Liverpool Overhead Railway. Why ? Did They Close It.
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- An often asked question is why did they close the liverpool overhead railway.
A line that carried thousands in its day & would now be a major tourist attraction. The answer is not what most mistakely believe
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I think what made Liverpool a tourist destination was nostalgia for The Beatles.
Yes tourism is very Beatles led in Liverpool with a lot of tourists doing the Beatles trail , visiting homes & venues. It's somewhat ironic that the Caven club was demolished during the building of the Merseyrail underground. There was no sense of history or anyone to think of Liverpool as a tourist destination back then.
Ace video MW and sound analysis of the situation in 1956. My old man who was pretty well connected in the City, said it was ultimately the MDHB who sealed it's fate, but I'll defer to your wider knowledge and research. I really enjoyed that, a real Friday treat. Cheers.
The MDHB passed the buck very early on. It was they that wanted the railway in the first place. But they offered the opportunity for others to build & run it as they didn't see themselves as a railway company. Though they were ok with running the railways in & around the docks. That same excuse was given when closure loomed
Very interesting to know about how Liverpool used to have its very own overground railway above Liverpool. Before it went underground. Very interesting.
It mostly served the dockland area but served it's purpose during it's lifetime. The Merseyrail underground was to provide a better link up than the overhead could have done
True. Totally agree 👍
Excellent, most informative, thank you.
Thank you Frank, shame it's gone
Basically it only served the docks and its usefulness was destroyed by a failure to expand at either end. Once it didn’t , in addition to the lack of maintenance on the metal work, the virtual total destruction of the docks along that stretch, the move to containerisation and deep water ports meant the workforce disappeared overnight. And with no workforce 3/4 of your passengers disappeared
All correct. Empty trains wouldn't have paid the bills. The owners made the right decision
Never knew there was an overhead railway in Liverpool before it went underground and underneath the River Mersey. Fabulous stuff.
The line under the Mersey came before the Overhead railway. The Mersey railway opened in 1886. Though it was steam operated until 1903, ua-cam.com/video/wZdWkdw2V6c/v-deo.htmlsi=TsBt68KH8kFtbwmS . The overhead went underground at Dingle for a short length but it was never connected to the Mersey railway. It did join what is now the Northern line at Seaforth and Litherland. ua-cam.com/video/uTS5EVH2kWo/v-deo.htmlsi=nayO_vIdIiLHMMCO
Many people assumed that The Ovie or The Dockers Umbrella was run by The Council, it was not, it was run privately by The Liverpool Overhead Railway Company.
It's a mistake that many people keep making. I complied this video in an attempt to educate people on who actually closed it. I've no doubt though that the council will still be blamed for it. They have made many mistakes but closing the overhead wasn't one they can be blamed for
Very interesting as usual. Love your videos. I wonder if a scheme to build a monorail system could be viable, particularly for tourism. It could start at Dingle Station with some work being done to turn it into a Hub for tourism and therefore retain some of the history of the line. The monorail could easily operate through the tunnel and then open out onto an elevated track that could follow the existing LOR a route. Since it would be a monorail utilising a concrete structure and the train running on rubber tyres wheels. This system works very well in the Florida Disneyland monorail shuttle service and being concrete, the structure is weather resistant cheap and reliable. The footprint of the stanchions is tiny which would allow the rail system to be built along any existing road route. Including linking up with one of the Merseyrail stations in the North like the old LOR used to. They could even route the monorail around the Albert Dock and even along the seafront … just imagine the potential for that.
Of course no one is willing to put their hands in their pocket. Imagine the extra jobs created and the foreigners would love it. With the proposed new station at the Baltic Triangle it’s proximity to Dingle would be worth considering as a bonus too.
I have seen a video proposing such a monorail . Its funding would be a issue I suspect. It's taken over 50 years to get a station to Headbolt lane. A visionary private company would have to build such a line. Waiting for council & government to agree would probably take another 50 years
Monorails didn’t save Springfield or North Haverbrook. They are not going to save Liverpool.
Cracking Video
Thanks Tony hopefully it will correct a few misconceptions
Let's gooooo! Merseywailers rise up! :)
Cheers, this video might be informative to people. Liverpool council have made many mistakes, but they can't be blamed for the overhead closing
Firstly the LOR was a PRIVATE COMPANY. They didnt, or couldnt invest the sums needed to upgrade .
The figure of £2 million was quoted but dont forget this was 1956 prices, nowadays more like £100 million. That sum would have been needed for other council services.
The. city council could not afford to bail out a private company and the Conservative government refused to nationalise the LOR pointing to the parallel Liverpool -Southport line which was also s an early electric venture dating from 1902.
Liverpool Corporation decided to buy 50 new buses and start a new bus route 1, and 1A-1E between Dingle and Seaforh but the roads in Dingle were in need of reusuf ac ing as the Victorian cobbles would have damaged buses. Not only that but buses had to climb Dingle Mount where the LOR had a tunnel . Liverpool was also having to replace trams at the same time.
The LOR needed investment. The docks were also changing to and shipping moved north up river and the docks south of Pier Head gradually ran down. closing after the bankruptcy of the Meraey Docks and Harbour Board
The LOR could only with patching lasted until 1970as shipping declined. Much is made of the tourist potential but even the Mersey Ferries spend much of the year sailing with more crew than passengers in the winter months
The vista of derelict docks wod not have been appraling to tourists, not too many years after the closure there would have been little shipping to see, especially when the Atlantic liners ceased in the early 1970s.
The dock labour was whittled away fron 20000 to a few hundred by the end of the 20th century . More people drive cabs than there are sailors and dock workers nowadays
Even I as a child in the 1960s had to be told by my father about the LORs existence as no trace remained.
