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Dockers' Umbrella

“That looks like an interesting day trip, lets do that next weekend”

The Liverpool Overhead Railway ( known locally as the Dockers' Umbrella ) was an overhead railway which carried passengers from one end of Liverpool Docks to the other. It opened in 1893. The railway had a number of world firsts: it was the first elevated railway to use electric power, the first to use automatic signalling and was home to one of the first passenger escalators in a railway station.

At its peak almost 20 million people used the railway every year. In its later years it was promoted as a tourist attraction, “See giant ocean liners and 13 miles of the finest docks in the world”

In 1955, a report into the structure of the many viaducts showed major repairs were needed that the company could not afford. The railway closed at the end of 1956

( thanks to Jeff Wharton for re enactor photo, geheugen.delpher.nl for background photo and Bing for poster artwork )

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Uploaded on December 25, 2020