Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request Birkenhead Park Railway Station

My Auntie lived next to this station, in the 1960s- how many tracks were in place here then, and are there any photographs available of the station?

Mmmm... Difficult to describe without a pic/scan (can do neither sorry) but.... From a bird's eye view over the whole station, from north to south you had:-

Stabling siding (no platform access)
Loop siding accessed from platform
Main line to H.Square accessed from platform
Main line from H.Square accessed from platform
Loop siding accessed from platform.
Stabling siding (no platform access.)

Soooooo.. you had six parallel tracks in total. This was c1968. Info from:-
Mersey Railway Electric Stock.
Signal Transport Papers.
by Cull & Prigmore. 1968

Hope this is of help.

This is the track layout through Birkenhead Park Station in the 1940s, which is as Pinzgauer described, it remained similar to this until the 1970s when the layout was changed several times, ending up with a single, widened island platform with just two tracks by the 1990s.

Here you go, two pictures from May 1961, one of B-head North and one of Park Station May 1961.



b-head north below.


Thanks to the website Wikimedia Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Thanks for that- just goes to show- you don't always know what was there before

& here's the layout in 1910 when it was a joint Wirral Railway/ Mersey Railway station.

Use to have the nickname "Pneumonia Junction" because of sulphorous problems occurred by the sufferers in the tunnel.

Just one other question on this area- coming back from Conway Park, just before exiting the tunnel, I noticed what looked like a disused spur going off to the right- has anyone any information on this

The disused spur you noticed was provided when the line opened as the starting point of a projected link to the docks.

The plan was for goods to be taken across the river. What is now the start of the new Loop line before James Street station was to have been the start of the connection to the dock lines in Liverpool. There is another "blind" tunnel on the Birkenhead bound side of the tunnel at this point which was part of the same scheme.

It was calculated that the maximum loading of freight trains would have been too little to be economic so the plan was dropped.

to KeithS

Thanks for that info!