The Olive Mount chord in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

, England, is a 300-metre stretch of railway track between Olive Mount Junction, in Olive Mount cutting, and Edge Lane Junction that provides access to the

Canada Dock Branch The Canada Dock Branch is a 4-mile 59 chain (7.62 kilometre) long railway line in Liverpool, England. The line's route is from the large Edge Hill rail junction in the east of Liverpool to Seaforth Dock to the north. The line was originally ...

(more usually known today as the Bootle Branch).

History

The Olive Mount Chord was built as part of the

L&NWR The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom. In 1923, it became a constituent of the Lon ...

's Canada Dock Branch railway, which opened in 1866. It was designed to ease transition between the branch and the main L&NWR line into and out of the Liverpool area. The chord was taken out of use following a fire in the signal box at Edge Lane Junction on 21 January 1987 and subsequently lifted, because the declining amount of dock traffic meant the cost of repairing the box, or altering the signalling to allow remote operation from Edge Hill PSB, was not seen to be justified. However, delays resulting from the removal of the chord limited access to the

Port of Liverpool The Port of Liverpool is the enclosed dock system that runs from Brunswick Dock in Liverpool to Seaforth Dock, Seaforth, on the east side of the River Mersey and the Birkenhead Docks between Birkenhead and Wallasey on the west side of t ...

Reinstatement

On 27 June 2006, Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for Transport, revealed that the Olive Mount Chord was one of several projects to be included in the government's productivity transport innovation fund. On 20 January 2008, the green light was given to reopen the line to make the ferrying of freight between the Port of Liverpool to the

West Coast Main Line The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is one of the most important railway corridors in the United Kingdom, connecting the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest ...

easier. The works removed the need for reversing at Edge Hill and for crossing the lines in and out of Lime Street. Over the Bank Holiday weekend of early May 2008, the Chat Moss line was closed to rail traffic to allow a facing

crossover Crossover may refer to: Entertainment Albums and songs * ''Cross Over'' (Dan Peek album) * ''Crossover'' (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles album), 1987 * ''Crossover'' (Intrigue album) * ''Crossover'' (Hitomi Shimatani album) * ''Crossover'' (Yoshino ...

to be installed between the inbound (to Liverpool) and outbound (to Manchester) lines. This crossing was placed on site on Sunday 4 May 2008 and is located east of Mill Lane bridge. The work on this weekend involved the use of a Kirow rail mounted crane. A further step change took place on Sunday 13 July 2008 when the Balfour Beatty New Track Construction machine was in use on the chord. It laid a single track from Olive Mount Junction on the Chat Moss line through the Olive Mount Tunnel up to the Bootle Branch at Edge Lane Junction. There was already a crossover and turnout on the Bootle Branch but no physical connection was made at that stage. The project became operational from the Winter 2008 timetable, starting on Sunday 14 December 2008. It cost an estimated £7.9m, of which

Merseytravel Merseytravel is the passenger transport executive, responsible for the coordination of public transport in the Liverpool City Region in North West England. Merseytravel was established on 1 December 1969 as the Merseyside Passenger Transpor ...

contributed £2.1m. The chord was officially reopened on 6 March 2009.

References

{{commons category, Olive Mount chord, position=left Rail transport in Liverpool Rail junctions in England