Liverpool St James railway station


Liverpool St James station in Liverpool, England, was a railway station situated on the old Cheshire Lines Committee line from between Central and stations. This line is now a part of Merseyrail's Northern Line. The station is located in a deep cutting between two tunnels at the junction of Parliament Street and St. James' Place, opposite St James' Church.
There are plans in place by Merseytravel and local businesses to reopen the station.

History

The station opened on 1 March 1874 and closed on 1 January 1917.
In 1913 six people lost their lives in an accident at the station when a train ran into the back of a train standing at the southbound platform.
Parts of the station's platforms survive, as do some rooms cut into the rockface. They can be seen on Northern Line trains heading for or.

Future

The station site's proximity to the M&S Bank Arena, Anglican Cathedral, Kings Waterfront, Cains Brewery Village and other more recent developments in the surrounding area has focused public attention on reopening it.
In 2012 Liverpool's Strategic Investment Framework listed the reopening of St James as important to the success of the Baltic Triangle development. Merseytravel agreed to work with Liverpool Vision in March 2014 to investigate the cost of reopening the station and its projected usage. In January 2015 Merseytravel confirmed that they would be carrying out a study for the station's potential reopening in the 2015-16 financial year. Merseyrail listed the re-opening of the station as a 'top rail project' during a presentation on rail development and delivery in November 2016.
Merseytravel commissioned a report into the reopening of the station which was completed in September 2017. The report compared reopening St James against the construction of a new station in the Chinatown area of Liverpool. Whilst the report found many benefits to opening a station in the Chinatown area, it concluded that: "A new station at St James is feasible and potentially highly beneficial, albeit at a high cost and with correspondingly reduced value for money." Merseytravel's chairman Cllr Liam Robinson stated in an interview with the Liverpool Echo in February 2019 that reopening the station would be a significant task and would involve the construction of new platforms, ticket offices, waiting areas and lift shafts.
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority announced in August 2019 that they were planning to use part of a £172m funding package to reopen the station, subject to the plans being approved.