Both the Burscough Curves and Skelmersdale fall under West Lancashire, which is unfortunately not part of the Merseytravel area or the Liverpool City Region combined authority, with all the benefits that brings (however Rainford is located in St Helens). What is important is not to allow what is an essential scheme in Skelmersdale to overshadow the reopening of the Burscough Curves as they are extremely different projects.
Reopening the Burscough Curves would at most involve relaying less than 1 mile of single track over an existing embankment which is currently owned by Network Rail, with some obvious devegetation work needed and minor signalling enhancements required to create capacity for new services. This is by no means a “luxury” scheme, in fact it would be particularly low cost, with benefits to a very large number of people. The combined populations of Southport, Ormskirk, Burscough, Rufford and Croston alone are 130k, not including any of the smaller settlements in the vicinity, or anyone in Preston wishing to travel to Southport. How exactly is it selfish for me to suggest that a number of communities in a wide area of West Lancashire gain better connections with each other and with Southport. This would NOT be at the expense of Skelmersdale.
By contrast, the full Skelmersdale scheme could, by my calculations, require laying a total of up to 10.3 single track miles of new track, of which 7 miles may need to be electrified, in addition to electrifying 1 mile of existing double track between Rainford and the new Skelmersdale/Upholland West Junction. This would include redoubling the single track section between Fazakerley and Rainford, which would require widening of the existing embankment at Headbolt Lane to provide a 3 track layout for continued access to the Knowsley waste facility by freight trains and replacing several single track bridges, including one over the M57, to create the capacity needed for a Skelmersdale service. Rainford station will need both platforms to be significantly lengthened to accommodate an 8 car 777, at present only a 2 car 150 will fit. Beyond Rainford, a new spur of approximately 1.9 miles will need to be built to a new Skelmersdale station, running over a new embankment which will have to be constructed on land where there has never previously been a railway of any kind, requiring land purchase. This would be a similar scheme to the construction of the line to Manchester Airport, but longer, as this is only 1.5 miles. I envisage the new line being built as 2 parallel tracks, with the western track used by Merseyrail and the eastern track used by Northern, this way only the western track would need to be electrified. The direct connection between Rainford and Upholland would need to be retained for the aforementioned freight access to Knowsley.
Skelmersdale currently enjoys 4 buses an hour to Wigan, Ormskirk and Southport, 2 to Maghull and Liverpool and some smaller local ones, but I agree they need to be supplemented by a rail link as soon as possible. The population of Skelmersdale is 38k. This is still a very significant number of people, deserving of such a rail link, but the Burscough Curves with far less complexity involved could easily be fully operational several years before the Skelmersdale rail link can be delivered and I believe this should happen.
Southport is the 13th largest town in the North West (and the 17th largest settlement overall as Liverpool, Manchester, Salford and Preston are cities) and is well connected with Liverpool to the south, but to nowhere else. It may be technically connected but not well. In terms of buses, there are 5 an hour to Liverpool, 2 to Ormskirk/Skelmersdale/Wigan and 4 to Preston, of which 2 are “Express” (the X2) and the others are an extension of a previous Preston-Tarleton service which only seem to have appeared when Stagecoach ordered a new fleet of buses for the X2, using the older bus fleet.
While is good that we have retained a service to Manchester, it is frequently publicised for its poor performance and overcrowding, even being the main subject of a Channel 4 Dispatches programme not that long ago. It frequently saw 142s until 2019 and has never seen a 195 in service, only on a single test run, as the plug doors foul the platforms and Meols Cop and this is apparently not a priority to rectify despite all Merseyrail platforms being modified for level boarding and the much less used platforms at New Lane being lengthened. We may also be the last to receive the 777s on any services at all. Hillside station, which gets extremely busy when The Open golf is held at the Royal Birkdale in Southport is only now having lifts installed, many years after several much less used stations closer to Liverpool received disabled access. The introduction of the Class 769 units (which are a fundamentally good idea) has seen Manchester services frequently arriving 30-45 minutes late at Southport due to powertrain faults and their subsequent withdrawal due to these faults has seen services short formed of 2 car 150s or 156s with no capacity for social distancing.
In my personal experience the X2 is frequently 20 minutes late, making it impossible to rely on to get a train from Preston and while they are modern vehicles and the seats are comfortable, the ride quality is awful owing to the poor condition of the road surface north of Southport and the journey time of almost an hour is unacceptable for a shorter distance than the trip to Liverpool. Buses I’ve been on from Ormskirk have taken over 3 hours to reach Southport in the complete gridlock traffic of pre COVID rush hour. Travelling via Sandhills, the service to Ormskirk waits for connection with the one arriving from Southport as it is a conflicting movement, but in the other direction, the Southport service doesn’t wait unless it’s busy and a few minutes late from Hunts Cross, but in the peak it tended to be crush loaded and impossible to board. The last time I tried to change stations at Wigan for a connection, the Southport service was 20 minutes late arriving so I had a 55 minute wait and the last time I travelled back from Manchester I arrived almost 45 minutes late, after sitting at Gathurst for half an hour.
Based on this evidence I would argue that Southport is definitely hard done by, but perhaps not to the same extent as Skelmersdale. The rail connection to Skelmersdale would appear to reduce journey times from Skelmersdale to Liverpool by nearly an hour. The Burscough Curves would reduce the journey time from Southport to Ormskirk by a similar amount, but without needing to build 2 new stations at Skelmersdale and Headbolt Lane or potentially several expensive new substations for electrification, only needing a tenth of the amount of new track to be laid. I’m all for building the line to Skelmersdale, even for it to be extended from Skelmersdale to Ormskirk, as with the amount of road traffic between them, for future rail passengers to be expected to change at Kirkdale is unacceptable, particularly as this would also provide a direct route from Ormskirk to Wigan via Skelmersdale.
The Burscough Curves remain a vastly cheaper scheme to deliver directly benefitting almost 100k more people, but there is still very high value in connecting the population of Skelmersdale. Take the example of Macclesfield, population 51k, which has direct services to Manchester, Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, all intermediate stations between Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent, Milton Keynes, London Euston as well as Stafford, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry, Oxford, Reading, Southampton and Bournemouth via the CrossCountry service and also Wigan, Preston, Lancaster, Oxenholme and Carlisle during diversions on the WCML such as those last weekend. Any population of this size deserves to be this well connected, so why is it that Southport, with almost double the population can’t even manage a local service to Ormskirk or Preston so far, let alone direct long distance services to anywhere beyond, or why Skelmersdale or Leigh, without being significantly smaller than Macclesfield, aren’t provided with anything at all?
In answer to your question, yes I have petitioned MP Damien Moore about the Burscough Curves and I have a video of Boris himself saying in Parliament that it is a good idea to reinstate them. I am told he is also mentioned building a new railway to Skelmersdale but I haven’t seen this. He has now been invited to visit Southport and see the Crossens pumping station.
With regards to your proposed no-brainer, the main rail artery for freight to and from the Port of Liverpool including the endless Drax trains, I’m unsure if it has the capacity for frequent stopping passenger services without negatively affecting freight throughput. Also are Merseytravel willing to spend the money to reinstate 6 stations at once? Perhaps matchday specials to Anfield are feasible. Where would these proposed services run from? Would it be Southport via Bootle Junction, a Bootle shuttle, a Lime Street shuttle, or perhaps Wigan/St Helens/Warrington Bank Quay/Manchester via the Olive Mount chord. To run from Ormskirk would also require the North Mersey branch from Aintree. There are endless possibilities. It is beneficial to provide as many as possible, without causing conflicts, instead of prioritising them over each other.
