Manchester–Southport line
railway line in the north-west of England
The Manchester–Southport line is a railway line in the north-west of England, operated by Northern Trains. It was originally built as the Manchester and Southport Railway. The section between Wigan and Salford is also known locally as the Atherton Line.
Starting at the city centre stations of Manchester Victoria (also serving Salford Central on the fringe of the city centre) and Manchester Piccadilly (also serving Manchester Oxford Road and Deansgate), it runs in a north-western direction through the towns, villages and suburbs of the City of Salford and Wigan. It then proceeds in the same direction through the small rural villages of West Lancashire, before ending on the Irish Sea coast at the resort town of Southport.
Rolling stock
Services on the line use Class 150, Class 156 and Class 158 DMUs as well as Class 769 BMUs, although 150s and 156s are the most common. Class 153 DMUs are banned from operating on this route because the steps below the doors on these units foul the platform coping stones at Wigan Wallgate station.
Current stations
Southport – terminus, interchange for Merseyrail Northern line services to south Sefton and Liverpool
Meols Cop – suburban stop for eastern Southport
Bescar Lane – village (cottage-style) stop for North Meols. Infrequent service.
New Lane – village stop, also for Martin Mere.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Manchester–Southport line” as railway line in the north-west of England. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as railway line in the north-west of England. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6747592. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Manchester–Southport line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.