Notes: Bootle Balliol Road was located on the London & North Western Railway’s (LNWR) Alexandra Dock branch which opened on 5 September 1881. The short branch connected the LNWR Canada Dock branch from Atlantic Dock Junction to Alexandra Dock. The Canada Dock branch formed a link between the LNWR Liverpool and Manchester line at Edge Hill to the north Liverpool docks.



Balliol Road station opened with the branch. The entrance to the station was, as the name would suggest, on Balliol Road where the Bootle Town Hall was situated. Passengers entered the station via a single storey brick building located on the western side of Balliol Road. The building contained waiting rooms and a booking office.

Being situated in a deep cutting with sloping banks and retaining walls the railway was at a much lower elevation than the station building. Passing over the line was Millers Bridge Road, and just to the west was the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway’s (LYR) Liverpool and Southport line.

The Alexandra Dock branch was a double-track railway and Balliol Road station was provided with two platforms. The up platform (Liverpool direction) was reached via a sloping path that led straight down from the station building. The down platform was approached via a path that passed over the line at the north end of the station where it entered the Berry Street tunnel. The path then ran parallel to the LYR line for a short distance before dropping down to the platform.

The platforms were on a curve and extended to the south side of Millers Bridge Road. Both platforms had waiting facilities and toilets. The up platform facilities were on the north side of Millers Bridge Road and the down were on the south side.

To the south of the station the Alexandra Dock branch climbed to an elevation equal to that of the LYR line before descending into the Oriel Road tunnel which carried it to Atlantic Dock Junction. At the point where the two lines ran parallel a junction had opened by 1 June 1886 when a service of through coaches between Southport Chapel Street and London Euston began. Named Bootle Junction it was controlled by an LYR and an LNWR signal box. The LNWR box was located on the east side of the line at the point where the connecting lines to the LYR diverged from the Alexandra Dock branch. It had opened by 1 June 1886 and was an LNWR Type 4 box with a 20 lever frame. The LYR box, a Railway Signal Company product with a 36 lever frame, had also opened by 1 June 1886. Co-operation between both boxes was required to work the junction as a series of inter-locking bolts had been installed as a safety measure.

At the time of opening Bootle Balliol Road had a frequent service of trains that ran between Liverpool Lime Street and Alexandra Dock, most of which called at all stations on the branch.

By December 1895 there was an intense service of 19 up and 20 down trains from Bootle Balliol Road on Monday-to-Saturday with no trains on Sundays, as shown in the table below.

The July 1922 timetable showed 13 up and 14 down trains on Monday-to-Friday. On Saturdays there were only 8 up and 7 down services and no trains ran on Sundays.

On 1 January 1923 the Alexandra Dock branch became part of the London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS). By 1930 the LNWR Bootle Junction signal box had been closed and demolished. The LYR box received a 46 lever LYR frame so that it could control all of the junction and a section of the LNWR line, including that through Balliol Road station.

In summer 1932 there were 11 trains to Alexandra Dock and 13 to Liverpool Lime Street on Monday-to-Saturday only. The first departure from Balliol Road was for Alexandra Dock and it left at 6.53am. The last departure was also for Alexandra Dock at 10.43pm.

On 4 May 1941 Canada Dock station was badly damaged during heavy bombing and the passenger service was withdrawn. Although the station was patched up quickly allowing freight services to resume the passenger service was not resumed leaving only the trains that ran between Liverpool Lime street and Alexandra Dock.

By 1947 the service had reduced to 6 up and 5 down trains running Monday-to-Friday only as shown in the table below.

On 1 January 1948 Bootle Balliol Road became part of the British Railways London Midland Region. It did not survive long into the Nationalisation era, closing on 31 May 1948.

The Alexandra Dock branch had always been more important for goods traffic, and it continued to see heavy traffic until dock traffic started to decline in the 1960s. Rail traffic had reached a low ebb by 1980 when there were only a handful of booked trains running through Bootle Balliol Road. After 1980 traffic levels began to pick up, first with the introduction of Freightliner services to and from Seaforth, and in the second half of the 1980s imported coal started to come in through Liverpool docks.

Bootle Balliol Road remained remarkably intact after closure, the road side building surviving until the 1990s. The platforms remained extant but they had degraded significantly by 2013, becoming very overgrown with only the sections beneath Millers Bridge Road clearly visible.

Tickets from Michael Stewart route map by Alan Young.

Sources:

• An Illustrated History of Liverpool’s Railways – Paul Anderson – Irwell Press 1996
• Bradshaws Rail Times December 1895 - Middlewood Press 2011
• Bradshaws Rail Times July 1922 - Guild Publishing 1986
  
• LMS Time Table July 18th to September 11th 1932
• Rails to Port and Starboard - J W Gahan - Countyvise 1992
• Railway Passenger Stations in Great Britain a Chronology - M Quick - Railway and Canal Historical Society 2009

See also Alexandra Dock

See also the stations on the Canada Dock branch: Canada Dock, Spellow,
Walton & Anfield, Breck Road, Tue Brook, Stanley & Edge Lane

See Feature:

Atlantic Dock Junction