Headbolt Lane is a proposed new railway station in the Northwood area of Kirkby, Merseyside, England. Plans to build a station to serve the area featured on local authority plans as far back as 1972. Work is expected to start on the station in 2020 with the station opening in 2023. Further details of the plan for the new station were announced by the Liver City RegionCombined Authority in July 2020, who also announced an additional £3.3 million funding for the project. The new station will have a 500 vehicle capacity car park, a bus station and step-free access throughout. The plans confirmed that the station would replace Kirby as the MerseyRail terminus and that Northern services from Wigan and Manchester would also operate to and from the new station. The authority confirmed that they were working closely with Lancashire County Council and West Lancashire Borough Council to ensure that plans would facilitate a planned rail link to a new station in Skelmersdale.
History
As part of the planned extension of Merseyrail's Northern Line along the Kirkby Branch Line, the station was initially expected to provide "turn-back" platforms for interchange between Merseyrail electric and Northern diesel services, replacing the existing transfer facilities at Kirkby station. The proposal failed to receive Major Scheme Funding in 2013. However it was mentioned in Merseytravel's 2014 30-year plan. The Electrification Task force placed electrifying the line from Kirkby to Salford Crescent via Wigan in a Tier 1 priority category in 2015. By 2017, Merseytravel and Lancashire County Council had committed £5 million into a study to reopen the line to Skelmersdale with the construction of a new station at Headbolt Lane as part of the plans. Initial estimates suggest that the building of the line with new stations at Headbolt Lane and Skelmersdale would cost around £300 million and would take up to a decade to deliver. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority announced in August 2019 that they were planning to use part of a £172m funding package to build the station. Plans were approved in November 2019 and work is expected to start in 2020.
