Rainford - Transport

Transport

Rainford Junction is so called because it contained the junction between the Liverpool and Bury Railway's Skelmersdale Branch and St. Helens Railway, and is now home to the village's only railway station. The station is on the Kirkby - Manchester Victoria via Wigan line. Passengers wishing to travel to Liverpool must change at Kirkby onto the Merseyrail electrified line. Rainford Village railway station, located on Crosspit Lane, served the centre of the village from 1858 until closure in 1951. It was located on the line to St Helens Shaw Street station.

Rainford sits alongside the A570 (Rainford Bypass), a dual carriageway constructed in the late 1930s to supplant the original route running through the village centre. The A570 connects at one end to the East Lancashire Road and, at the other end, the M58 motorway. This results in excellent road links, and the village therefore has many inhabitants who commute to the nearby cities of Liverpool and Manchester, and to St Helens.

There are bus services in Rainford; Arriva operate service 38 which connects the village and Rainford Junction to St Helens every 30 minutes. Evening and Sunday journeys on this service are numbered 356 and go via Crank approximately hourly. Strawberry bus operate the 319 from St Helens to Ormskirk via Rainford. The service provides an extended link to Southport during the summer months and there are also several shortened versions of the 319 running throughout the day serving just St Helens to Rainford via Cross Pit Lane, Higher Lane and Old Lane. The 152 is operated by Cumfy Bus and runs along Higher Lane to St. Helens via Crank hourly. The 157 goes to Ashton and is currently operated by Warrington Coachways.