Birkenhead Woodside railway station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birkenhead Woodside was a railway station in Birkenhead, Merseyside.

The station opened on the 31st March 1878 and was the terminus for many services on the Wirral and for routes further afield, including Great Western Railway services to Birmingham Snow Hill railway station, Wolverhampton Low Level railway station and London Paddington.

The station was a grandiose building, with two semi cylindrical roofs covering much of the platforms. However, given the size of the station, it only had 5 platforms, as much of the space was taken up by middle tracks. The station building was known to local rail users as "the wrong way round", due to the fact that for the majority of the station's life, its original rear entrance was used as the main booking hall, whereas Woodside's 'front' entrance was mainly used for handling parcels. This entrance, covered in a porte-cochere to allow travelling gentry to avoid inclement weather, faced the Graving Dock on the south side of the station. It had been intended that passengers disembarking from the nearby ferry terminal of the same name would use this entrance. Unfortunately, the ferry companies were slow at co-operating & when the tram terminus opened in front of the ferry terminal in the early 1900's, the decision was made to keep the small 'back' entrance a permanent fixture. This was very unfortunate, as passengers arriving at the station never got to see the huge sandstone fireplaces, decorative brick work and massive timber roof trusses holding up the roof of the intended booking hall, which has been described by SAVE as 'a station of truly baronial proportions & being worthy of any London terminus'.

The station was very busy right up to nationalisation. However, as with many other stations and rail routes in the UK, the then Chairman of the British Railways Board, Dr Richard Beeching, found the need for the terminus superfluous, as most of the routes served could also be taken from Liverpool Lime Street station, on the other side of the River Mersey. The station closed to passengers on the 5th November 1967 and the station was demolished within a couple of years.

Today, the only evidence of the station's existence is the tunnel which lay at the station throat. The rest of the land is now used as a bus depot.