The LOR

Reimagining the Liverpool Overhead Railway

An independent architectural study exploring a new elevated railway for Liverpool’s waterfront, with Pier Head station at its heart.

THE LOR imagines an elevated railway moving through Liverpool again. Trains pass between the waterfront’s familiar landmarks, stations become places to experience the city, and a continuous route brings its dockside neighbourhoods into closer connection.

The project begins at Pier Head. Set against the Three Graces, a pair of sweeping station canopies rises from the ground and opens towards the skyline. Their metallic leaf tracery frames glass, daylight and views of the buildings behind.

From this single station, the study looks further along the waterfront and inland, considering how a contemporary interpretation of the Liverpool Overhead Railway could become part of everyday life.

Liverpool Overhead Railway, reproduced in Every Boy’s Book of Railways and Steamships (1911). Image: Internet Archive Book Images / Boston College Libraries, via Wikimedia Commons. No known copyright restrictions.

A railway woven into the city

The original Liverpool Overhead Railway opened in 1893 and closed in 1956. Known as the Dockers’ Umbrella, it carried passengers above the working waterfront and became an enduring part of Liverpool’s identity.

Its elevated position offered a particular experience of the city: travelling alongside ships, warehouses and docks, looking across a landscape of industry and movement. The railway was both useful infrastructure and a way of seeing Liverpool.

Fragments of its structure remain along the former route, including supports embedded in dock walls. These small traces give the project a starting point. THE LOR asks what that elevated relationship with the waterfront might offer Liverpool today.

Pier Head as a point of arrival

Pier Head station is conceived as a meeting place between railway, river and city.

The platforms sit above street level, with stairs and glazed lifts connecting them to the public space below. The central entrance remains open between the two canopies, giving the station a clear address and preserving a view towards the Cunard Building.

Each canopy gathers around the platform before extending into a long, tapered tip. Seen together, the forms suggest a pair of wings. Their silhouette offers a quiet association with the Liver Birds while giving the station an identity of its own.

The intention is for arrival to feel distinctive at both levels: approaching on foot beneath the structure, or arriving by train with the waterfront opening into view.

Ornament becomes structure

The station’s architectural language draws on the richness of its surroundings.

Carved stone, repeated window bays, sculptural figures and elaborate rooflines give the neighbouring buildings their depth. The canopy responds through a contemporary pattern of interlocking leaves, translating that interest in ornament into a frame that follows the changing surface of the roof.

The tracery has physical depth. Its members catch the light along their edges and cast shadows across the glazing, allowing the pattern to read differently from the ground, platform and surrounding buildings.

The frame becomes finer towards the high tips, giving the ends a lighter finish. More substantial areas gather nearer the ground, while glazed openings across the sides and crown retain views and bring daylight into the station.

Material and the maritime setting

The material study brings reflective metal and glazing into conversation with the waterfront’s pale stone façades. Silver surfaces pick up warmer tones in the light, giving the frame a changing relationship with its surroundings.

Below the station, slender supports and dark bases recall the rhythm of the original overhead railway. The regularity of the elevated line provides a quieter setting for the more expressive station roof.

Liverpool’s exposed waterfront would make durability and access for maintenance essential to any further development. Metal finishes, junctions, drainage and replaceable glazing would need to be considered together. The concept establishes a material direction; its construction would require a detailed response to the maritime environment.

A line with room to grow

The accompanying route study places Pier Head within a wider waterfront corridor.

To the north, the line connects the Liverpool Waters area, Ten Streets and the stadium district. To the south, it continues through the Albert Dock, Baltic Triangle, Kings Dock, Brunswick and Festival Gardens areas.

Further possibilities include extensions towards Bootle Strand, Dingle, Sefton Park and Liverpool John Lennon Airport. An inland connection through the Waterloo and Victoria tunnel corridor is also explored, suggesting a relationship between the waterfront, central Liverpool and the east of the city.

These routes establish an ambition for a connected network. Interchanges near James Street and Lime Street would allow THE LOR to complement existing rail services, with the alignment and operation forming a separate stage of investigation.

A new journey through Liverpool

THE LOR brings together a remembered railway, a contemporary station and an imagined journey through the city.

At Pier Head, infrastructure becomes part of the public experience of the waterfront. The train moves through a familiar setting, while the station offers somewhere to pause within it: sheltered beneath a patterned roof, looking out towards the river and the architecture around it.

An independent concept by mmcd studio. Station design, materials and route proposals remain exploratory