Bold St Entrance to Central Station, Liverpool Central Rail Station , Ranelagh St, Liverpool, Merseyside, England, UK, L1 1JT

Liverpool Central railway station in Liverpool, England, forms a central hub of the Merseyrail network, being on both the Northern Line and the Wirral Line. The station is located underground on two levels, below the site of a former mainline terminus. It is the busiest station in Liverpool, though considerably smaller than Lime Street station, the mainline terminus, and the busiest station to operate solely on the Merseyrail network. The station is the busiest underground station outside London serving 40, 000 people daily. The station in passengers per platform is the busiest underground railway station in the United Kingdom at 5, 217, 547 per platform per annum and laying third in all stations, underground or overground. Liverpool Central is one of nine stations on the Merseyrail network to incorporate automatic ticket gates. The main concourse is part of a shopping centre, and includes a closed subway link to the former Lewis's department store Liverpool Central Low Level underground terminal station opened on 11 January 1892, at the end of the Mersey Railway's route, via the Mersey Railway Tunnel from Birkenhead, when the route was extended from James Street station. The Mersey Railway platforms were underground, accessed from stairs within the High Level station and situated in roughly the same position as the escalators accessing the Northern Line today. The Mersey Railway tunnel entering Central Low Level from the north of the station was aligned with the High Level station's approach tunnel from the south. This was to ensure minimum engineering work if ever the two tunnels were to be linked up—as did occur in the 1970s. The Merseyrail network was created in the 1970s by merging separate railways into one integrated network. Central underground station would service the Northern and Wirral Lines. A new loop tunnel was built in Liverpool city centre for Wirral Line trains, linking James Street station with Moorfields, Lime Street and Liverpool Central