West Kirby railway station

West Kirby railway station is situated in the town of West Kirby, Wirral, England. It is situated at the end of one of the branches of the Wirral Line, part of the Merseyrail network.The beach can be reached easily from the station.

The station was originally built in 1878 as the terminus of the Wirral Railway's route from Birkenhead Park station. Through services via the Mersey Railway Tunnel to Liverpool commenced in 1938, when the London Midland and Scottish Railway electrified the line.

Current service levels are every 15 minutes to Liverpool during Monday to Saturday daytime, and every 30 minutes at other times.

There is a central island platform between two terminus tracks, and two parallel sidings for out-of-use electric trains. The canopy over the platform was renewed in reinforced concrete at the time of the 1938 electrification, but the station building across the end of the tracks was left untouched from Victorian times, although in recent times much of its space has been rented out as retail units accessed from the public road rather than from the railway premises.

When the Open Golf Championship was held at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club (situated between West Kirby and Hoylake) in July 2006, services terminated at Hoylake station during the tournament. This was to allow competitors to cross the tracks from the practice course on one side to the championship course on the other. This caused some controversy locally, especially given the large increase in passengers during the championship.

Until 1964 there was an active freight depot on the east side of the station, occupying the triangular area between the electric lines station and the Birkenhead Joint station, mainly used to receive coal for domestic distribution. The area occupied by this freight depot was later used for the construction of The Concourse local authority building. The West Kirby goods depot was principally served by a daily goods train along the electric line from Birkenhead, which also served goods depots at Hoylake, Moreton, and the Cadbury's factory near Leasowe.

Birkenhead Joint branch

In 1886, the Chester and Birkenhead Railway extended their line to West Kirby from Parkgate; this now meant there was a direct route from Hooton to West Kirby. The station was single platformed with a water tank at its southern end. The station closed to passengers in 1956 and completely closed in 1962. A principal traffic was scholars travelling from stations along the route to the secondary schools in West Kirby. In its final years the almost-unused line was employed for the training of diesel multiple unit crews operating from Birkenhead and Chester via Hooton. The route all the way to Hooton is now a footpath, known as The Wirral Way, which forms part of the Wirral Country Park.

The station for the Hooton line at West Kirby lay to the east of the current station, along the alignment of what is now Orrysdale Road between Bridge Road and Grange Road, and was effectively a separate facility to the main station on the electric lines. There was a junction between the two underneath the Bridge Road overbridge, but very few train movements connected between the two, the only significant one being a once-daily through service, often just one or two coaches, which ran until 1939 from New Brighton via Bidston and this route to Hooton and Chester, where it was attached to a London Euston train.

External links

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

References