Disused railway lines and closed stations in Merseyside

121 miles of disused railway
115 closed stations
82 stations open today
49 named lost lines

Merseyside has 121 miles of disused railway and 115 closed stations, against 82 stations still open today. More stations have closed here than remain: 1.4 lost for every one still served. The longest lost line is the Liverpool North Extension Railway, with 9.6 miles of its route inside Merseyside.

See Merseyside’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 121 miles of lost railway in Merseyside break down as 74 miles with the track lifted and the trackbed still traceable, 32 miles built over or ploughed out, with little or no trace left and 15 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 Merseyside

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

Line	Miles in county
Liverpool North Extension Railway	9.6
Hooton and West Kirby Line	6.2
Cheshire Lines Railway	5.8
North Mersey Branch	5.6
Chester and Rock Ferry Line	5.3
Haydock Park Branch	5.0
Hunts Cross East Junction to Southport Lord Street Branch	4.9
St Helens and Rainford Line	4.6
Birkenhead Dock Branch	2.7
Blackbrook Branch	2.7
Haydock Colliery Railway	2.5
Southport and Preston Line	2.5
St Helens & Runcorn Gap Railway	2.4
St Helens Line	2.4
Storeton Quarries Railway	2.4
Kirkby Industrial Estate	2.3
Alexandra (Langton Docks) Branch	2.2
Chester and Birkenhead Railway	1.9
Huskisson Branch	1.8
Victoria Tunnel	1.6
Bankfield Goods Branch	1.3
St Lukes Junction to Pool Hey Junction Line	1.2
Wapping Tunnel	1.2
Havannah Branch	1.1
Waterloo Independent Lines	1.1
Garston Curve	1.0
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway	0.9
Ravenhead Branch	0.9
Hunts Cross to Southport Line	0.7
Liverpool Overhead Railway	0.7
Mersey Dock & Harbour Board Main Line	0.7
Pocket Nook Branch	0.7
Speke Junction and Church Road Junction (Garston) Branch	0.7
Birkenhead Goods Extension Line	0.7
Sandhills Junction and Ormskirk Line	0.7
Altcar and Hillhouse Branch	0.6
Fazakerley West Curve	0.6
Aintree Metal Box Sidings	0.6
Weaver Junction and Liverpool Line	0.6
Edge Hill Junction to Park Lane Goods	0.5

And 9 shorter stretches: Linacre Gas Works Branch, Sutton Oak Branch, Waterloo Tunnel, Aintree Curve, Monk's Ferry Extension Line, Olive Mount Junction to Edge Hill Junction (Wapping Branch), Sutton Oak Junction to St Helens Junction, Rainford Village Line and Seaforth Container Terminal Branch.

Closed railway stations in Merseyside

All 115 closed and former stations in Merseyside, 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 Merseyside

82 stations in Merseyside still have a train service. The busiest are Liverpool Central (14.8 million a year), Liverpool Lime Street (14.4 million a year), Moorfields (6.6 million a year), Southport (3.8 million a year) and Liverpool James Street (3.1 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

Flintshire, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire and Denbighshire.

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