Deep within Liverpool's creative Baltic Triangle district lies an abandoned train station that thousands walk past everyday.
While these days the likes of Lime Street, James Street and Central are the names of stations most associated with Liverpool, over 100 years ago you could have added St James Station to that list.
The original St James Station opened in 1874 and was named after the nearby parish church. It closed in 1917 as a cost-cutting measure during the First World War and was never re-opened.
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Remnants of the original station platforms can be seen when travelling on the Northern Line of the Merseyrail network between Brunswick and Liverpool Central stations. This week we were invited down for a look around.
The old entrances to the station are long gone and the old ticket office in Parliament Street disappeared years ago to be replaced by flats. Today you reach the station site through a metal door near Cains and by descending a long metal grille staircase to the old platforms.
On both sides of the track, you can still see the platform beds that were cut out of the bedrock. On the west side below the Ashwell Motors garage, the remains are fragmentary, and in parts overgrown and litter-strewn - but they're still very recognisable as a station.
Above one of those alcoves is a bricked-up double-window. And further along is the bricked-up entrance to the former staircase leading up to street level and the vanished platform building.
For decades the station, which lies in a cutting by Parliament Street, was left to decay along with the area surrounding it. But over the past decade the Baltic Triangle has become a creative and development hotspot that now hosts scores of bars, restaurants and businesses as well as thousands of flats and apartments.
With this in mind, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram has pledged to build a new Merseyrail station on the site. It is hoped that giving commuters and leisure visitors to the area a direct connection to the Merseyrail network would support the reduction of car journeys to the area, contributing towards reducing traffic congestion, as well as aspirations to improve air quality across the city region.
The planned station would be located between Liverpool Central and Brunswick Station on the Northern Line and will include passenger toilets, a cycle hub, step-free access to and between both platforms and a passenger drop-off area outside.
The scheme is currently in the design development stage. Land has already been purchased to safeguard the site of the new station ticket office building.
Earlier this year, the Liverpool City Region conducted a public vote on a name for the new station. The clear winner was Liverpool Baltic and so this will be the name of the new station when it is built.
The current plans aim for the station to be open in 2025, subject to funding being secured for the construction stage. It is expected that a planning application will be made for the station in 2023.
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