Hidden Gem: Where Time Stood Still

A journey back to to the 17th September 1956 to Hadlow Road Station, as it stood when The Birkenhead Railway closed to passangers.

It is one of my favourite local hidden gems on the Wirral, Hadlow Road Station. This hidden gem has the ability to transport you back to the day of Monday the 17th of September 1956. It has been carefully presevered through the decades allowing us all to marvel at this peice of railway history.

With a section of track, signals, the wooden signal box, brick shelter, level crossing gates, red telephone box, rail equiptment and the station building itself which is complete with ticket office which is adorned with original advertisement boards for Hudsons Super Soap, Bovril, Lever's Cattle Cakes and more.

Unlike the main station building, you can't go inside the signal box, but you can walk up to the platform for a great view along the tracks and platform, and if you peer inside, you can see a model of the station as it would have been operating between the 1st of October 1866 until it closed to passangers on the 17th of September 1956.

The station was served by The Birkenhead Railway. It was a single track line which stretched initially from Hooton to Parkgate with an additional station serving the nearby village of Willaston, before later being extended to West Kirby. Despite it's closure to passanger services, the railway was in use for freight services for 6 more years before being fully closed.

After the tracks were eventually lifted, the route stretching 12 miles from Hooton to West Kirby was repurposed to become the Wirral Way, which opened to the public on the 2nd October 1973 as Britain’s first designated country park. Hadlow Road Station now sits proudly on that route just along from Hooton where the path begins.

Find it for yourself: Hadlow Rd, Willaston, Neston CH64 2UQ