The Wirral line is one of two commuter rail routes operated by Merseyrail and centred on Merseyside, England, the other being the Northern line.
The Wirral line connects Liverpool to the Wirral Peninsula via the Mersey Railway Tunnel, with branches to New Brighton, West Kirby, Chester and Ellesmere Port. Beneath Liverpool, the line follows a clockwise circular route in a single-track tunnel called the Loop, built in the early 1970s.
The Wirral line has carried its present name since the opening of the Merseyrail network by Queen Elizabeth II on 25 October 1978, during the British Rail period. The Wirral line is fully electrified with a DC third rail, and has existed in its current form since May 1994 with the start of electric services to . A total of 34 stations are served, with connections available to mainline services at , , and . The line also connects with the Northern line of the Merseyrail network at and .
History The Wirral line was not originally conceived as a single route, but uses several railway lines built by individual private railway companies. Even after the Grouping Act of 1921, three of the Big Four companies were active on the Wirral Peninsula until the nationalisation of the railways in 1948, when all four were absorbed into British Railways. During the 1970s, under British Rail, the Merseyrail network was developed. Privatisation during the 1990s has resulted in services once again being run by private operators.
Pre-grouping
Chester and Birkenhead Railway
Part of the Chester and Birkenhead Railway forms the oldest section of today's Wirral line. The route between the two settlements was surveyed by George Stephenson in 1830, but the railway company itself was not incorporated until 12 July 1837, after a previous bill had been rejected a few months earlier. Between 1830 and 1837, an alternative route was surveyed by Francis Giles, but Stephenson's plans were favoured. Construction work started in May 1838 and was allocated to three different contractors. By October 1839, over 900navvies and 40horses were employed on the southern of the route, which included the construction of Mollington Viaduct over the Shropshire Union Canal at Moston, now Grade II listed. In 2011 this viaduct underwent strengthening work at a cost of around £800,000. The total cost of the railway was around £513,000, more than double the original estimate of £250,000, and the full length of opened as a single-track line on 23 September 1840 between temporary termini at Grange Lane in Birkenhead and Brook Street in Chester, close to the present location of Chester railway station. The inaugural service was operated by locomotive "The Wirral", taking 50minutes to travel the length of the line from Birkenhead. In 1842, the company purchased Monks Ferry station and extended the railway north from Grange Lane to reach the new combined rail and ferry terminal, which opened on 23 October 1844. On 22 July 1847, the line was merged with the Birkenhead, Lancashire and Cheshire Railway into the Birkenhead, Lancashire and Cheshire Junction Railway, who doubled the track. Chester General station opened a year later on 1 August 1848, still extant today as the southern terminus of the Wirral line and renamed to simply "Chester" in 1969 following the closure of Chester's other station, Chester Northgate. In 1859, the Birkenhead, Lancashire and Cheshire Junction Railway shortened its name to become the Birkenhead Railway, but was taken over in 1860 by the Great Western Railway (GWR) and the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), who operated the line as a joint affair known as the Birkenhead Joint Railway. Birkenhead Woodside station opened on 31 March 1878 as a new terminus to replace the facilities at Monks Ferry. To connect the new station to the railway, a tunnel was dug using the cut and cover method.
Wirral Railway
On 28 July 1863, the Hoylake Railway was incorporated due to the Hoylake Railway Act 1863 being granted royal assent, which authorised the construction of a railway line between Birkenhead and Hoylake. A single track line was constructed between and (adjacent to Wallasey Bridge Road), and the railway opened to passengers on 2 July 1866. The railway had ambitious plans that included the construction of a bridge across the Dee Estuary to join the LNWR North Wales Coast Line at Mostyn, but due to financial difficulties the company went into receivership on 13 February 1869. The railway was bought by the Hoylake and Birkenhead Tramway Company, who passed a bill for a new tramway from the Bridge Road station to Woodside Ferry Terminal on 18 July 1872. The Hoylake Railway reopened on 1 August 1872, and in 1878 was extended to West Kirby to the west and an interchange with the tramway and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board railway system to the east where Birkenhead Dock station had been built. The tramway was sold to the Birkenhead Tramways Company on 11 October 1879 which was already operating other tramways in Birkenhead. On 18 July 1881, the railway became the Seacombe, Hoylake & Deeside Railway Company and acts were passed for lines to , Deeside and Warren Drive, later extended to New Brighton. Before these extensions were complete, the railway became the Wirral Railway Company and a decision was made to double the track as far as the western terminus at West Kirby.
