Liverpool Overhead Railway

Liverpool Overhead Railway
Two trains near Seaforth Sands station
Geographic map of the Liverpool Overhead Railway
Route length:	11 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	initially busbar (500 V) in the middle of the tracks, later side busbar ( 630 V)  =
Dual track :	continuous
Legend to Ormskirk Aintree LOR trains 1906–1908, special trains until 1956 to Liverpool Exchange, Merseyrail to Southport , LOR trains 1906-1914 Seaforth & Litherland LOR trains from 1905 to Liverpool Exchange, Merseyrail Seaforth Sands left: 1895–1926, right: from 1905 Gladstone Dock opened in 1930 Alexandra Dock Langton Dock 1896-1906 Brocklebank Dock Canada Dock Huskisson Dock opened in 1896 Sandon Dock closed in 1896 Nelson Dock opened in 1896 Clarence Dock to Edge Hill Princes Dock closed in 1941 Riverside 1895-1971 Pier Head James Street Mersey Railway, now the Merseyrail James Street Canning to 1947 Customs House Wapping Dock Brunswick Dock to Liverpool Central, Merseyrail Toxteth Dock Brunswick to Hunts Cross Herculaneum Dock opened in 1896 Herculaneum Dock 1893-1896 Dingle opened in 1896

The Liverpool Overhead Railway (LOR, German about overhead railway Liverpool ) was an electric elevated railway in Liverpool . Its designer was the British port engineer George Fosbery Lyster . It opened in 1893, making it the second metro in the United Kingdom after the London Underground , but before the Glasgow Subway, and the oldest electrically powered elevated railway in the world.

The elevated railway was shut down in 1956 and its lines dismantled. This makes it the only metro system in the world that has ever been completely shut down.

history

An elevated railway connecting the port had been discussed since the 1850s. Construction finally began in 1889, when there was a need to separate the movement of goods and people along the river bank. On January 7, 1893, the first special trip with the engineers and other important people took place; Public service began on March 6 of the same year, the route ran from Alexandra Dock along the Merseys and the port area to Herculaneum Dock . It was about 10 kilometers long, had 14 stations and was mostly supported on 4.9 meters high wrought iron pillars. The latter earned her the nickname “ Dockers' umbrella”.

The route was later extended three times. A little more than a year after opening, in 1894, the route was extended by one station in the north to Seaforth Sands . The second extension concerned the south end. By the end of 1896, an 800-meter-long section of tunnel had been built in what is now Liverpool's St Michaels district , which ended in the first and only underground station on the line and opened on December 21. For this purpose, the original terminus at Herculaneum Dock was converted into a carriage hall and rebuilt a few hundred meters further north.

→ Main article : Railway accident at Liverpool-Dingle station

Almost exactly five years later to the day, on December 22, 1901, a serious train accident occurred in the access tunnel to Dingle station when an electric motor caught fire on a train. Six deaths were the result, the underground station burned down completely. This was the first serious accident on an electrically powered railway in which travelers were killed.

On July 2, 1905, the line was extended again at the northern end to Seaforth & Litherland , a station of the recently electrified Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR), now Merseyrail . Here, too, the former terminus Seaforth Sands was replaced by a new station, the old terminal station was still in operation until 1926, but was then converted into a car hall.

In order to realize a continuous operation with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway , one changed the power supply of the LOR at the time. The originally between the rails preferred busbar (500 V DC ) was replaced by a laterally located, which led 630 V DC. Until the 1920s, the middle busbar was still used as an electrical return conductor. From 1906 the continuous connections to Southport and Aintree began . Regular train services to these stations were abandoned as early as 1908 (Aintree) and 1914 (Southport), but the connection to Aintree was still used a few times a year for events at the Aintree racecourse (e.g. the Grand National ) used in special traffic. From then on Seaforth & Litherland was the regular terminus.

Over the years some stations have been closed or new ones opened, e.g. B. last in 1930 the new Gladstone Dock station . The station Princes Dock was during Liverpool Flash ( Battle of Britain ) by the German Luftwaffe destroyed, and after the Second World War, never rebuilt. During the Great Depression, fewer ships called at Liverpool Harbor, and in 1932 the Overhead Railway had to start a marketing campaign with discounted tickets in order to keep the railway running.

Since it was an exclusively local company, the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company was not nationalized in 1948 with the rest of the railway network to form British Railways .

