Chat Moss threatened the completion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, until George Stephenson, with advice from East Anglian marshland specialist Robert Stannard, succeeded in constructing a railway line through it in 1829; his solution was to "float" the line on a bed of bound heather and branches topped with tar and covered with rubble stone. The M62 motorway, completed in 1976, crosses the bog, to the north of Irlam. Also the A580 crossses the bog, forming Leigh, Lowton and Astley's(Wigan MBC)'s boundary with Warrington, Culcheth and Glazebury, Croft, and Kenyon.