Hooton railway station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hooton
Location
Place	Hooton
Local authority	Ellesmere Port and Neston
Operations
Station code	HOO
Managed by	Merseyrail
Platforms in use	2,3 & 4
Live departures and station information from National Rail
Annual Rail Passenger Usage
2005/06 *	0.358 million
Passenger Transport Executive
PTE	Merseytravel
Zone	B2/G1
National Rail - UK railway stations
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
* Annual passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Hooton from Office of Rail Regulation statistics.
UK Railways Portal

Hooton railway station is situated in the south of the Wirral Peninsula. It lies on the Wirral Line of the Merseyrail network, and is near the junction of the branches to Chester and Ellesmere Port.

The station provides a park and ride facility for Birkenhead and Liverpool, being situated close to Junction 5 of the M53 motorway. The station car park was remarked in early 2007 and now contains compliant blue badge parking spaces. Further work, to provide a variable height counter, and new cycle parking was also carried out in 2007.

[edit] History

Hooton station is located on the former Chester and Birkenhead Railway, a joint railway owned by the Great Western Railway and the London and North Western Railway, which opened on 23 September 1838. A branch from Hooton to Helsby via Ince & Elton opened on 1 July 1863, and another branch to Parkgate (later extended to West Kirby) followed on 1 October 1866. In its heyday, the station had 7 platforms. The West Kirby branch closed completely in 1962. The service to Helsby now operates from Ellesmere Port to Warrington Bank Quay, no longer serving Hooton. The station signs between Helsby & Ellesmere Port still display Hooton as the terminus of the trains.

Through services to Liverpool began in 1985, when the line between Rock Ferry and Hooton was electrified; previously passengers for Liverpool had to change at Rock Ferry. Hooton then became the point where passengers from Chester and Ellesmere Port had to change for Liverpool, until further electrification work saw the electric trains reach Chester in 1993 and Ellesmere Port in 1994.

[edit] Services

Trains operate every 30 minutes (15 minutes in weekday evenings) to each of Chester and Ellesmere Port and every 15 minutes via Hamilton Square station in Birkenhead and the Mersey Railway Tunnel to Liverpool. During peak periods on weekday mornings, trains also run up to every 7 minutes to Liverpool.

[edit] External links

• Train times and station information for Hooton railway station from National Rail
• Station information from Merseyrail