St Helens

[M60lad]

Does anybody have any information on the St Helens Central-Ormskirk service and when it was actually closed and lifted, was this an actual passenger line or was it a goods line

Is there a reason why the railway bridge on Haresfinch Road is still in place as I'm sure the railway that goes over it isnt in use anymore I know the Wigan line doesnt go over it as this bends right just before the bridge

 

[flymo]

Pieces of info and pictures here

Links to other stations on the line on that webpage

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I think that the station at Skelmersdale, that featured in a very recent debate thread on this forum, was one of the stations on that line.

 

[flymo]

Is there a reason why the railway bridge on Haresfinch Road is still in place as I'm sure the railway that goes over it isnt in use anymore I know the Wigan line doesn't go over it as this bends right just before the bridge

Looking at Google Earth I wonder if it was to serve the Pilkington factory adjacent to the line just over the bridge. May have been used for deliveries and distribution at one point. Is it still??
On street view you can see the 4.5M (15ft) bridge has certainly had a few bashes in its time.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Sorry for not coming back sooner, but I saw the information that flymo had posted, so I thought that my old collection of railway books needed dusting off, to see if I could add anything further to this. Your posting referred to a goods line, so I have found the following information on a single track goods line in that area.

Working on the principle that the line that you describe was the St.Helens to Ormskirk line, via Rainford Junction, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway put in a single line link which bypassed Rainford Junction station, to connect the St. Helens line and the Ormskirk line, but this was specifically for the use of goods trains only. There were never scheduled passenger services on this single line link.

There was nothing like the internet in my early days, so I have retained all my collection of long out-of-print railway historical books (I even came across a 1927 bound volume of Stanley Gibbons Commonwealth and World Stamps during this search, that I thought I had lost many years ago).