Due to the decline of the Port of Liverpool, the elevated railway continuously lost passengers, and many switched to the trams . The iron structure of the elevated railway sections was also heavily corroded by the steam-powered port railways that operated directly below . In 1955, the investment required was estimated at two million pounds (around 40 million euros in 2017). The company went into voluntary liquidation , although it was still making some profit, and the Liverpool Overhead Railway Act 1956 released the company from its legal obligation to carry passengers. The last trains on the elevated railway ran on December 30, 1956.

After hiring

The tunnel entrance between the Herculaneum Dock and Dingle stations is one of the few remaining structural structures of the LOR

About 100 LOR employees moved to British Railways , while a small number still maintained the viaducts; At first it was still believed that it could be restarted. The route was replaced by a new bus line, for which the municipal transport company purchased 60 new buses. For the dock workers, the fare for a return ticket increased from 8 d (66 euro cents) to 1  s (around 1 euro). The Northern Line of the Merseyrail , opened in 1977, runs a few hundred meters further inland parallel to the former elevated railway.

The demolition of the line began after many protests on September 23, 1957 and was completed in January of the following year.

Little is left of the elevated railway today. In some streets the remains of the pillars can still be seen in the wall, the tunnel including the Dingle train station is now used as a car workshop . On July 24, 2012, part of this tunnel collapsed and several houses above the tunnel had to be evacuated. The tunnel was repaired again in October 2013, and residents were able to move in again from February 2014.

vehicles

An elevated railway three-car train, 1902

The Liverpool Overhead Railway was the first electric train in the world to use multiple units from the start and not a combination of locomotive and non-powered wagons. The vehicles were made by Brown, Marshalls and Co. Ltd. built. 30 motor vehicles were available for the opening. These were 8 feet 6 inches (2.59 meters) wide, had a 60 hp (45 kW) engine. Initially, individual railcars were used in the off- peak hours , but mostly the vehicles were run as 15 two-car trains. In 1894 eight more railcars were added, with which 19 two-car trains could now run. In 1896, another eight railcars and now eight sidecars were ordered to run three-car trains. The railcars from 1896 had 70 hp (52 kW) engines.

In 1902 all railcars were equipped with new engines (100 HP, 75 kW) in order to keep up with the electric trams; the travel time was reduced from 32 to 20 minutes. In addition, ten of them were widened to 8 ft 4 in (2.84 meters). From 1916 to 1918, 15 sidecars were finally procured, so that the LOR now had 46 multiple units and 32 sidecars, i.e. 32 three-car trains. In 1919 the engines were exchanged again, the new ones had 75 hp (56 kW) and the driving time was extended to 31 minutes.

After the Second World War, most of the vehicles were in a rather poor condition. The purchase of new trains was not financially possible, so 14 railcars and seven sidecars were modernized. The wooden superstructures were replaced by aluminum, and automatic sliding doors were installed instead of outward-swinging doors.

After the LOR was discontinued, most of the wagons were scrapped, only one car in its original form is preserved in the Museum of Liverpool , and a modernized example in the Electric Railway Museum in Warwickshire .

Movie

The railroad is featured in some scenes in the feature films Waterfront (1950), The Magnet (1950) and The Clouded Yellow (1951). The train can also be seen often in the documentary Of Time and the City about the city of Liverpool. The Lumière brothers also recorded some film scenes from the Overhead Railway in 1897.

See also

• Sir Douglas & Francis Fox , engineering company involved in the construction
• Merseyrail , today's suburban railway-like suburban railway for the city
• List of cities with subways

Web links

Commons : Liverpool Overhead Railway  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Liverpool Overhead Railway at disused-stations.org.uk
• The Liverpool Overhead Railway , Dewi Williams (private)
• Liverpool on urbanrail.net
• Documentary about the LOR (Youtube)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Newsletter No. 25 , Liverpool Heritage Forum, March 5, 2007
2. ^ The Dockers' Umbrella: City railway served Liverpool's busy port, published in the Liverpool Echo, April 23, 2008
3. ^ Toxteth train tunnel collapse investigated. BBC , July 24, 2012, accessed June 16, 2017 . 
4. ^ Rob Pattinson: Work to begin on repairing collapsed Liverpool Overhead Railway tunnel. Liverpool Echo , October 7, 2013, accessed June 16, 2017 . 
5. ↑ Dingle tunnel collapse families anger at repair costs. BBC , May 12, 2014, accessed June 16, 2017 . 
6. ↑ Liverpool film by the Lumière brothers : the scenes from the LOR can be seen from 1:30 to 4:20