The Liverpool Overhead Railway

Liverpool can hold claim to that title when you look at the six and half mile rail line known as the Overhead Railway.

---

Locals would call it many things :'The 'Ovee' or, the one that still remains for so many people, The Dockers' Umbrella. It was the world's first electric elevated railway; first railway to use an escalator. Britain's first automatic semaphore signals. First colour signalling lights. Liverpool ...the Capital of Firsts . Its place in history goes on...but the Overheard Railway is now a distant memory. Much-loved and much-missed. In this 84 page souvenir - a celebration of this unique railway first,we look back at how it came about; how it survived two World Wars but, in the end, time and progress waited for no one. The Overhead Railway, opened in 1893, was stopped in its tracks in 1956. It is now immortalised in the magnificent Museum of Liverpool with an original carriage lovingly returned for posterity for all those who wanted to know what it looked like; what it felt like to be part on it. An experience. Just how high was it off the ground? Where did it start and finish? All these questions are answered in our special salute to a mould-breaking innovation in world transport.
Today, New York and Chicago and many other famous cities have overhead railways, but none were like Liverpool's. Featuring images and stories from the Daily Post and Echo archives, Liverpool Record Office and National Museums Liverpool and first-hand experiences from frequent travellers and dockers ( who travelled on it (and sheltered underneath it), this is a celebratory glossy souvenir programme - a keepsake return ticket to ride on one of the greatest legacies of Liverpool. We won"t see its like again - but it will never be forgotten Now you can travel back to a time when there where trains in the sky ...a true story. The Liverpool Overhead Railway :A Celebration of the Dockers' Umbrella Trinity Mirror Media GBP4.99.