The Crossens carriage sheds were located on the West Lancashire Railway Company’s (WLR) Southport & Preston railway which opened in stages between 19 February 1878 and 5 September 1882.

On 19 August 1881 a tender was prepared for the erection of a carriage shed at Crossens, and it was built by 8 July 1882. It was east of the passenger station at Crossens on the up side of the line. The rural location of Crossens in the1880s appeared a strange place to provide a carriage shed: it was also neither at one end of the line nor the other which necessitated non-revenue generating empty stock workings. The reason for the choice of location was economic since land in Southport was too expensive, and the WLR was not a wealthy company, struggling financially from the very beginning.

The carriage shed had two roads. It was brick-built with a gable roof, but the large, arched windows were dressed with stone. Pits were provided to make maintenance of the coaches easier.

A WLR board minute of 16 August 1893 recorded that a new carriage shed was to be provided at Crossens to stable twelve coaches. In fact the original shed was extended north-eastwards and was considerably larger than the minute would suggest. When the extension was completed the entire shed was 260yd long, well able to accommodate more than twelve coaches. The extension consisted of brick walls and a corrugated iron roof coated with pitch.

On 1 July 1897 the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (LYR) took over the WLR. They found it to be in poor condition and had to invest heavily in it. The LYR had major railway facilities at both ends of the line which were superior to those of the WLR. There is no record of how the LYR used the carriage shed as they had facilities for coaches at other far more convenient locations. It is believed that they used Crossens to store out-of-use stock. From 1923 the London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) took control of the former WLR, and a 1925 track plan still recorded the building as ‘a carriage shed 260 yards long’ so the LMS may have continued using it in the same manner as the LYR.

By 1950 the building was in the private ownership of Bankfield Engineering. Over the next four decades the shed remained in industrial use; at some point extensions were added to the north-west side. At an unknown date after 1984 the corrugated roof of the 1890s extension was replaced.

The buildings were out of use by the end of 2000, and demolition of the roof began in January 2001. The building itself was demolished from 1 to 15 February 2001, and a housing estate has been developed on its site.