Hooton Station Hooton station is located on the former Birkenhead Railway, a joint railway owned by the Great Western Railway and the London and North Western Railway. The station was opened by the Chester and Birkenhead Railway, a constituent of the Birkenhead Railway, on 23 September 1840 and became, until 1967, the northern end of the GWR's main line from London Paddington to Birkenhead Woodside. A branch from Hooton to Helsby via Ince & Elton opened on 1 July 1863, and another branch to Parkgate (later extended to West Kirby) followed on 1 October 1866. In its heyday, the station had seven platforms. The West Kirby branch closed to passengers in 1956 and completely in 1962. The branch line trains frequently comprised a train of LMS coaches hauled by a GWR tank engine; there was also a gas-lit 'motor train' with a driver's compartment at the end of the carriage used when the train was running with the engine at the rear. The service to Helsby has been replaced by a couple of diesel "parliamentary" services between Ellesmere Port and Warrington Bank Quay, thus no longer serving Hooton. Hooton's architecture is in the style of the Birkenhead Joint Railway, the brick-built station buildings being similar to those at Hadlow Road which date from 1866, rather than the rough-hewn Gothic style used at Little Sutton and Ellesmere Port stations from 1863. The original 1839 Birkenhead Railway was single track and few if any relics remain today along the route which was doubled in 1847 and quadrupled in 1891. The signalling and the signal boxes of Hooton North, a 90-lever box which closed on 9 December 1973, and Hooton South, a 128 and then 80-lever box which closed on 18 May 1985 and now replaced with a modern structure, were distinctly L&NWR. However, in spite of some local L&NWR (later LMS) trains and locomotives, it was very much Great Western territory - situated as it is near the end of the main line which earned that railway its major profits, even though it did not serve the rather more glamorous destinations with which the GWR liked to be, and generally is, associated.
Class 507 507020 arrives at Liverpool South Parkway on a Hunt's Cross to Southport service.
Class 508 508136 runs into Liverpool Central on a New Brighton working.
