A number of stations opened and closed during the railway's operation owing to relative popularity and damage, including air bombing during the Second World War.

When the LOR was extended to the Dingle terminus the "overhead" description of the railway would have seemed an anomaly to those descending to the platform there which was underground in a tunnel.

The power was supplied by a generating station at Bramley-Moore Dock that received its coal directly from the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway branch line which passed above.

I will therefore, though with some fear and trembling, fulfil the injunctions of Sir William Forwood, and proceed to handle the electric machinery which is to set this line in motion.

[5] The railway was officially opened on 4 February the same year by the Leader of the Opposition the Marquis of Salisbury, who turned on the main electrical current during a ceremony at the generating station at the Bramley-Moore Dock.

[18] The ceremony was attended by the Earl of Lathom, Lord Kelvin, the mayor of Liverpool, the chairman of the Dock Board, directors and engineers, and a number of other guests, who traveled on an inaugural journey along the railway.

[20] Realising that the railway was receiving low traffic outside of working hours, the line was extended northwards to Seaforth Sands on 30 April 1894 in order to reach more residential areas.

[21] While the passengers had previously been primarily travelling to businesses and the city, the Seaforth extension resulted in a large increase in traffic from residents of the outer areas of Liverpool.

Dingle was the only underground station, the extension from Herculaneum Dock being achieved with a 200 ft (61 m) lattice girder bridge and a half-mile (800 m) tunnel through the sandstone cliff to Park Road.

[17] In the early 20th century, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway L&YR was electrifying its routes out of Liverpool Exchange.

[29] The L&YR built some special lightweight electric stock and from 1906 began running services from Dingle to Southport and Aintree.

The line upgraded the signalling from semaphore to a Westinghouse permanent daytime colour-light system in 1921: the first to be installed in Britain.

[35] With fewer ships docking in Liverpool during the Great Depression, there was a reduction in usage of the Overhead Railway.

The lack of development or rescue by the board was at least in part due to its determination to restrict its activities to those that directly impacted the dock.

It was vulnerable to corrosion, especially as the steam-operated Docks Railway operated beneath some sections, despite the locomotives being fitted with chimney cowls which were intended to deflect the steam from the structure.

[39] Parts of the decking had become rusty on the surface, caused by steam and soot from the dock locomotives that passed underneath, mixing with rainwater to form an acid that began to corrode the metalwork.

Electric trams were introduced and competed with the railway, reducing the number of people using it, and changes to ticketing increased operational costs for the company.

[5] A full-time maintenance team was employed solely for the Overhead Railway, but struggled to keep up with repairs, and costs began to rise steeply during the 1950s.

The company could not afford such costs and looked for financial support, from the Liverpool Corporation, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board and British Railways.

[41][40][2] The company went into voluntary liquidation, despite still being reported to be profitable for its shareholders,[40] and was relieved of its statutory obligation to operate passenger services with the Liverpool Overhead Railway Act 1956 (4 & 5 Eliz.

[42] The final two scheduled trains were full of passengers and were timed to meet at Pier Head, where crowds gathered.

[38] Demolition of the structure commenced on 23 September 1957, and all 80 acres (32 ha) of elevated track were removed by January the following year.

[55] A three-car train was modernised in 1945–47; this involved replacing the timber body with aluminium and plywood, and fitting power-operated sliding doors under control of the guard.

It was used to de-ice the track and haul the maintenance train from its acquisition in the 1890s until it was sold to Rea Ltd, a coal merchant in Birkenhead in 1949.

The railway is featured in the films Waterfront and The Magnet (both 1950), and in the final scenes of The Clouded Yellow (1951), as the character played by Jean Simmons uses it to travel to one of the docks.

[citation needed] Extensive archive footage appears in Of Time and the City, a "cinematic autobiographical poem" made by British film-maker Terence Davies[60] to celebrate Liverpool's 2008 reign as Capital of Culture.

In 1897, the Lumière brothers filmed Liverpool,[31][61] including what is believed to be the first tracking shot, taken from the railway.