Canada Dock Branch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Canada Dock Branch

Legend

Broad Green

Edge Hill

Wavertree Technology Park

Junction with LMR

Stanley Cattle

Atlantic Junction (ATLNTDJ)

Junction with LCSR

Alexandra Dock

The Canada Dock Branch is a 4 mile 59 chain (7.62 kilometre) long railway line in Liverpool, England, built by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR).

1 History
2 Today
3 External links
4 Notes

[edit] History

It opened in 1866 between Edge Hill and Canada Dock. On 5 September 1881 a line to Alexandra Dock was opened and on 1 May 1886 a junction with the Liverpool, Crosby and Southport Railway was opened.

By 31 May 1948 the stations on the line had all closed to passengers. The line continued to be used by regular Liverpool Lime Street to Southport services, which operated primarily to provide a convenient connection to/from London trains. When the Merseyrail Loop and Link lines opened in 1977 this final service was deemed surplus to requirements and was withdrawn.

[edit] Today

It is currently a busy freight-only line and is sometimes called the Bootle Branch or Seaforth Container Terminal Branch(SCT) providing the sole remaining rail connection to the Port of Liverpool. Rebuilding the Olive Mount chord has been approved in order to increase usage of the line for freight purposes. It could also be reopened to passengers; this would provide a connection from the Northern Line (south of Bootle) to Liverpool Lime Street and the City Line.

On July 16, 2007 the Liverpool Daily Post reported that Liverpool FC could fund the reopening of the line to passenger services to provide a direct rail link to their new stadium.^[1]This was highlighted on the Network Rail North West development plan as a potential project to be undertaken by Network Rail, rather than LFC.

On 20 January 2008 the green light was given to reopen the Olive Mount chord to make the ferrying of freight between the Port of Liverpool to the West Coast Main Line easier. The works will remove the need for reversing at Edge Hill and for crossing lines in and out of Lime Street and it is hoped will remove large vehicles from congested areas, including Switch Island. The project is due to be completed by the end of 2008 and will cost an estimated £7.9m, of which Merseytravel will put £2.1m towards the costs. There is no suggestion of reopening the section for passenger service. ^[2]