IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Shannon Street, BIRKENHEAD, CH41 8JP

Looking halfway to Birkenhead Park station. Underneath, nearest, Ilchester Road, Buccleuch Street &, furthest, Lincoln Street girder road bridges. Formerly known as 'bomb alley' to train drivers, due to the nature of having to travel underneath the bridges, in one of the roughest parts of Birkenhead, before the River Street houses were demolished. The redbrick tunnel archway, barely visible in the distance, goes beneath Corporation Road.

Viewed from the opposite side of the rarely-used line to platform 1, though otherwise the same as Image

The view from the Ilchester Road overbridge, looking down the line towards West Kirby and New Brighton. In the 49 years since Ben Brooksbank's historic photo http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1802063 the through line on the right has been removed along with the semaphore signals, telegraph poles and canopy to the footbridge. Perhaps the most noticeable change between the two photos (taken in the same month) is the encroachment of trees and shrubs on both banks of the cutting. All the houses to the right have been demolished and those in the distance have been replaced by the Bidston Moss recycling centre.

Signals ML566 and ML568 are at the eastern end of the island platform.

On a sunny afternoon, Merseyrail electric unit 508 141 pauses at Birkenhead North on its way from Liverpool to West Kirby. Introduced in 1980 on inner suburban services from London Waterloo, the 508s migrated to the Wirral lines of Merseyrail around five years later to replace 1930s vintage stock. They were built as four car units, but were reduced to three when they moved, the spare intermediate cars being used in the class 455 units that replaced them (giving those units an uneven roof profile).

Arriving with a service from Liverpool.

Electric Multiple Unit, Class 507, unit number 004, departs from Birkenhead North with an afternoon service to Liverpool. The footbridge, joining the two platforms, is of LMS design.

This area used to be filled with terraced housing like this house. I think that the area was designated as an area for redevelopment in the 1950s-1970s and it looks as if all the residents except this house accepted the compensation. The roads marked on the map between Ilchester Road and Lincoln Street are no longer in use and are blocked by similar barriers to those in the foreground of this picture.

A Merseyrail unit departs towards Liverpool as passengers wait for the next train to Bidston.