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Notes: Tan House Lane Station was located on the east side of Tan House Lane on the Great Central (GC) and Midland Railway (MR) Widnes Loop Line which connected the town with the Cheshire Lines Railway Liverpool to Manchester main line.
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By the 1870's the LNWR had a monopoly on the town of Widnes as it owned the west to east Ditton Junction to Manchester via Warrington and Lymm line and the north to south St. Helens to Widnes (former Runcorn Gap) line. The Cheshire Lines Committee were granted powers to build a new railway from Garston to Manchester (opened 1.8.1873) which |
passed to the north of the town. Industrialists in Widnes lobbied for a loop line to be built that would branch off this new line to the east of Widnes pass south and then run through the town before turning north and joining back up with the CLC main line. The GNR objected to this new line being in the ownership of the CLC. It was therefore built as a joint GC & MR line and opened for goods traffic on 3.4.1877.
Primarily a goods line it had one station at Widnes Central which opened on 1.8.1879. Due to the construction of the line further industry expansion took place along its route to the east of Widnes and a small community grew up to serve it. Tan House Lane Station opened to serve this community on 1.9.1890. The station was situated at the point where Tan House Lane crossed the railway by means of a level crossing.
Located on the east side of the crossing the station had two platforms which were also linked by a footbridge at the west end of the station. This footbridge also served pedestrians who could use it to cross the railway when the crossing gates were closed. The station was provided with single story timber and brick built buildings on both platforms. Tall brick built walls ran along the length of the platforms on both sides. On the westbound platform the wall was topped with barbed wire to prevent access into a neighbouring chemical works.
From the beginning the station was served by mostly stopping trains running between Liverpool Central and Manchester Central with some shorter workings going only as far as Warrington Central. It appears that some services from the Liverpool direction actually terminated at Tan House Lane. By the 1960s there were still nine trains each way (Liverpool Central - Manchester Central) but even the introduction of DMU's in 1960 could not save the station from the growth in road transport and it closed on 5.10.1964.
The loop line closed a few years later but that was not the end of the story for Tan House Lane as a rail served destination. A connection was put in from a point about half a mile to the west of Tan House Lane to the Widnes to St Helens line and this allowed goods services to continue running into a Cement Factory at Tan House Lane. The factory was situated just to the north of the station site and a separate level crossing gave access to it across Tan House Lane. When in turn the Widnes to St Helens line closed in 1982 a new connection was put in linking the cement factory to the Ditton Junction to Manchester via Warrington and Lymm line. This connection remained in use for cement traffic until 2000.
Part of the route of the Loop Line on the west side of Tan House Lane was landscaped as a public park during 2008 and a section of the original Loop Line railway track, that had survived as a headshunt, has been kept as a feature. The idea is to protect the alignment of the railway as it is hoped that in the future the line will reopen to serve what will become a prestigious waterfront development on the north bank of the Mersey.
The area around the site of the station is already changing rapidly from one of large industrial chemical factories to an area of mixed residential and business use.
Ticket from Brian Halford |
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