The parish had three railway stations – Preston Brook, Moore and Daresbury. Confusingly, Daresbury station was in Moore too.
Moore station was opened on 4 July 1837. The station building was functional rather than pretty. There was a signal box and a water tower, which is still remembered by some villagers. The water was fed into troughs in the middle of each set of railway lines. The steam locomotives used to take up the water as they travelled along, creating plenty of spray.
The station house still stands, as do two railway workers’ cottages and all are now private residences. Milk from the local farms was taken to the station by horse and cart and then transported to the markets in Manchester. There is still a ring in the wall where the horses used to be tied up.
A timetable from 1914 shows that the journey to Warrington Bank Quay took 5 or 6 minutes and to Crewe took between 45 mins and an hour.
The station was closed temporarily during both wars, but in fact, it didn’t reopen after WW2 and was officially closed on 1 February 1943.
In the search for higher speeds on the West Coast mainline, all evidence of the station and platforms was swept away when the section from Weaver Junction to Glasgow Central was electrified in 1974. Now, both electric and diesel trains speed through the village every day, interspersed with slower moving freight trains.
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