Birkenhead Mollington Street was a former traction maintenance depot located at Mollington Street in Birkenhead, England, on the Birkenhead Dock Branch railway. Although never directly connected by rail, the depot was situated less than 200 m (660 ft) from Birkenhead Central railway station. The depot serviced steam and subsequently diesel locomotives until 1985, when it was closed and demolished. As of 2018[update], the site of the depot is still disused.
The new partners need new and better servicing facilities for their fleets, and so built the new joint-depot in 1878. The shed consisted of two separate but conjoined 8-road straight sheds:[4]
LNWR: to the north, an eight-road pitched-roof shed.[5]Coaling stage to the west, turntable at the shed throat
GWR: to the south and closest to the running lines, an eight-road north light pattern roofed shed.[5] Coaling stage to the west, turntable to the south on an entrance siding. Originally coded BHD, it later became 24
In 1951, the ex-LNWR shed was reduced in scale by half its width, to allow the construction of a new two-road straight diesel shed in its place. The LNWR coal stage was removed, meaning all coaling moved to the southern GWR coal stage. A new diesel fuelling stage was built on the entrance throat to the new diesel depot.[4]
In 1963 as the Beeching cuts were felt, the entire ex-GWR allocation of locos was removed and sent south to Swindon Works for reallocation or scrapping.[4] Nonetheless, up to ninety locomotives on shed could still be seen, on occasion.[5] About half of these would be BR Standard Class 9F 2-10-0s, which worked the heavy iron ore trains from Bidston Dock to the John Summerssteelworks in Shotton.[5] The final day of steam operations at the shed was 5 November 1967.[6] The depot code was 8H, between September 1963 and May 1973[2] and finally BC between May 1973 and closure, in 1985.
Diesel era
After closure to steam, 9F duties were taken over by Brush Type 4s.[10]
During the final years of the depot, locomotives stabled included Class 03,[11]Class 25, Class 40[12] and Class 47[13] traction. Class 03s were also allocated to the depot.[14] In the early 1980s, circa. 1984, during the Merseyrail changeover from Class 503 to Class 508electric multiple units, those units were also stored at the depot.[15][16] The depot was closed on 25 November 1985, and demolished in July 1987.[5]