been put to councillors to endorse the £60m plan to build a new railway station in Skelmersdale, reconnecting the town with Liverpool. 2009 In June 2009, the Association of Train Operating Companies, in its Expanding Access to the Rail Network report, called for funding for the reopening of this station as part of a £500m scheme to open 33 stations on 14 lines closed in the Beeching Axe, including seven new parkway stations. The report proposes extending the line from by laying 3 miles of new single track along the previous route to the town, at a cost estimated to be in the region of £31million. The route is largely intact, though a deviation north of Westhead would be required. The proposed station would be on the north west corner of town near the Skelmersdale Ring Road, right next to where the old station once was. A feasibility study on the project jointly funded by Merseytravel, Merseyrail, Lancashire County Council & West Lancs Borough Council was due to begin in the autumn of 2013. 2015 Lancashire County Council approved the initiation of a more detailed evaluation on 1 June 2015. This option selection process will take the project to completing Network Rail's GRIP stage 3 level of development in January 2017. The evaluation is to be developed in partnership with Network Rail and Merseytravel. Network Rail has suggested a construction date commencing in April 2021, with services beginning from December 2023, once the single option development and detailed design stages in the GRIP process have been achieved. The likely route for the new link is southwards to join the Kirkby branch line between Upholland and Rainford rather than the original plans to go north via Ormskirk, so as to enable trains to travel to Wigan & Manchester as well as to Liverpool. 2017 In February 2017, Lancashire County Council confirmed that the preferred site for Skelmersdale railway station was the former site of Glenburn Sports College/Westbank Campus. County Council Transport portfolio holder John Fillis said that the site "is big enough to provide a high quality station with scope to expand to meet future demand.". By September, Merseytravel announced that they would be committing £765,000 to the study into the reopening, estimating that the station could be open within a decade with a lot of additional funding. Merseytravel's plan would also see a new station built at Headbolt Lane in