the boat and train - it was a journey she had done for years,” Peter says.

“Bertha saw her off at the station. I was called that evening because Thomas was expecting her home.

“She had been staying with Bertha for a couple of months, almost living with them for a while.

“My mum had some mental health issues. She felt like a change of scenery would help because she had been depressed.”

At the time Peter was living in Penge, south London.

He spoke to his mum the night before she went missing.

“I suppose you place more significance on something like that afterwards,” he says.

“But I remember at the end of the phone call her telling me she loved me, although she would often say that.

“We were talking about how she was feeling and I said ‘we all want you to get better but you have to want to get better - it’s down to you’.

“And she said ‘yes, it is down to me’.”

A day later Peter got the phone call from his uncles - Ellen hadn’t returned home as expected.

“She did sometimes go places on her own so not being around for a day was not incredibly unusual.

But then it got to another day and nobody had heard from her and she didn’t have a mobile phone,” Peter says.

“We called the police but were advised to wait until the following day.

"We started getting concerned and started liaising with the police in Manchester and Ireland.”

He adds: “We did wonder if she got on the boat.

"We asked the police to look at CCTV footage and for some reason they couldn’t get hold of it, or it was not working that night.

"So there was no CCTV footage.

“James and Thomas did a TV appeal and police did an appeal on BBC TV.

"I remember we were trying to push the police into doing an appeal at the time.

“We were getting a lot of false sightings.

"People saying they had seen her here and there and it always ended up being someone else.”

Greater Manchester Police and Garda both investigated Ellen’s disappearance but were never able to locate her.

Her brother Thomas previously told the Irish Mirror that he spent months trawling the streets of Ireland's capital in a desperate bid to locate his missing sister.

He told the Irish Mirror back in 2016: “I can remember when there was a lookalike of her in Dublin.

“I had to sleep rough to gain the trust of the homeless community and I wanted to see this woman.

"I did see her – very like my sister but not her.

“There were several sightings of her in Dublin but none of them turned out to be her.”

Thomas also spent years travelling back and forth to Holyhead in the hope of finding her.

Ellen, who was from Ballyfermot in Dublin, had just £20 in her pocket and no passport when she vanished.

Peter, a customer service supervisor, says he is baffled as to where his mum could have ended up.

“It felt like I was constantly having to ring the police for updates,” he says.

“The police in Dublin wanted to close the case early.

"It didn’t feel like it was a priority.”

He adds: “At one point me and Bertha had to view a body in Bournemouth.

"They had been in the water for sometime.

"I didn’t think it looked like her.

"We had to give DNA samples in case and it was an anxious wait.

"In the end it wasn’t her.

“It was difficult because you’re making that journey and on the one hand you’re hoping it isn’t her and on the other you just want to know what has happened.

“That was probably less than a year after she went missing, so about 2000.”

Single mum Ellen was close to her son and they would spend Christmases and birthdays together.

Those anniversaries are still tough for Peter, years after his mum’s disappearance.

“We had a close relationship,” he says. “I was an only child and mostly my mum brought me up.

“We spoke on the phone all the time.

"I would come home for Christmas and holidays when in Manchester I would go up and see her.

“I had seen her about a month before she went missing.

"She seemed down.

"She had not been herself.

“Then other times she would be fine.

"She was still quite independent.”

He adds: “I suppose I was in shock at first.

"Because it was so difficult to deal with I would not think about it and push it to the back of my mind.

“A year after she went missing it dawned on me - I didn’t know if she is alive or dead but either way I have still lost my mother.

"Now it’s still hard when there are anniversaries and birthdays, or Christmas, when we would be together.

"But now I can remember the good and the bad and the things that make me laugh so I can remember her as a real human being.

“She was quite a vivacious person.

"My mum loved music and I remember her singing around the house.

"And she was independent.

“She always seemed to look younger than she was.

"In the last year I could see the mood had taken a toll because she was not herself.”

Peter now has renewed hope that he may hear something about his mum as GMP have started to look into the cold case again.

(Image: Mark Waugh Manchester Press Photography Ltd)

“It’s brought everything to the forefront again", he said.

"Recently I had to do another DNA sample because there might have been a match with some remains.

"It was not the case but it brought everything to the forefront.

“You’ve got hope on the one hand but dread on the other that you will hear the worst.

“People talk about closure - that you want to know one way or another - I think that’s exactly it.

“I’m a bit more hopeful that we will establish what happened.

"But then again we have been here before and it’s 20 years down the line.

“On Sunday I will spend some time on my own.

"As much as it’s a sad occasion I will try and remember my mum in happier times.”

Peter says Ellen was familiar with Manchester city centre, Middleton and her home town of Dublin.

Her brother-in-law Pete still lives at the house in Langley, though Bertha has since passed away.

Her brothers, James and Thomas both still live in Dublin.

Peter has since moved from Penge but still lives in the south east of the capital, in Catford.

Anyone who thinks they may have seen Ellen is asked to call Greater Manchester Police on 101.