Brilliant history of the system in and around Aintree.and at the grand old age of 56 I've finally found out what the Aintree Iron was......thank u very much ,thank you very very very much , I'm a happy man. 😀..spent most weekends of my youth in the late 70's travelling the merseyrail network on my trusty merseyrover ticket .. unlimited travel within merseyside boundaries from 6pm friday night till midnight sunday for the princely sum of 50p (Child fare) oh the memories . Thanks again Mitch. (Ex Huyton-ite)

Used to go train spotting in Aintree shed on Sundays in the early sixties. Plenty of engine's to cop but very few namers. Nobody ever chased us out of the shed and no H&S, those were the days, happy times as well.

Great video. In the 60's & 70's I lived off Park Lane. Used to take my young son for a walk down the trackbed of the CLC Southport Extension Railway towards the Old Roan. Occasionally there would be a class 40 working into the Metal Box factory.

Very informative and ... you have given me the meaning of "The Aintree Iron" so "Thank You Very Much" as the scaffold sang!.

Further down the line is a station called orrel park, my Nana's house used to look onto the railway just before you'd get to the station. I always remember as a kid hearing her single glazed windows rattle as the trains went through, but of course she was used to it so never really noticed. She did tell me about how in the olden days the trains would come "thundering" through at all hours, which I guess would have been the freight trains too. I never knew all this history about Aintree station though, but I do remember my mum driving past there when I was younger and me being amazed at this bright new building at Aintree station, along with a car park and bus station. For years I've gone under that bridge near the kfc and never known that used to be part of the railway! So thank you for this video, it was really enjoyable to watch.

The Ghosty and back hills we played there as kids.

Thanks for these videos! I used to live in Helsby Road in the 1970's and would play in the disused Aintree engine shed over the, as was then, Back Field. Great nostalgia

Excellent documentary, thank you for your good work. 😊

Excellent video, superbly conceived and presented.

One of the guys I used to work with on The Railway back in the early 90s was an ex Aintree shed guy, he started there as a young lad. He brought some Black and White photos in one day that had been taken at the shed, on one of them there is a bunch of lads, all posing in front of this steam engine. He pointed out himself and the guy who was stood next to him, was a very young Billy J Kramer who started at Aintree shed as an engine cleaner.

Fantastic History Lesson,what a great station we have now thanks to all the Planning, I was able to build a wall with Waste bricks from the engine sheds, yes it's still standing in rice lane

Spent most of my childhood at Aintree sheds.

An outstanding piece, well done. Just on the the North Mersey branch from Bootle to Aintree - it has not been used for many years and is generally overgrown to the extent that it would be difficult to use without significant expenditure. The Sectional Appendix, records the operational details of all Network Rail lines and is incorporated into Track Access Agreements with train operators. Currently, the North Mersey branch is recorded as being restricted solely to “engineering trains” i.e. run for maintenance and renewals purposes. Since the line has not actually seen traffic for several years, Network Rail has decided to propose that its status is changed to “out of use”. This means that the branch will still be in Network Rail’s operational property portfolio and not available for disposal/sale. This provides protection for any potential future rail uses that may arise. Such an approach is believed to be consistent with the policies of key stakeholders. The installation of new electrical supply kit (as seen on your video to the right of the junction) was to allow safer isolation of the electrical supply to the third rail system, by means of remote isolation. Network Rail were also upgrading some of the power cables to make them more resilient to the increased power demands on the supply system that new trains, soon to be online and currently parked at Crewe /Kirkdale for Merseyrail, will generate. As part of this work, they also removed a small section of track in the Aintree station sidings (as in your video) to allow the running of new cables from the supply sub-station directly to the third rail network. The works have also involved vegetation removal along part of the North Mersey branch, as far as Network Rail's road access point off Deltic Way. A great vid - thank you for your efforts. I live just by the old Langton Dock branch - would love to have seen more photos of that when it was in full operation - ironically what the Dock needs now more than ever to move freight but cannot see it ever being recommissioned.

