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Outdoor area at a Merseyrail station featuring metal barriers arranged for crowd control or queuing, with green directional signs reading "Liverpool City Centre via Kirkdale & Orrell" and "Merseyrail Sandhills." A covered structure with yellow railings is visible in the background, along with trees and a modern building.

Upgrading Sandhills Station to support Everton’s next chapter

Updated February 19, 2026 Rail 2 min read

The Sandhills station upgrade project involved improving access and capacity for the closest railway station to Everton FC’s new Hill Dickenson Stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock.

One of England’s most famous and historic football clubs, Everton FC, completed a much-anticipated move from their iconic stadium of Goodison Park to their new home, the Hill-Dickinson Stadium.

Built on Bramley-Moore Dock, the new stadium provides a higher capacity of 52,769, which means thousands more loyal football fans attending the stadium on matchdays. To cope with this increased demand, the nearest station to the stadium, Sandhills, required improved access and capacity.

We installed a new footbridge and staircases to connect the crowd management zone at the station to the southern end of Sandhills’ island platform, improving the flow of foot traffic throughout the station.

The new footbridge is founded below the existing brick arch structure that the station is built upon. To enable this, the team had to locally strengthen and then break through the brick archway between the island platforms. The debris was all removed through the resulting hole, and concrete was pumped up from below to form the support for the structural steelwork of the bridge. This allowed construction to continue safely and efficiently during the operational day without impacting train services.

We installed six flights of staircases in the station, one from the island platform leading up to the bridge span and the remaining five providing access down to the crowd management zone. All work was completed while the station remained fully operational, with the bridge span installed during the rules of the route rail possessions.

The added infrastructure will aid the entrance and exit of people from the station platforms once attendance is at or close to capacity, making matchday transport more efficient, more convenient, and safer.

Sandhills station is the closest Merseyrail stop to the stadium, and it will serve as the main hub for matchday travel. A  new second entrance and pedestrian footbridge at the station have been constructed and are now fully operational, supporting event days and helping manage the expected large crowds.

We’ve been enhancing railway infrastructure around the UK for years, using trusted supply chain partners and decades of combined expertise from our in-house specialists to our on-site technicians. 

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