Liverpool Overhead Railway

The Liverpool Overhead Railway (known locally as the Dockers' Umbrella) was an elevated railway in Liverpool which operated along the Liverpool Docks. It opened in 1893 with lightweight electric multiple units. The design of an overhead line probably originated from the New York High Line which was authorised in 1847. Just five years later, in 1852, the need arose in Liverpool for a similar solution. The railway had a number of world firsts:

• first electric elevated railway,
• first to use automatic signalling,
• first to use electric colour light signals
• first to use electric multiple units
• had one of the first passenger escalators at a railway station.

It was also the second oldest electric metro in the world. The only earlier one was the 1890 City and South London Railway. In the early 1900s electric trains ran on the electrified Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to Southport and Aintree. Special trains to Aintree for the horse race meetings ran twice a year after regular services were withdrawn. Being a local railway it was not nationalised in 1948.

In 1955, a report into the structure of the many viaducts showed major repairs were needed that the company could not afford. The railway closed at the end of 1956. Despite public protests the structures were dismantled in the following year.

Liverpool Overhead Railway Media

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  Liverpool Overhead Railway map

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  Share of the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company, issued 9 March 1897

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  Illustration of a section of the railway

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  A cap badge from the railway

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  A section of the overhead railway circa 1911

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  Tunnel for Dingle station, the only underground station, and one of its few remaining visible traces

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  Remnants of Overhead Railway supports built into a wall near Clarence Dock.

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  An electric train on the Liverpool Overhead Railway, photographed for the Street Railway Journal, 1902.

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  Liverpool Overhead Railway carriage in the Museum of Liverpool, 2023