A new railway station at Golborne is apparently one Whitehall signature away, which is Westminster-speak for either imminent progress or another decade of watching paperwork gather dust in a very important-looking folder.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham says Golborne Station is not a pie in the sky idea, and Leigh MP James Grundy agrees, despite the pair usually standing on opposite political platforms. Credit where it is due, when Labour and Conservative politicians both point in the same direction on transport, it is either a genuinely sensible plan or the end times. In this case, it looks like the former.
Golborne, sitting on the Cheshire and Greater Manchester border, had a station until it fully closed in 1967. The old platforms can still be seen, though not used, which feels painfully familiar around here, plenty of railway history, not quite enough actual trains.
The plan is to reconnect Golborne to Manchester and improve links for the wider Leigh area, which Burnham describes as majorly underserved. He is not wrong. The Leigh Guided Busway arrived in 2016 and has been useful for many, but anyone pretending it solved every transport problem from Leigh to Golborne deserves to spend a wet Tuesday trying to make three connections with a laptop bag and no patience left.
Back in January 2021, Greater Manchester Combined Authority approved £16m for the development and delivery of the new station, with another £1m put forward to work up the project, funding proposals, and operating costs. James Grundy also said the scheme had received £15m from the Government’s Transforming Cities Fund. So, in classic transport-project fashion, there are figures, funding pots, and enough acronyms to make a normal person quietly leave the room.
Burnham says Transport for Greater Manchester identified Golborne as having the strongest case for a new station in Greater Manchester. He also pointed out that if Metrolink is not coming to Wigan borough any time soon, rail connectivity has to improve. Sensible enough. We can all enjoy a tram fantasy, but at some point somebody has to build something with wheels that actually arrives.
If approved, Grundy said construction could start in 2024 with the station operational by 2025. The station would sit on the current West Coast Mainline, used by trains between Glasgow Central and London Euston, meaning he could use it to get to the House of Commons more easily. Naturally, MPs discovering public transport becomes more urgent when it improves their own commute. Funny how that works.
Burnham, meanwhile, admitted he would probably use Newton-le-Willows more than Golborne himself, because his life runs between Liverpool, for football reasons, and Manchester. Fair enough for the honesty, though it does rather take the shine off the grand ribbon-cutting energy.
The big local issues in Golborne are exactly what anyone with eyes would expect, parking and traffic. Burnham says the rail industry believes the station would be heavily used straight away, and he sees the investment as a way to regenerate Golborne, citing Newton-le-Willows as the gold standard. That comparison is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but Newton has certainly shown what a properly planned station can do for a place.
He also made it clear Golborne will not get the same amount of parking as Newton. His view is that people wanting to drive to a station should go to Newton instead. That is practical, but it also means Golborne will need very clever bus links, walking routes and traffic management, not just a shiny artist impression and a hopeful press quote.
The Bee Network also comes into this, with Burnham saying control of bus services in Wigan from September would allow timetables to include shuttle buses to the station. In theory, marvellous. In practice, the difference between an integrated transport network and a nice logo on a bus is the bit residents actually notice.
Now for the part that makes ears prick up in Culcheth: Kenyon Junction.
James Grundy believes Golborne could become the template for reopening Kenyon Junction, the former station off Kenyon Lane near Culcheth, over the Warrington border. It closed in 1963, and hopes of bringing it back were dashed in the 2000s after local opposition. That opposition was not imaginary either, because one of the fears was that everyone would drive through Culcheth to reach it. Anyone who has sat in local traffic will understand why that concern did not come from nowhere.
Kenyon Junction would sit on the Manchester-Liverpool line as the next station along from Newton-le-Willows. For people in Leigh, Lowton and surrounding areas, it could be genuinely useful. For Culcheth, it could be brilliant or a traffic headache wearing a hi-vis vest, depending on how the access is handled.
Both Grundy and Burnham agree that the Atherleigh Bypass is the key. The road, stretching from Atherton to Leigh Sports Village, has long been known for being left incomplete. Grundy wants it taken all the way up to the M6 and says a bid for road infrastructure could be made in 2024. He argues this would open up access to Kenyon Junction and ease congestion at Lane Head.
On that point, he is talking sense. Kenyon Lane is narrow, winding and already congested, and funnelling station traffic through Lane Head without proper road planning would be the kind of decision that makes residents develop a permanent twitch. If Kenyon Junction comes back, the road infrastructure needs to come first, not as an afterthought scribbled on the back of a council napkin.
Grundy says Kenyon Junction has a major advantage over Atherton and Golborne, lots of space for parking. He also made the fair point that while walking and cycling to a station is great, commuters do not always want to arrive at work soaked and looking like they lost a fight with a garden sprinkler. Quite right. Active travel matters, but so does living in the North West, where horizontal rain is basically a personality trait.
Burnham said he had previously looked at Kenyon Junction as MP for Leigh, describing it as a Wigan Council proposal from the early 2000s that failed after opposition from local Conservatives and Warrington councillors. He also noted that Kenyon Junction is in Warrington, close to Newton station, but could serve the south side of Leigh if paired with a continuation of Atherleigh Way.
For Culcheth residents, this is the nub of it. A station near Kenyon Junction could be a huge boost if it is properly planned, with access designed to keep traffic away from village bottlenecks. But if the idea is simply to revive the station and let local roads absorb the chaos, then no thank you, we already have enough slow-moving metal boxes pretending to be traffic flow.
As for a train station in the heart of Leigh, both Burnham and Grundy were more cautious. The old railway track has gone, and bringing rail back into the town centre would mean major land, housing and funding challenges. Grundy said it could be decades away, while Burnham said it would cost tens of millions. The phrase never say never was used, which in transport terms often means not before your grandchildren have a pension.
There was also a curious note in the original piece saying the article was brought through an exclusive subscriber partnership with USA Today and did not necessarily reflect the view of The Herald. Quite why a local transport story about Golborne, Leigh and Culcheth needed that transatlantic flourish is anyone’s guess, but there we are, even railway stations get an American cameo now.
The bottom line is this: Golborne Station looks like a serious prospect, not just another artist impression dangled in front of long-suffering commuters. Kenyon Junction near Culcheth is back in the conversation, but it must not be separated from the Atherleigh Bypass, Lane Head congestion, parking, buses and the very real impact on local roads.
Better rail links for this corner of Warrington and the wider Leigh area would be a good thing. But if the plan forgets Culcheth’s roads, residents will not be cheering from the platform, they will be stuck in a queue on Kenyon Lane wondering who approved the timetable and whether they have ever actually been here.