Disused railway lines and closed stations in Cheshire

145 miles of disused railway
92 closed stations
54 stations open today
33 named lost lines

Cheshire has 145 miles of disused railway and 92 closed stations, against 54 stations still open today. More stations have closed here than remain: 1.7 lost for every one still served. The longest lost line is the Whitchurch and Tattenhall Branch, with 12 miles of its route inside Cheshire.

See Cheshire’s lost railways on the map

The map opens on the county with the disused lines and closed stations drawn over today’s network. Tap any closed station for its history, or any grey line for its name.

What is left of it

The 145 miles of lost railway in Cheshire break down as 115 miles with the track lifted and the trackbed still traceable, 17 miles built over or ploughed out, with little or no trace left and 13 miles with track still in place but no trains. These are OpenStreetMap’s own distinctions, made by the people who surveyed each stretch, so a line can appear under more than one state along its length.

Lost railway lines in Cheshire

33 named lines with disused track in the county, longest stretch first. The mileage is the part inside Cheshire; a line crossing the border is counted on both sides.

Line	Miles in county
Whitchurch and Tattenhall Branch	12
Manchester Ship Canal Railway	8.7
Macclesfield, Bollington and Marple Railway	7.4
Skelton Junction to Ditton Junction Line	7.3
Nantwich and Market Drayton Railway	6.5
Winsford Branch	6.1
Hooton and West Kirby Line	5.7
Wigan Junction Line	5.3
Widnes Branch	4.9
Fiddlers Ferry Power Station Lines	4.4
West Cheshire Line	3.9
Sandbach to Stoke Line	3.3
The Salt Line	3.2
Crewe to Derby Line	2.9
St Helens & Runcorn Gap Railway	2.9
Churnet Valley Line	2.9
Deansgate (Manchester) and Dee Marsh (near Chester) Line	2.9
Eaton Hall Railway	2.7
Chester and Connah's Quay Curve	2.6
Warrington Avoiding Line	2.2
Biddulph Valley Line	2.1
Salt Branches	2.1
Middlewich Branch	1.7
Royal Ordnance Factory Risley	1.6
Carterhouse Junction to West Deviation Junction Line	1.4
Audley Line	1.2
Runcorn Dock Branch	1.0
Over and Wharton Branch Line	0.9
Bolton and Kenyon Line	0.7
Trubshaw Siding	0.7
Chester to Mold Line	0.5
Warrington Goods Depot	0.4
Middlewood Curve	0.4

Closed railway stations in Cheshire

All 92 closed and former stations in Cheshire, A to Z. Each name opens the map on the station; the Wikipedia link, where there is one, has its history.

Stations still open in Cheshire

54 stations in Cheshire still have a train service. The busiest are Chester (5.3 million a year), Crewe (3.4 million a year), Macclesfield (1.5 million a year), Warrington Bank Quay (1.5 million a year) and Warrington Central (1.3 million a year). Every one has its own page, with the stations you can reach from it directly and how often the trains run: see the A to Z of stations.

Lost railways nearby

Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Flintshire, Wrexham, Denbighshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Derbyshire.

About these figures

The disused lines are the stretches OpenStreetMap records as disused, abandoned, razed or dismantled railway, measured segment by segment and given to the county each segment lies in. The closed stations are Wikidata’s record of British railway stations no longer in service, kept where they are not within a few hundred metres of a station still open. County boundaries are today’s ceremonial counties, with unitary authorities folded into the county they sit in, from the Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0; contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2024). Historic county lines were different, and a closed station a mile over the border is on the neighbouring page.

Every county · About the disused lines layer · About the closed stations