As kids we sometimes played by the old station on the delta way side of road and walk along the tracks looking for birds eggs and rabbits

Excellent video and very informative..I remember the big signal box at Aintree Station. If I remember correctly there was a signal manufacturering depot on signal works road not far from Aintree Station.

A great video. Thanks. I have fond memories of working at Courtaulds and going to the Grand National as a kid. Many school friends lived on Park Lane. The Scaffold further immortalised the 'Aintree Iron'. Walshy.

Another great video love the way you get loads of information and use it wisely I hope you can do Southport soon all the lost Stations up there

Very enjoyable article. The inclusion of the old maps is so informative & using Google Map it is possible to see the area as it is today.

Excellent video - thanks for putting it together! Fascinating stuff. I’m really interested in the old railway lines and stations in the Aintree area. Only the other week I walked around those container units to see if I could see any evidence of Aintree Central (couldn’t see any) and saw a rusty single line of track on the North Mersey Branch is still there. I didn’t realise it had 4 lines there at one point! Your video has answered a lot of my questions too in particular what that bridge over the A59 was used for! 👍🏻

Really thorough and concise and I like the leisurely pace. I had a late friend who lived around here and we often used to go for long walks around what had been Aintree Central, the Gridiron and Walton Triangle. He knew the bit around Aintree Central as ‘The Back Field’. Sometimes we’d go along the line which crossed Warbreck Moor. It was still active in the 80s but not used much. The whole area must have been really busy through most of the 60s, but as a small kid I’d not have been out that way much, though I do recall the North Liverpool Extension Line still being used by steam trains at Broadway and Walton Triangle. It was a bit of a shame the Merseyrail network was never completed as originally conceived. I no longer live on Merseyside, but that whole area always seemed full of ghosts. It was difficult to believe it had once been such a hive of activity. If it wasn’t for the old photos and videos like yours, I’d begin to think I’d dreamed it all. Nice detail about the bridge to Courtaulds. I only discovered what that was for quite recently but it always intrigued me because it looks quite modern.

Excellent work. So interesting. More please...

This video is amazing! I live on Warbreck Moor and use Aintree station to get to the City Centre and Ormskirk. I love seeing old photos of steam locos passing through and the MPD where the new housing estate is now! Could you do a video on Old Roan station?

Very good, really enjoyed it

Really enjoyed that with lots of fantastic information and old photos 👍🏻 Shame the other lines got pulled up as they might of made a very different Mersey rail network 🤔

That No. 1 loco is fascinating!

I have only been to Aintree once but as I got off the train the next unit to come in going to Liverpool center was 507021 "Red Rum" I wonder what the odds for that are. Thanks for an interesting video.

brilliant

Thank you for covering British Enka, my Grandad used to work there years ago, I could find very little information on this and its great to see it on the old map. Also its nice to see an actual picture of the turntable my dad told me about when I was a kid, thank you, finally I get to see it, read all the books I could find and nothing

Great, at last I know now where that big complex electrified junction was at 8:19. I've often seen pictures of it but it was never clear where it actually was. And now I also know where the "Aintree iron" was that was in the song by the Scaffold ( I think, not sure now ) back in the 60's. Weren't they from somewhere in Merseyside? I remember them on "crackerjack" back in the late 60's. I'm from down south and I was only brought to the north when my parents moved in 1971 and I only started travelling to Liverpool and Merseyside in early 1989, and I remember wandering around the Wirral docks areas and seeing the last of the old Wirral dock rail lines just after they'd gone out of use. Have you done any videos about them too?

I live off Wango lane ,when i first moved up there i would take the dog around the back of Aintree racecourse,,canal turn. there was all large space next to the Kirkby line with lots of what looked like Railway building all demolished. was this some sort of goods yard back in the day ?

So the bridge over warbreck moor was used as a station ?

Aintree sounds lot different from Braintree.