An exceptionally boring and dull location for any trainspotter.
Bolton is on the Manchester-Preston line therefore it's a constant stream of units and very little else. 142/150/156/158/185 can be seen with 185 perhaps being the most common type as they dominate the Manchester Airport to Blackpool and Barrow In Furnesss workings. Sprinters and 142's come from the Wigan branch line on Manchester locals. The Wigan branch line meets the Man-Preston mainline at Lostock. At the northeren enterance to Bolton station this is also joined by a Blackburn-Bolton branch line.

Virmin units 220/221 also pass through here regularly. Their workings are always the Manchester-Glasgow (or Edinburgh) paths.

The line is basically clogged up with Units to such a great extent, that Grand Central Railways were refused paths when they applied to run a Manchester-Newcastle HST service because of "Congestion between Manchester and Bolton". There are about 15 units per hour on average in the daytime stopping at Bolton. Basically, it's one after the other. There are a few ECS moves that don't stop

Now that the boring unit crap is out of the way with, there isn't much left to talk about. The only loco's that can be seen are 57/3 moves from Longsight to Preston (or beyond) usually only about one every day and it usually passes at unsociable hours such as between 23:00 and 05:00am. When weekend diversions are on you can see 57/3's dragging VWC trains.

Station is open all night (bar the booking office) if you want to wait around all night for those 57/3s and maybe the odd departmental freight & TPE 185 unit on the Blackpool Airport services.