The MD and HB railway closed in 1973 after the company went bust I do eemember the railway line but by my childhood few trains ever ran south of Pier Head by then. Sadly when I was born the LOR was being demolished and the trams had gone Born too late for two pillars of Liverpool transport history.
@@paulmason329 unfortunately despite all the facts.that you have stated here. And the reality of the history of the overhead railway that I have presented in this video. We will still get people blaming the wrong targets for the closure. Mostly Liverpool City Council. Which is constantly & wrongly blamed for it's demise.
Bloody council trashing our heritage. The tourist would love it. 😅
I know they destroy everything 😆
The city could have had its own version of Canary Wharf, or some other flavour of dock redevelopment that fit Liverpool best.
Instead, we have crumbling buildings with windows smashed in, and (despite their heritage status) being willing to bulldoze iconic and under-maintained artefacts of Liverpool's history just to build a stadium for some billionaire wankers, sacrificing our city's world heritage status in the process.
Remember who our society actually serves. When HS2 is cancelled, when costs outgrow wages, when they say "we can't afford it"... *They bloody well can. They just don't want to.*
@@caramelldansen2204 something like that would have saved the overhead. Unfortunately we're in Liverpool. Now if it's was called London they would have thrown £billions at the city . A lot got fooled by leveling up, & more Will be if they think we we see more than a tiny percentage of the cancelled HS2 cash.
@@Merseywail Exactly! That HS2 money has already been spent, by the way! They lied.
@@caramelldansen2204 Yours is one of the most ignorant postings I have ever read on this subject. Name a single Listed Building demolished or bulldozed for development purposes in the last 25 years in the area? Every single conservation rule has enabled them to be saved and more importantly re-utilised. Indeed the Vice Chancellor of LJMU said that in Liverpool he got a 'bigger bang for the Buck' by taking over dilapidated Listed buildings for the college at bargain prices and getting an English Heritage grant to refurb them back and make money from them from the increased student roll he could cater for. The UNESCO WH Status was removed by a committee in New York which did not bother with the actual context of the WH site which has been maintained. It was the same Conservation and Listing Rules that helped actually create the UNESCO site.
I am no football fan, but the Bramley-Moore scheme assists economic development of both the Everton club and the area around both the new stadium and Goodison Park.
Then you switch to HS2. I was always opposed to it, I actually worked in the sector. Why? because it has nothing to do with UK rail infrastructure needs urban development. It was always part of the EU TEN-T White Elephant vanity schemes which suck the life out of regional railways by misallocation of budgets. .
The Germans bombed the hell out of it in the war and it was going to cost around 10 million to rebuild it. I travelled on it many times up to its closure in 1956.
Good historical assessment However, the Overhead was an eyesore. If it had survived and when the south and central docks were subject of massive redevelopment urban renewal it would have been a constraint to that. All 'elevated' intra-urban railways blight the area beneath them and often stop like a wall nearby improvements. In fact the Dock Wall was removed to connect the central city area to the Mersey and facilitate the massive improvements we have seen over the last 25 plus years. When the south and central docks and stages closed there was simply no point to it.
No - it would not have been a 'tourist attraction'. Liverpool was not a tourist destination when it existed and since it has become a tourist destination it is not missed and could fulfill no transport need.
Only rail nerds liked this thing. Myself, I am an enthusiast for mass rapid intra-urban rail systems and having looked at this line among all the other abandoned rail routes in the City region I doubt if it could have any role.
Since the implementation of the Merseyrail system, new intermediate stations have opened which service the littoral. 'Brunswick' and soon 'Baltic' do this to the south. 'Liverpool Waters' can be served by a re-opened Waterloo Tunnel and the Bramley-Moore Stadium can be reached from a Match Day platform on the Northern Line (Lancs-Yorks) viaduct from nearby.
When the overhead is mentioned there's a lot of rose tinted spectacle wearing wearing going on. As with a lot of abandoned railways. Yes it was ugly and it would have spoiled the views of the three 'Grace's'. Just the same as the Shankland plan elevated walkway's did. Thankfully they and the proposed motorway ring road were abandoned. The Merseyrail system made much more sense. Just a pity it wasn't built earlier. The overhead served it's purpose in its Day, but that day has gone
@@Merseywail Shankland and 'walkways in the sky' Ughh - the City of London have just removed the last one in the Barbican as well. I remember the one that crossed Roe Street / Gyratory from St John's to what was left of Queen's Square, it robbed us of the view of St George's Hall. However, I have just seen a Merseyrail video posted today and added a comment of 'about time Moorfields was rebuilt' because it still has that ridiculous remnant of a 'skywalk' of having to go from street level to First Floor to get the escalator down to the platforms! With the amount of redevelopment in the area it surely could be subject to a new building above which the developer could cover the cost of rearranging it all. As to closure of that entrance being a possible disruption, well there is the entrance and pedestrian tunnel from Old Hall/ Tithebarn Street to give access.
@@uingaeoc3905 that entrance is stupid. Made worse recently as the escalator up from the street, owned by the council not network rail. Was cleaned by some council clown using a pressure washer and they knackered the workings
@@Merseywail The issue is that the 'street' is owned-managed by the Council but the building is owned by Merseyrail/ Network rail. This could be sorted out with a third party investor. I am surprised that Merseyrail which has shown such initiative with Heabolt Lane, Battery 777 and Baltic with previous examples and more in the pipeline eg Bidston-Neston that they don't address this matter.
I understand that Merseyrail is going to take over from Network rail to simplify arrangements further.
I am old enough to to that I had many rides on the overhead. It was a shame when it closed. The LOR was in profit when it closed but could not afford to replace the decks which were rotting after years of steam trains passing underneath.