Liverpool Overhead Railway - transfer of motor coach to new Museum of Liverpool

LIVERPOOL'S famous Overhead Railway stretched from Seaforth in the north to Dingle in the south.

It served one of the busiest ports in the world, the centre of the country's trading activity.

Construction of the railway was a brilliant technical achievement, way ahead of its time and it was the first elevated railway in the world to use electric traction.

Trains on the Liverpool Overhead Railway consisted of three coaches, with a motor coach at each end and a trailer coach between them. The video at:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCjxLVj7beM

shows the movement out of storage of one of the original motor coaches which has electric motors mounted beneath the floor, a driving cab at one end and third class accommodation with wooden seats.

The coach is one of a batch built between 1892-1899. It served on the Overhead Railway until it closed in 1956 and was preserved by British Railways - the only example of a LOR motor coach to survive. It was later presented to National Museums Liverpool by the British Railways Board.

The Overhead Railway was built to ease congestion along the docks but it was also marketed as a tourist attraction as it provided amazing views of the docks, shipping and transatlantic liners on the River Mersey. It was fondly known as the 'dockers' umbrella' as it also provided shelter from the rain.

The coach has been displayed in the new Liverpool Museum at the height it would have travelled at, so visitors in The Great Port gallery below will be able to walk beneath it, as the dockers once did.

The video shows interviews with Museum staff plus coverage of the coach being transported to its new location in July 2010, retracing part of the original route that it would have taken.

Please pass this link on to other groups with an interest. Thanks.

Stephen Wolstenholme

Another very interesting link provided by Stephen,

Excellent stuff :handclap:


collegepudding

I visited the new museum last weekend, the high-light of which, was undoubtedly the LOR carriage, followed closely by the Liverpool Cityscape by Ben Johnson.

As a teenager, I was a volonteer at the Steamport Museum in Southport. The museum possessed a LOR carriage which was in the protective hands of Charles Box, who was, if I am correct, the last chief-engineer of the LOR. Mr Box was a fascinating person to talk to and many an hour was spent in his company. Sadly, the LOR carriage was in poor repair and I have no idea what has become of it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by andyk

Sadly, the LOR carriage was in poor repair and I have no idea what has become of it.

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Car 7 led a nomadic existence after the closure of the LOR being used as an office by a coal merchant and then a firm of car breakers, at some time after its sale from the LOR scrapline it lost it's bogies and almost all of it's interior fittings. before finally being sold to the Southport railway centre and housed in their shed, mounted on a pair of accommodation bogies. The closure of that centre in 1998 and the relocation of most of their stock to a new site in Preston once again left car No. 7 with an uncertain future as it was regarded as surplus to the requirements of the new centre and in need of a new home and a new owner.

LOR 7 was moved to an electric railway museum near Coventry in August of 1998. Funds are now being raised to effect a full restoration on the coach but it is outside in poor shape.

Stephen Wolstenholme