AN ARCHIVE celebrating Edge Hill Station’s significance as the world’s oldest passenger railway station opened to the public at the weekend.

Based at Metal arts centre, in the station’s former boiler house, the permanent exhibition features spoken memories, photographs, objects and a digital database of stories and images that is also accessible online.

It is the culmination of three years’ work by the organisation and its volunteer group, Future Station.

Jenny Porter, Metal’s project manager, said: “It’s not just a story for railway enthusiasts, but something that has had a massive impact on the way we live our lives, similar to the way the internet has changed how we experience the world today.

“Creating an archive that was housed online and told through interviews with former railway workers, Edge Hill residents, train-spotters and historians seemed like the perfect way to gather such a diverse and rich history.”

Also on display, until December, is an exhibition of paintings by artist-in-residence James Quinn who observed passengers from Metal’s studio space in another former railway building.

Departure Point is a series of their portraits showing the back of their heads.

Quinn, who won the Liverpool Art Prize people’s choice award in 2010, said: “People have been using Edge Hill Station since 1830, generation after generation, moving towards and away from Liverpool.

“Watching the back of heads became the focus of my attention and not the bricks and mortar, the station platform or even the trains.

“Watching this procession from my studio I began to think of myself as being outside of a loop, outside of time, witnessing a process that will continue until the station ceases to exist.”

Edge Hill opened on September 15, 1830, towards one end of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway.

Metal has commissioned writer Ken Taylor, whose father and other family members were railway workers in the area, to write a history of the station.

Founded by Liverpool-born Southbank director Jude Kelly in 2002, Metal provides multi-disciplinary residency space for artists as well as hosting the annual Liverpool Art Prize exhibition.