Haydock Park railway station was a railway station adjacent to Haydock Park Racecourse, formerly in Lancashire and now in Merseyside, England.[4] The station's sole purpose was to handle race day traffic. It did not feature in public timetables[5] and normal service trains passed through the station without stopping.

v t e GCR lines to St Helens and Wigan
Legend
Wigan Central Wigan Darlington Street Springs Branch Manchester–Southport line Ince Lower Ince Wigan avoiding line to Pemberton Hindley to Springs Branch Junction Manchester–Southport line Lancashire Union Railway Lancashire Union Railway "The Whelley Loop" Strangeways West Junction Hindley South Strangeways East Junction Platt Bridge Manchester and Wigan Railway St Helens Central (GCR) St Helens Central Liverpool–Wigan line Haydock Haydock Colliery Tunnel Bickershaw and Abram Ashton-in-Makerfield Haydock Park Park Lane Halt Golborne South West Coast Main Line Golborne North West Leigh and Bedford Liverpool, St Helens and South Lancashire Railway Wigan Junction Railways Lowton St Mary's Junction Lowton St Mary's Chat Moss line Kenyon Junction Culcheth Newchurch Halt Liverpool–Manchester lines Glazebrook

The station was on the Liverpool, St Helens and South Lancashire Railway line from Lowton St Mary's to the original St Helens Central railway station. It stood behind the racecourse's grandstand.[6][7][8]

History

Opened by the Liverpool, St Helens and South Lancashire Railway, as part of the Great Central Railway, it became part of the London and North Eastern Railway during the Grouping of 1923. The station then passed on to the London Midland Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948.

Services

Race Day specials were very heavily patronised until well after WW2, as were other specials such as those serving Wakes Weeks and football matches. Although railways are always best suited to regular, day-in-day-out traffic, with cheap labour and plentiful old rolling stock available until the 1960s such intermittent services could make money and be seen as worthwhile. The corporate climate and economics were shifting, however. The station was closed in October 1963. An experiment in running race day specials was run in 1975, using the long-closed Ashton-in-Makerfield station some 500 yards to the west, with the trains passing through Haydock Park station's carcass. This was not repeated after that year.[9]

After closure

The line through the station continued in use by trains to an oil depot at Haydock until 1983 and Lowton Metals scrapyard,[10] Haydock, until 1987, after which the tracks though the site were lifted.

By 2005 much of the station site had disappeared under a car park extension and other landscaping, though parts of the station footbridge were still standing among undergrowth in 2014.[11][12]

References

Sources

External links

• The station's history in Disused Stations UK
• The station on an 1888-1913 Overlay OS Map in "National Library of Scotland"
• The station on a 1948 OS Map in npe Maps
• The station and line overlain on many maps in Rail Map Online
• The station and line HOB2 in Railway Codes