Shunted onto the right tracks

WE'VE been shunted along the right tracks regarding a double railway puzzler (this page December 11) set by pro rugby player John Riley.

He'd wanted to know when the old level-crossing at the foot of Moss Bank Road shut its gates for the final time; and when that particular stretch of St Helens track was ripped up to make way for what is now Scafell Road.

And now, Joe Powell, a man obviously keen on such track-clattering research, has steamed in with some really useful information. And a further piece of interesting railway history has come in from an Eccleston reader who wishes to be identified only by his initials of J. W.

Joe, from Eskdale Avenue, Clinkham Wood, tells us that the St Helens to Rainford line was opened in 1858 and the stations en route were: Gerards Bridge (at the tight bend from College Street into Haresfinch Road) Moss Bank (near the Railway pub, now blandly-renamed Moss Bank Hotel) Crank, Rookery, Rainford Village and Rainford Junction.

"Passenger services had been curtailed on June 16, 1951," adds Joe, "and the station dismantled during the 1950s. The route via Rainford Junction went through Wigan Wallgate and onward to the rugby towns of the North West.

"It was thus used for occasional 'rugby specials' to and from St Helens and I recall going to watch Saints play Swinton by this route.

"Several freight trains, and latterly the Pilkington Brothers' oil trains used the line as well as the occasional holiday special."

Moss Bank level crossing, he adds, closed 30 years ago, when the line was cut back to Pilkingtons' sidings. "The blue-brick abutments are still conspicuous at the Washway Lane end of Scafell Road."

Switching to another transport yedscratter set by John Riley, Joe says: "The Sandy Lane trolley bus stop (its passenger shelter still stands in sad dilapidation) was in use all through my schooldays." The direct bus route from St Helens then crossed the East Lancashire Road (the A580) which, up to the late 1960s, was controlled at this point by a set of traffic lights.

For the benefit of John and any keen railway buffs, Joe recommends a visit to the St Helens Library archives department which has a few photos of the level crossing.

"And," he signs off, "Bob Pixton's excellent publication, 'Widnes &St Helens Railway' has a couple of shots of the Moss Bank station."

J. W. of Eccleston, in tracing his family history, discovered that the Rainford stationmaster in the 1850s was Joe Naylor who then lived with a Martha Owen, a seamstress, in Bartons Row, Rainford (now Ormskirk Road).

"Where they married? I guess not!"

Living next door but one was train driver Isaac Blackburn. "These houses are still there," adds our Eccleston correspondent, "just 100 yards past the Eagle & Child pub."

J.W. picked this up from maps and censuses kept in St Helens Library's history section. But he also has a little first-hand information about the latter days of the old St Helens-to-Rainford line.

In the 1940s he helped a St Helens coal dealer, based behind what is today the shops around Rigby Street, to collect his fuel from the old St Helens railyards.

This coal, he believes, may have come from Rainford, as the line headed for the old Central Street station, long-gone and now the site of the Birchley Street car park.

J.W. well recalls the hard slog of removing the low, laden coal wagons by hand and into sacks for direct transportation to waiting customers. "Holding on to those sacks didn't half cut your fingers."

And he signs off by revealing that a map of the 1850s shows a Victoria Colliery behind what is today Victoria Street, Rainford. It had close links with that 'mineral line' which chugged its way to St Helens via Moss Bank.

MY thanks to our couple of rail buffs for all that detailed response.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.