The Widnes loop was a railway line which served the town of

Widnes Widnes ( ) is an Industrial city, industrial town in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England, which at the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 census had a population of 61,464. Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, it is on t ...

, England from 1879 to 2000.

History

The main line of the

Cheshire Lines Committee The Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) was formed in the 1860s and became the second-largest joint railway in Great Britain. The committee, which was often styled the Cheshire Lines Railway, operated of track in the then counties of Lancashire an ...

(CLC), between and Liverpool Brunswick, opened in 1873. This passed to the north of the expanding town of

. In 1873 the Widnes Railway was projected to link that town to the CLC, via a triangular "Widnes Junction" to the west of . Hough Green, Widnes & Runcorn Barnstaple Mansfield RJD 18

Hough Green, Widnes & Runcorn Barnstaple Mansfield RJD 18

In 1874 the uncompleted line was sold to the

Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) was formed in 1847 when the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway joined with authorised but unbuilt railway companies, forming a proposed network from Manchester to Grimsb ...

(MS&LR); and in 1875 it became the joint property of the MS&LR and the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It am ...

- two of the partners in the CLC. The third partner, the Great Northern Railway declined to take part in the project. The line was therefore not part of the CLC but separately administered by the

Sheffield and Midland Railway Companies' Committee The Sheffield and Midland Railway Companies' Committee was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1869 as a joint venture between the Midland Railway and the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway. Origins For many years the Midland had be ...

. The line opened for goods traffic in 1877 and was soon extended westwards to rejoin the CLC at Hough Green Junction, east of station. The western half of the loop passed through a tunnel under Hale Road and Liverpool Road, Ditton. A passenger station on the loop, known as Widnes Central, was opened on 1 August 1879. The south-to-west arm of the triangular Widnes Junction was severed on 29 February 1880, though the remnants were used as a wagon store until the 1960s. A second station known as "Tanhouse" and later as Tanhouse Lane was opened on 1 September 1890. Two branches left the loop southwards at Moor Lane Junction, west of Widnes Central, referred to by Dow as "Marsh Branch" and "Landowners' Branch". OS Maps of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries refer to the latter as "Ditton Marsh Branch." At the Grouping of 1923 control of the line passed to the LNER & LMSR Joint Railway, under which it remained until nationalisation in 1948. The passenger service along the loop was provided by CLC trains running between and

Liverpool Central Liverpool Central railway station in Liverpool, England, forms a central hub of the Merseyrail network, being on both the Northern Line and the Wirral Line. The station is located underground on two levels, below the site of a former mainline ...

. The last passenger trains along the loop ran on Saturday 3 October 1964. The stations were formally closed by

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

on the following Monday, 5 October 1964. They had been recommended for closure in the

Beeching Report Beeching is an English surname. Either a derivative of the old English ''bece'', ''bæce'' "stream", hence "dweller by the stream" or of the old English ''bece'' "beech-tree" hence "dweller by the beech tree".''Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames' ...

. Services had by this time declined significantly from their peak levels in pre-grouping days (15 per day each way in 1922) to just five westbound and six eastbound departures on weekdays & Saturdays only. The entire loop line was closed as a through route soon afterwards, though the freight yard at Tanhouse Lane remained in use for cement traffic until 2000 - access was latterly provided by a connection from the ex-LNWR Widnes Deviation Line. Almost no trace of the stations remains. The authoritative TRACKmaps labels a wholly different, surviving, line as "Widnes Loop", this being what was historically referred to as "The Deviation". This line - part of the former Ditton Junction to Warrington Bank Quay Low Level lineEngineers' Line Reference SDJ2 via ''railwaycodes''
/ref> - runs through the sites of West Deviation Junction and Carterhouse Junction which are nowadays plain line. Presumably, as the original loop has long been closed and lifted there will be no source of operational confusion.

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History

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