Lostock Hall railway station is a railway station serving the village of Lostock Hall in the South Ribble borough of Lancashire, England. It is on the East Lancashire Line and is managed by Northern, who also provide all passenger trains serving it. History The first railway in the area was the Blackburn & Preston Railway, which opened its route from to Junction (on the North Union Railway, 3 miles south of ) in June 1846. The company was almost immediately taken over by the ambitious East Lancashire Railway, which was undergoing a rapid expansion of its network of routes in the area. The ELR encountered problems almost from the outset over the use of the NUR route between Farington & Preston, with congestion and the high tolls charged by the latter company for access to its metals causing considerable friction between the two. The ELR sought parliamentary permission to build its own route to Preston to resolve this issue, which was granted in 1848 despite initial opposition from Preston Corporation. The following year saw the arrival from the west of the Liverpool, Ormskirk and Preston Railway, which had received parliamentary assent in 1846 but had been bought out by the ELR before construction work had started upon it. This route gave the ELR direct access for its traffic to the docks in Liverpool and joined the B&PR at Lostock Hall by means of a junction facing towards Blackburn. A station was built on this line a short distance to the west of the junction (adjacent to the bridge carrying the main Preston to Wigan across the railway) to serve Lostock Hall village, which had by this time been chosen by the ELR as the site for one its main locomotive depots. The ELR Preston Extension was finally opened to traffic on 2 September 1850 - this left the original B&PR line at a triangular junction just east of Lostock Hall and ran roughly parallel to the NUR en route to new platforms alongside the latter's station, with a connection to the main line beyond. Thereafter, the old B&P line between Lostock Hall Junction and Farington was rendered redundant & closed - not seeing regular traffic again until the mid-1880s. Services from the station ran to westbound and to both Preston and (with some extensions through to ) eastbound. Traffic levels continued to increase in subsequent years, particularly after the ELR's