Birkenhead, Lancashire and Cheshire Junction Railway

One of the main routes opened was from Chester to Walton Junction just south of Warrington in 1850 to link the Chester and Birkenhead Railway to the London and North Western Railway at Walton.

The BLCJR merged with the Chester and Birkenhead Railway in 1859 to become the Birkenhead Railway and was taken over by the London and North Western Railway and Great Western Railway in 1860 as a joint line. It survived as this joint railway until nationalisation in 1948 when it became part of British Railways.

The station on this line that was in the parish was Daresbury which opened when the railway did. There is a section on this station elsewhere on our website.

A good section of the Birkenhead Railway is now part of the Merseyrail Wirral line electrified from Birkenhead to Chester. Although the unnelectrified Chester to Warrington line is still regularly used by passenger trains, the number if freight trains has dropped  in recent years, the only regular recent freight trains are log trains to Chirk, sand workings to Ellesmere Port and a coal train to Penyffordd.

The reopening of the Halton curve means extra passenger trains (not through the parish), an hourly service to Liverpool Lime Street via Runcorn and Liverpool Parkway. The TFW North Wales service runs hourly and there is another non-stop hourly service through the parish from Chester to Leeds.