Earlestown station

Resource Type: Image | Posted on 28th October 2011 by Liam Physick

One of the images donated to Metal by Eric Shenton. This is a 1979 photograph of Earlestown station, another of the original Liverpool and Manchester Railway stations, called Newton Junction when founded. In July 1852, it became Warrington Junction, then Earlestown Juction (gaining its name from James Hardman Earle, a director of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway) in November 1861, assuming its present appelation on 5th June 1950. With the opening of the Warrington and Newton Railway on 25th July 1831, it became the first steam railway junction in the world. Earlestown’s surviving buildings were constructed in 1835 on the original site. It later became a coach and wagon works. In 1837, three years after the Warrington and Newton was absorbed by the Grand Junction Railway, a new curve was built at Earlestown to allow trains to run to Manchester. Thus, Earlestown assumed a triangular shape with six platforms - one of the few triangular stations in Britain. Grand Junction trains would set out from both Liverpool and Manchester, and would join at Earlestown and travel from there to Birmingham, and, after 1839, to London. Grand Junction trains arriving from Birmingham would split at Warrington Bank Quay: thus, separate trains for Liverpool and Manchester would pass through Earlestown. Earlestown began to see less traffic after the London and North Western Railway built the Golborne cut-off for its services to the Scottish Border, and in the Beeching Report of 1963 it was recommended for closure, but spared. It is the world’s oldest passenger railway station still on its original site

Earlestown station

Tagged under: liverpool and manchester railway, eric shenton, beeching axe, earlestown station, london and north western railway, grand junction railway, warrington bank quay station

Categorised under: Landmarks, Landscapes & Locomotives

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