to keep up with the competition from trams. In the early 20th century, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway L&YR was electrifying its routes out of . A connection was built from the L&YR station to a new station beside Seaforth Sands. The railway became popular with tourists. A 1902 Liverpool guidebook devoted a whole chapter to viewing and visiting the docks via the overhead railway, and a 1930s poster described it as "the best way to see the finest docks in the world". As of 1919, a total of 18million passengers used the Overhead Railway each year, 14million passengers per year, even during WWII, and 9million into the 1950s. From 1902, the journey end-to-end journey time was reduced to 22minutes, but due to increased power and maintenance costs, the trains were then slowed down by six minutes in 1908, and the frequency of trains was increased to one every three minutes during peak times. By 1910, the operating hours were unrivaled, providing at least one train every 10minutes from 4:45am until 11:33;pm on weekdays. From 2 July 1905, Overhead Railway trains began running through to Seaforth & Litherland, and through connections and through bookings between Liverpool Overhead Railway stations and the Southport branch of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway were made available, with revised fares and timetables. The L&YR built some special lightweight electric stock and from 1906 began running services from Dingle to and Aintree. Regular services to Aintree were withdrawn in 1908, and after this special trains ran only twice a year, on Jump Sunday and the following Friday for the Grand National, both held at Aintree Racecourse. Through services from Dingle to Southport were withdrawn in 1914. By 1914 the railway had served over 10 million passengers. To allow the through-running of L&YR trains, the conductor rail was moved to outside the running rails and the centre rail became the earth return until the 1920s. The first automatic train-stop system was installed on the line, and was electrically operated. An arm on the trackside would be struck by each passing train, activating an electromagnet, resulting in a 'danger' signal being shown until the train had passed through the next station. As a result of automation, the number of manned signal boxes was reduced to two. The line upgraded the signalling from semaphore to a Westinghouse permanent daytime colour-light system in 1921: the first to be installed in