I love watching this route from Manchester Victoria to Liverpool Lime Street as it brings back so many Happy Memories of the years gone by. I'm a Born and Bred Mancunian who has lived in the North East for the past 30 Plus years also my Parents & Family moved from Manchester many moons ago to reside in a picturesque little village called Lowton about 8/9 miles down the East Lancashire Road towards Haydock Park. Every other Saturday Morning i used to board the early train from Darlington to Manchester Victoria and meet up with Mates outside the Station and we would make our way over to Maine Road to watch Gods own Football Team, after the Match they would walk me back to Manchester Victoria Station and i would jump on the Liverpool Lime Street bound train and get off at Newton Le Willows, then i would jump on a bus outside Newton Station which would take me those last 2 miles of my journey to My Parents Home where i would stay overnight before doing the reverse Journey back to the North East the following day (Sunday). When that Darlington to Manchester Train pulled into Victoria Station it always made me feel so good about myself as i knew in my heart that i was back Home with only that short train ride to Newton Le Willows meaning i was back with all My Family, but it was also vice-versa as i had my own Wife & Kids waiting to greet me on my return journey at Darlington Station on the Sunday Afternoon. These days it's easier to drive to the Etihad Stadium usually with 3/4 Grandkids in tow than it would be to take them and myself on the train, it's strange how none of my own 4 Children support Manchester City but all 6 of my Grandchildren are Man City Fanatics.
29:20 St. Helen's Junction. 37:15 Rainhill and the Skew Bridge. The first house on the right past the bridge is called Ashdown and George Stephenson lived there during the construction of this part of the line. My Aunt owned this house and the family congregated in the garden to watch the 150th year commemoration of the Rainhill Steam Trials in 1979 which lasted several days, and included a running replica of Rocket and some of the other engines. An unforgettable experience !
Rainhill is 37 minutes in, with the attractive skew bridge just beyond, one of the many original Liverpool and Manchester Railway structures surviving.
Thanks for uploading this , travelled on that line from Huyton to Edge hill every day for 12 years , also ,(as I now live in NI ), you have solved a mystery for me too . why the track is only going to be quadrupled from Broad green to Huyton . Because the new ( 1970's)road bridge at Queens drive Isn't Long enough and the M62 on ramp cuts the station in half ! short sightedness 70's planning strikes again !!
Got "bombed" going down whiston bank ,A breeze block came wizzing into the cab,managed to get to lime st in a state of shock, The "specky"said,," just look at the damage to the train!",,never bothered about me!
great vid,i travel this line 100s of times and never see half of this stuff,i remember the end of last summer when we had the floods,and the driver had to keep on getting out to use the lineside phone,very funny,you have to love the liverpool cuttings and tunnels,still un chaned from the steam days.
I did this journey Twice a day in 1990 for six weeks when I was in the Manchester Victoria Signalling School. A 142 off Platform 11, usually Packed, like a tin of Sardines 😊.
brilliant video, liked and faved! i was suprised i wasn't standing on the end of roby station signalling to the drivers to give he a 2 tone! once again excellent vid, can't wait for more :)
that was an interesting observation , I never knew this memorial existed , the first of hundreds of thousands to die on the tracks ultimately , I was involved more than ten during my railway service.....................marty
That's a great bit of history, thank you. I read an account of the incident. Huskisson was attending the 15 September 1830 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He was run over in a freak accident by Stephenson's "Rocket."
Not actually true, we say he was the first passenger to be killed, or "The first person that mattered"... But there were dozens killed before him. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(before_1880)
At 30:50 you can see the first bridge carrying one railway over another in the world. It was part of the St Helens and Runcorn Gap Railway. The bridge was demolished when the line was electrified. Remains of the bridge to the south of the line were demolished to make way for a new housing estate. I don't understand when you have this unique piece of railway history and you just throw it away like that.
just came over from the Carlisle-to-Newcastle run. When they searched my luggage, they found a lump of coal and kicked me off the train. Anyway, I hope to complete this journey...BTW does this train stop at Tucumcari?
Filmed this is August 1987 and again in Sept 1989 from Liverpool Lime St to York and Scarborough, not changed much, well a lot of railway as disappeared
Im gonna be traveling over the whole Liverpool and Manchester route next month. Reason im waiting till then is cause Im riding over the route behind a steam train, Ex LMS Black 5 number 45305 or Ex BR Class 7 pacific number 70013 Oliver Cromwell.
fascinating viewing, railway action doesn't get much more intense than this... however it was bloody annoying that I had to keep on fast forwarding the bits where the video kept on freezing (07.38, 10.25 etc). video editing software is easy to use these days
Newton-le-Willows station at 21:50 was built in 1845. The Earlestown station buildings at 24:33 were built in 1835, and is regarded to be the oldest train station still in use today. These are not the original buildings, they replaced the original 1830 station. I don't know if George Stephenson designed these, I can't find that information, but at 26:37 is the Sankey Viaduct (aka the Nine Arches Viaduct) and that _is_ designed by George Stephenson.
It runs to Liverpool Docks via Bootle Junction where it runs parallel for a short distance Merseyrail's Northern Line to Southport. The tunnel and junction you see is part of a Y formation, the other leg of the Y being the junction to the right at 56.02, beyond the station the train stops at after the tunnel you mention. At Bootle Junction there is a link between the docks line and the Northern Line, plus a branch to the disused Aintree line via Bootle. The docks line is regularly used by biomass trains to Drax power station, container traffic and scrap trains. The new class 777s are delivered via the docks line joining the Merseyrail network at Bootle Junction.
It sounds like a class 150 or 156. It's odd that there are two non electrified routes to liverpool from manchester, I guess the one via trafford/warrington is faster.
This is the north route, and it's about 15 mins faster than the south/Warrington route now that trans pennine express run the 185 class express to Newcastle from lime street, stopping at MCV (~30 mins compared to 44). The north route was also the first modern railway in the world, and the site of the Rainhill Trials.
The last 4 minutes are so typical of Lime St access : a somewhat Piranesian landscape, or some underground line found by archeologists after The Big Earthquake, or WW III, who knows…
Martin Hodgson so the Windsor link must have been wired too, if I remember correctly the line from Picc to Oxford Road was done a long while back but was unused by electric trains, any idea why?
The line to Oxford Road was used by electric trains running to Altrincham on what is now the Metrolink line. The freight terminal at Trafford Park is also electrified so the line through Oxford Road saw electric freight trains even if no electric passenger trains ran until Chat Moss was done.
