Disused railway lines and closed stations in Lancashire

179 miles of disused railway
134 closed stations
62 stations open today
49 named lost lines

Lancashire has 179 miles of disused railway and 134 closed stations, against 62 stations still open today. More stations have closed here than remain: 2.2 lost for every one still served. The longest lost line is the Skipton and Wennington Line, with 13 miles of its route inside Lancashire.

See Lancashire’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 179 miles of lost railway in Lancashire break down as 139 miles with the track lifted and the trackbed still traceable, 26 miles built over or ploughed out, with little or no trace left, 13 miles with track still in place but no trains and 0.7 miles dismantled. 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 Lancashire

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

Line	Miles in county
Skipton and Wennington Line	13
Southport and Preston Line	12
Garstang and Knot-End Railway	11
Blackburn to Chorley Line	7.3
Preston Deepdale Branch	6.8
North Lancashire Loop	6.7
Altcar and Hillhouse Branch	5.8
Glasson Branch	5.7
Skelmersdale Branch	5.6
Marton Line	5.2
Cheshire Lines Railway	4.6
Bacup Branch	4.0
Clifton, Accrington & Colne Line	3.4
Fleetwood Branch	3.2
Tramway	3.0
Ingleton Branch	2.9
Clifton Junction to Accrington Line	2.7
Lostock Hall Junction to Preston Fishergate via Skew Bridge Line	2.6
Rochdale to Bacup Line	2.5
Hoddlesden Branch	2.3
Facit Branch	2.1
Mineral Railway	2.1
Wyre Dock (Fleetwood) and Poulton-Le-Fylde Branch	2.1
Barnoldswick Railway	1.9
Preston and Wyre Joint Railway	1.7
Whittingham Asylum Railway	1.6
Skipton & Colne	1.6
Fleetwood Branch Line	1.4
Bradkirk Tip	1.2
Kirkby Inland Sorting Depot	1.2
Ellerbeck Branch	1.1
Blackpool and Lytham Railway	1.1
Farington Curve Junction and Hall Royd (Burnley) Junction Line	1.1
Kirkham and Blackpool South Branch	1.0
Padiham to Rose Grove Branch	0.9
Penwortham Junction to Preston (West Lancs) Line	0.8
Boars Head to Adlington Branch	0.7
Burscough Curves	0.7
Moss Lane Junction to Lostock Hall Engine Shed Junction	0.7
Bamber Bridge Sidings	0.6

And 9 shorter stretches: Heapey Bleachworks, Burn Naze Sidings, Lancaster Castle Branch, Lower Darwen Colliery Tramway, Miley Tunnel, St Lukes Junction to Pool Hey Junction Line, Torrisholme Junction No 1 to Torrisholme Junction No 2, Poulton Curve and Lancaster Quay Branch.

Closed railway stations in Lancashire

All 134 closed and former stations in Lancashire, 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 Lancashire

62 stations in Lancashire still have a train service. The busiest are Preston (5.4 million a year), Ormskirk (2.3 million a year), Lancaster (2.2 million a year), Blackpool North (2.1 million a year) and Blackburn (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, West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and Cumbria.

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