Here’s another good image of Hoylake yesteryear kindly sent in by Paul Doleman.
A GMS (?) steam train pulling into Hoylake station in the days when there would have been a chap in the signal box (cabin) manually operating the level crossing. Care to put a date to this photo?
Incidentally, I could be wrong but I think I saw some workmen putting up security fencing along the steps of the footbridge. No doubt this is an attempt to stop people from climbing off the footbridge and onto the station roof. This is what happening only a couple of weeks ago in an incident that involved numerous emergency services. Anyway, I should be going past there tomorrow so I’ll double check.
Great photo! Obviously a long time after it was taken, I remember as a child watching the signalman spinning what looked rather like a ships wheel to open and close the gates there. That was in the sixties, and could well have continued into the seventies. Didn’t a train once run into the closed gates accidentally, more or less demolishing them?
A train maybe , but I do remember a steam roller flattening a closed gate some years ago !
Of course, it was a steamroller, I remember now! I believe they were pretty difficult to bring to a stop once they were charging along at a relentless 3 or 4 mph….
Possibly LMS???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Midland_and_Scottish_Railway
This would probably have been before 1937 when the line was electrified, though some steam trains ran after that date to take coal to Hoylake Gas works and West Kirby coal yards
Did steam powered coa; trains run from Chester to West Kirby, and did passenger trains run east from West Kirby? This would have beenin the 1940s, and 50 s.
Yes, the steam trains ran along what is now the Wirral Way and when I was a child the Queen famously used the line right through to Birkenhead, using a steam train, in the early 50’s
To clarify , I only saw goods trains on the ‘Wirral Way’ . The Royal Train was , I presume , a one off special carrying the new Queen on a Royal Tour or to a particular occasion .
I remember well waiting at the back of St.Bridget’s Primary School with all the other students and waving at the “Royal Train” hoping to catch a glimpse of the Queen. All we saw was a kitchen hand at the back of the train waving too all the kids – He must have felt like royalty himself.
The Queen’s visit was in 1957. I remember that a steam train still travelled along the line from West Kirby towards Bidston or Birkenhead at least as late as 1962. I don’t know if it had started along the Hooton-West Kirby line as I thought that had closed by then.
I lived in Hilbre Road West Kirby as a child (born 1944) and the line from WK to Chester ran along the back of the house and they were both passenger and goods trains. My dad would take me regularly from Kirby Park station to Parkgate to watch the cricket and I was fascinated watching the coal trucks deliver to Temples coal yard. Thecsteam trains joined the Chester line at Hooton I think?
I used to work in this signal box in a previous employment and your right as well as the signals there was a big rotating wheel for the level crossing somehow the up and down trains never came to the platform together hard work for 10 hours
Photo is between 1923, when the Wirral Railway was merged into the LMS (locomotive has LMS written on its side tank), and 1938, when the electric lines were installed. I am guessing it is close to 1938 because it appears to be taken from the south side of the steps of the new concrete footbridge that was built in 1937, along with the rebuilding of the station with the concrete buildings as part of the electrification investment. All these structures are still there. I don’t think there was a footbridge before this time.
The locomotive is a Webb Coal Tank, originally from the large London & North Western Railway, built in the late 19th century. They were drafted in to the old Wirral Railway’s routes after the merger when the Wirral’s own old steam locomotives were finished. The locomotive depot was at Birkenhead North, where the electric train depot is nowadays.
The line from Liverpool through the tunnel out to Birkenhead Park was a separate independent railway until 1948, the Mersey railway, it had electric trains since shortly after 1900. Everyone had to change trains at Birkenhead Park onto the steam trains which came out to West Kirby, until 1938 when this part of the line was changed over and then electric trains ran right through, like they do now.
I could be corrected over this but I think the last passenger steam train left West Kirby for Hooton in September 1956 and the last goods train left in May 1962 with the track being removed for the Wirral Way to be opened in 1973. Apparently King George Vl also travelled along the line sometime during the late 40’s but I haven’t been able to confirm this.
It’s time to bring steam back to the Wirral Way, and it can be done without upsetting the cyclists and walkers.
I’ve just visited the Avon Valley Railway, which runs for three miles along part of a much longer closed line. Most of the original length of the line is footpath very like the Wirral Way, and where the railway is running, the footpath runs alongside.
Hadlow Road – Hooton is the obvious choice, with stations still present and no obstacles built in the way.
West Kirby – Thurstaston could also work with a bit of bridge restoration.
Any thoughts?