{"id":3694,"date":"2024-01-22T02:29:52","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T02:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/birkemheads-beautiful-bridge-1\/"},"modified":"2024-01-22T02:29:52","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T02:29:52","slug":"birkemheads-beautiful-bridge-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/birkemheads-beautiful-bridge-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Birkemhead’s Beautiful Bridge (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0But First, An Introdtuction<\/span><\/p>\n

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The little video is a snapshot of trains at Hamilton Square, the main and busiest station in Birkenhead. Its distinctive feature is its tower …\n
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… offering “frequent electric trains”. And they are frequent.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

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Hamilton Square is just along the road from the Woodside ferry terminal …\n
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… which was home to trams and later buses.<\/p>\n

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With the decline in the traditional “Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey” the Woodside interchange is but a shadow of its former self with just a smattering of Arriva buses as in this aerial shot.<\/p>\n

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Here a busy scene at Woodside today:-<\/p>\n

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Back at Hamilton Square and “down below” there are three platforms. One is for all trains into Liverpool and round the “loop”; the others are for a split in services to the Wirral coast …<\/div>\n
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… with each terminus having a 15 minute frequency.<\/p>\n

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The other platform handles the trains via Rock Ferry, once the terminus of the electric lines …<\/p>\n

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… with an old Mersey unit terminating and a diesel arriving from the south.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Now you trundle electrically all the way to Ellesmere Port or Chester.\n
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Here we have a train every 15 mon from Chester …<\/p>\n

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… and half hourly from Ellesmere Port.<\/p><\/div>\n

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There is also a “connecting service” from Bidston to Wrexham …\n
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… which runs at an infuriating and very forgettable every 45 minutes. fbb guesses that the line would carry more passengers if it could be configured to run every hour.<\/p><\/div>\n

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It is interesting (yes it is – don’t complain) to go back and see how it once was.<\/div>\n
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The line from Chester via Bidston was part of the Cheshire Lines Committee network..\n
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… trans ran through. Now they terminate on one side of the island platform.<\/p>\n

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They have to get out of the way quickly to avoid the 15 minute Merseyrail trains.<\/p>\n

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The West Kirby and Wallasey lines were operated by the Wirral Railway.<\/p><\/div>\n

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West Kirby is off the map left …<\/p>\n

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… and New brighton off the map top centre.\u00a0\n
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They both look like very sweet market town termini, a far cry from big city suburbia.<\/div>\n
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When we get into Birkenhead centre things get a bit more complicated.\n
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Black colour is for the Mersey Lines, carrying today’s yellow trains under the river. The dotted red\/yellow track is labelled Birkenhead Joint; see “Explanation” below.<\/p>\n

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There is also a now-closed branch to Seacombe.\n
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fbb’s particular interest at Birkenhead, however, is the network of yrack served historically by the Birkenhead Docks Lines.<\/div>\n
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There were plenty of twiddly bits which survived quite late in the history of the Birkenhead rail network.<\/div>\n
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And that other tower? The reveal is postponed until tomorrow …\n
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… where it fits better. It is called careful advance planning!”<\/p><\/div>\n\n

\u00a0Next Birkenhead bridges blog : Tues 23rd Jan\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0But First, An Introdtuction The little video is a snapshot of trains at Hamilton Square, the main and busiest station in Birkenhead. Its distinctive feature is its tower … … offering “frequent electric trains”. And they are frequent.\u00a0 Hamilton Square is just along the road from the Woodside ferry terminal … … which was home to trams and later buses.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}