Liverpool Central Station was the western terminus of the Cheshire Lines Committee's (CLC) main line that linked the northern cities of Liverpool and Manchester. With Liverpool Brunswick Station over a mile south of the city centre and inconvenient for passengers, just over a month after it opened an Act was obtained by the partners on the 29th of July 1864 to build a line called 'The Liverpool Central Station Railway'. The line was one mile and forty-three chains in length, and to reach central Liverpool it needed five tunnels and sections of very deep cuttings. There were two stations on the line, St James and Liverpool Central and, due to the heavy engineering required, the new line and Liverpool Central did not open until the 2nd of March 1874. Being a relative latecomer to Liverpool the CLC had to make do with a cramped site in the heart of the city's shopping district but built an imposing station which served as their headquarters. The main entrance was through two imposing gates, separated by a large sandstone column, at the western end of Ranelagh Street at its junction with Church Street and Bold Street. Over the westernmost gate there was a sign that read 'Central Station'. East of the gates was the large high-roofed single-storey parcels office, east of which was another set of gates and, beyond them, a building, similar to the parcels office, that housed refreshment rooms. Beyond the gates and behind the parcels office was an open area for cabs and other road traffic. Facing onto the open area set back from the street, was the three-storey sandstone main station building, with decorative window features and columns. In the centre of the building, at roof level, was a large Baroque clock and the booking offices, with other passenger facilities on the ground floor. On the first and second floors there were offices occupied by departments of the CLC and its constituent companies. The station also had an entrance on Bold Street with a two-storey sandstone structure in the same style as the other buildings. Behind the main building was a single arched iron and glass train shed of 164ft span which reached 65ft at its highest point. The station had three island platforms giving six platform faces and became a landmark to city centre shoppers.
Services started on the 25th of February 1874 but with only platforms 1 and 2 ready but it was only fully operational by the 25th of June 1874. At first there were sixteen trains per day to Manchester London Road taking only 45 minutes, making it the quickest and most direct route between Liverpool and Manchester and it also served London St Pancras, Hull, Harwich, Stockport and Southport. On the 11th of March 1892 the Mersey Railway opened an extension to its under-river railway from Liverpool James Street to Liverpool Central and an island platform in a tunnel was created underneath platforms 1 and 2 which became known as Liverpool Central Low Level. Steam hauled trains ran from the Mersey Railway low level platforms to Birkenhead Park and to Rock Ferry but from the 3rd of May 1903 the line became one of the first in Britain to be electrically operated. A passenger service of significance were the GNR Hull trains. In the early years of the 20th Century they brought hundreds of thousands of eastern European migrants from Hull, travelling cross-country to Liverpool Central, to board ships to the United States. This required numerous porters and carters at Central Station to move the migrants and their possessions from the station to the docks, and extra railway policemen were deployed as migrants made an easy target for thieves and con-men.
In 1934 modern colour light signalling was installed at Liverpool Central - one of the earliest schemes in Britain and on the 14th of March 1938 trains from the Mersey Railway platforms started to serve West Kirby and New Brighton as the LMS had electrified these lines to allow through running. The services proved popular resulting in even more passengers using Central.
Although it was still a very busy station it was earmarked for closure in the 1963 Beeching report as most of its services could be re-routed into Lime Street via the Allerton Curve. In 1966, most services on the CLC route were diverted to Liverpool Lime Street with the only trains using the station being those to Gateacre, and the giant station slowly fell into decline. Platforms 1, 2, 5 and 6 were taken out of use with Platforms 1 and 2 becoming a car park and only 3 and 4 retained for the Gateacre service. After Platform 3 lost its track in 1970, and the last Gateacre train ran on 15 April 1972 the mainline station was flattened, eventually to be replaced by the modern, uninspiring shopping centre. The underground platforms were reworked to form part of the Merseyrail network and the 'new' Liverpool Central opened in 1977 with the site once occupied by the train shed becoming part of the Central Village development. By 2011, The Merseyrail station, on the Northern Line and Wirral Line was the busiest station in Liverpool and the seventh busiest outside London. In terms of passengers per platform, Liverpool Central is the second busiest underground station in the UK with more than 40,000 people using it every day.
see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/12/remembering-liverpool-structures-lyceum.html
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