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Birkenhead to West Kirby Railway
(1866 - 1896)

Birkenhead Dock station was the eastern terminus of the Hoylake Railway (HR), a 4½- mile single-track line that linked the eastern edge of Birkenhead to Hoylake via Meols

The HR was authorised to build the line on July 25 1863 and the original intention was to link Hoylake with Seacombe Ferry. This would have created a useful link between the attractive but undeveloped north Wirral coast and Liverpool

Work commenced in late 1864 but, owing to a lack of finance, the line only ran between Hoylake and a point nearly 2 miles from the banks of the Mersey at the western extremity of the Wallasey Pool, an area of water that was in the process of being enclosed as the Wallasey and Birkenhead Dock system

The line was completed by the middle of 1866 and was inspected on June 16 1866. The inspector had a number of concerns, and a further inspection took place on July 2 1866; regular services began on the same day. It is likely that some trains had run earlier as the railway had reported to the Liverpool Mercury as early as June 18 1866 that they were open for business.

At the time of opening the HR had only one locomotive, but a service of six trains in each direction was run on weekdays with four each way on Sundays and the journey between Dock station and Hoylake took 20 minutes

An omnibus service ran between the Dock station and Seacombe Ferry providing a connection with Liverpool

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