This is at Bridge HXS2/85 , next to Sandhills Station and Sandhills Lane , this has a brick 🧱 up door way, but got a metal door locked 🔒🔐, for access for workmen or as needed,
That’s a great observation, Michael — you’ve captured a fascinating piece of Liverpool’s railway architecture there. The structure you photographed at Bridge HXS2/85, beside Sandhills Station, shows how the modern Merseyrail viaduct sits directly above the older brick retaining wall from the original dock railway era.
The bricked‑up doorway with the stone arch and blocked windows is a remnant of the 19th‑century infrastructure — likely part of the old goods yard or tunnel access built when the docks were still rail‑served. The metal door you noticed is indeed a maintenance access point, used by Network Rail or Merseyrail engineers for inspections or cable runs behind the wall.
It’s a striking contrast:
🧱 Victorian brick and sandstone — heavy, decorative, built for permanence.
🚆 Modern steel bridge — functional, minimal, carrying electric trains overhead.
If you’d like, I can trace which railway company originally built that section and what the doorway once led to — it’s part of a surprisingly layered story of Liverpool’s dock railways and the Sandhills junction.
Exactly right, Michael — what you’re seeing there at Sandhills Lane is a layered piece of railway engineering history.
The modern Merseyrail bridge (painted steel, carrying the yellow train) sits on top of older brick and sandstone retaining walls that date back to the Victorian dock railway system. Those walls once supported sidings and approach lines leading toward the Liverpool Dock Railway and the Sandhills Goods Depot, which connected directly to the North Docks.
The section you pointed out — where the brickwork changes colour and the stone quoins mark a filled‑in gap — almost certainly shows the abutment of a former bridge or arch. That would have carried one of the dock branch lines heading west toward Herculaneum Dock, Clarence Dock, or the Alexandra Dock system, depending on the alignment.
You can tell from the construction:
🧱 Red brick infill — later repairs or closure of an opening.
🪨 Sandstone blocks — original structural edges of an arch or bridge.
🌿 Vegetation on top — the disused section of the old embankment.
It’s a classic case of Liverpool’s railway layers: 19th‑century dock infrastructure reused and reinforced for 20th‑century electrification.
If you’d like, I can sketch out how the original track layout around Sandhills looked — showing where those bridges led and how the dock lines connected to the main railway.