Whilst the new lines to Seacombe and New Brighton were being surveyed and built, a new joint company, later to become the North Wales and Liverpool Railway Company (NW&LR), took over the construction of the Deeside line due to a lack of Wirral Railway funds. The planned NW&LR route would pass through the heart of the Wirral Peninsula from on the Wirral Railway to in Flintshire, Wales where it would meet the Chester and Connah's Quay Railway and the Wrexham, Mold and Connah's Quay Railway (WM&CQR). The North Wales and Liverpool Railway opened for passengers on 18 May 1896, but powers to extend the service from Bidston to the more appealing destination of Seacombe were not granted until 1898. The NW&LR and WM&CQR were both acquired by the Great Central Railway (GCR) on 1 January 1905, and due to a high level of goods traffic the GCR opened a new connection to the docks in 1907 as part of what forms the now-disused Birkenhead Dock Branch. Today, the railway from Bidston to Hawarden Bridge forms the northern part of the Borderlands line which is the only railway line on the Wirral that does not form a part of the present-day Wirral line.
Mersey Railway
The first proposal to connect Birkenhead and Liverpool by a rail tunnel was made in 1864 by the Liverpool and Birkenhead Railway Company. The bill received the support of the chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board and of John Laird, the Member of Parliament for Birkenhead at the time, although ultimately it was unsuccessful due to strong opposition from the LNWR. A second tunnel proposal was made in 1865 by Sir Charles Fox, who planned to build a single track pneumatic railway under the Mersey between the two settlements. The Mersey Railway Act 1866 was passed, although the project was hindered with knowledge of engineering difficulties and limitations with pneumatic railways in other parts of the country. On 22 December 1869, Fox held a meeting with Liverpool businessmen and merchants where it was decided that the pneumatic single track railway would be substituted with a conventional steam double track line. Powers for the Mersey Railway Company to build a steam railway were granted in 1871 as well as those to extend the original planned route to connect with the joint Great Western and London and North Western railway at .
A contract was made with John Dickson to raise the necessary funding and then construct the railway, but he soon became bankrupt. Work on constructing the tunnel did not commence until December 1879 when a preliminary contract was entered with Major Samuel Isaac, a London businessman, to dig a pilot tunnel for determining the nature of the strata beneath the Mersey. Isaac subcontracted the construction work to John Waddell & Sons of Edinburgh who appointed James Brunlees and Charles Douglas Fox, eldest son of Sir Charles Fox, as engineers in chief. Two shafts were dug in the grounds of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board for the pilot tunnel - one in Birkenhead with a diameter of and the other in Liverpool of diameter . It was determined that there was an almost uninterrupted stratum of red sandstone beneath the river and as a result construction began in August 1881, before the pilot bore had been completed.
A total of three tunnels were constructedthe main railway tunnel, a ventilation tunnel and a drainage tunnel. The railway tunnel was horseshoe shaped and bored to a width of and height of for two standard gauge tracks. With six layers of brickwork through sandstone and eight courses through clay, a total of around 38million bricks were required. The drainage tunnel sloped down from the centre to pumping shafts on each side of the river each deep, lined with cast iron through water-bearing strata, and with a capacity of of water. Whilst water was encountered during the construction work, it was not a serious problem and the ground under the riverbanks was found to be wetter than that under the river itself. The ventilation tunnel is in diameter and was bored parallel to the main tunnel. In 1883, the rate of work was greatly improved with the deployment of a Beaumont Cutter which was a compressed air boring machine invented by Colonel Frederick Beaumont of the Royal Engineers.
Liverpool Pumping Station was built adjacent to George's Dock and contained a pair of pumps connected to a steam engine. On the opposite bank of the river Shore Road Pumping Station was constructed in Birkenhead. The pumping plants were designed with the capacity to deal with up to four-times the amount of water that entered the drainage tunnel and subsequently the pumping shafts. Steam-driven ventilating fans were installed at James Street, Shore Road and midway between and . The fans combined could draw out of the tunnel of air per minute which meant a complete change of air in the tunnel every seven minutes.
At the start of 1884 construction work was pushed ahead with 1,400 men and 177 horses underground. On 17 January of the same year, two tunnel headings met from the Birkenhead shaft. A ceremony marked this occasion with Henry Cecil Raikes PC, Major Isaac, Colonel Beaumont, James Brunlees, Charles Douglas Fox, Robert Paterson (Mayor of Birkenhead) and David Radcliffe (Mayor of Liverpool) present. The tunneling work was complete by the end of 1885 and thousands of members of the public took the opportunity to walk through the gaslit tunnel ahead of its official opening.
King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales performed the opening ceremony on 20 January 1886, accompanied by Prince Albert Victor and Prince George, later to become King George V. All three had spent the previous night at Eaton Hall and travelled on the Royal Train between and Rock Ferry where the locomotive was swapped for a Mersey Railway 0-6-4 tank engine and a temporary connection to the Mersey Railway traversed ahead of the journey through the tunnel to Liverpool. At , the Prince inaugurated the railway in James Street before attending a meal at Liverpool Town Hall. The first Mersey Railway passenger service ran ten days later on 1 February 1886. Around 36,000 passengers travelled on the railway on the first day of service and 2.5million passengers were carried during the first six months.