Daresbury Station was situated on the Birkenhead, Lancashire & Cheshire Joint Railway’s (BLCJR) Warrington and Chester line which opened on the 31st October 1850.

Daresbury Station opened as Moore after the village in which it was located on the 18th of December 1850. The station was located in a cutting on the south side of a road overbridge which carried Runcorn Road over the line. The BLCJR was a double track railway so Moore was provided with two platforms which were linked to Runcorn Road by a sloping footpath. Booking facilities were located at street level on the north side of the line.

At the time of opening the Station was served by trains that ran between Warrington and Chester and onward to Birkenhead.

On the 1st of August 1859 the BLCJR became the Birkenhead Railway but within a matter of months it was taken over jointly by the Great Western Railway (GWR) and the London North Western Railway (LNWR) as the Birkenhead Joint Railway on the 1st January 1860.

In April 1861 the new company renamed the station as Daresbury which is a small village about 1 mile distant from Moore. The reason for the renaming was probably to avoid confusion with another station in Moore which was located on the LNWR's main line between Crewe and Preston. The GWR used the line through Daresbury as a means of access to Manchester via Warrington and lines belonging to the LNWR. Daresbury Station itself however remained very much a local facility served mostly by local stopping trains.

In 1923 the LNWR share in the joint line passed to the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) who absorbed the former company as part of the ‘Grouping’ of the country’s many railway companies into four large organisations. The GWR retained its own identity.

In the summer of 1932 Daresbury Station was served by only seven trains in the westbound direction on weekdays. All of them went to Chester General with the first departure being at 7.35am and the last at 8.52pm. In the eastbound direction there were six trains. Four of them went to Warrington Bank Quay and two to Manchester Exchange. The first departure was for Warrington Bank Quay at 8:10am and the last was for Manchester Exchange at 7.45pm.

Although Daresbury Station was located within the centre of the village of Moore its sparse train service did not generate much income and it did not survive long after the Nationalisation of Britain’s Railway in 1948 closing to passengers on the 7th of July 1952. It continued to handle goods until the 1st of June 1965.  

Source - British Railway Companies by Christopher Awdrey

To see the other stations on the Chester - Warrington line click on the station name: Mickle Trafford, Dunham Hill, Halton & Norton