page_title: Crewe railway station
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Crewe railway station / History / Early years
caption_attribution_description: Crewe railway station from the air looking NE in 2005
context_page_description: Crewe railway station is a railway station in Crewe, Cheshire, England. It opened in 1837 and is one of the most historically significant railway stations in the world.
  Crewe station is a major junction on the West Coast Main Line and serves as a rail gateway for North West England. It is 158 miles north of London Euston and 243 miles south of Glasgow Central. It is located at the point where the lines to Manchester Piccadilly and North Wales diverge from this route, and is the last major station before the branch to Liverpool Lime Street diverges. It is also served by lines to Stoke-on-Trent and Shrewsbury.
  Crewe railway station has twelve platforms and a modern passenger entrance containing a bookshop and ticket office. Passengers access the platforms via a footbridge, stairs and lifts. The platforms buildings dating from the 19th century contain two bookshops, bars, buffets and waiting rooms. The last major expenditure on the station was in 1985 when the track layout was remodelled and station facilities updated.
context_section_description: Crewe's location was chosen after Winsford, seven miles to the north, had rejected an earlier proposal, as had local landowners in neighbouring Nantwich, four miles away.
  Crewe station was the first station to have its own adjacent railway hotel: the Crewe Arms Hotel, built in 1838, and still in use. It was the first to be completely rebuilt owing to the need for expansion. It was the also first to have completely independent rail lines built around it to ease traffic congestion.
  The station opened on 4 July 1837 on the Grand Junction Railway. The purpose was to link the four largest cities of England by joining the existing Liverpool and Manchester Railway with the projected London & Birmingham Railway. The first long-distance railway in the world, it ran from Curzon Street railway station in Birmingham to Dallam in Warrington, Cheshire, where it made an end-on junction with the Warrington and Newton Railway, a branch of the L&M.
   
  The station was built in the township of Crewe, which formed part of the ancient parish of Barthomley. The township later became a civil parish in its own right, and, later still, was renamed Crewe Green to avoid confusion with the town of Crewe, which was adjacent to it. The station was at the point where the line crossed the turnpike road linking the Trent and Mersey and the Shropshire Union Canals. Since the land was bought from the Earl of Crewe, whose mansion stood nearby, and it was located in the township of Crewe, the station was called Crewe. The railway station gave its name to the town of Crewe that was actually situated in the ancient parish of Coppenhall. In 1936, the railway station was transferred from the civil parish of Crewe to the then municipal borough of Crewe.
  As soon as the station opened the Chester and Crewe Railway was formed to build a branch line to Chester and this company was absorbed by the GJR shortly before it opened to traffic in 1840. A locomotive depot was built to serve the Chester line, and to provide banking engines to assist trains southwards from Crewe up the Madeley Incline, a modest gradient which was a challenge to the small engines of the day.
  By 1841, the Chester line was seen as a starting point for a new trunk line to the port of Holyhead, to provide the fastest route to Ireland, and the importance of Crewe as a junction station began to be established. This was given further endorsement when the Manchester and Birmingham Railway, a separate undertaking which had hoped to build a wholly independent line linking the two cities, shorter than the GJR, decided that it would be uneconomical to compete with that line over the greater part of its length, and decided to divert its own line to meet the GJR at Crewe. Teething squabbles between the companies delayed the running of through services for a while, and the M&B had to build a temporary station of their own, part of which survives today as an isolated platform next to the North Junction, at the start of the line to Manchester.
  In 1842 the GJR decided to move its locomotive works from Edge Hill in Liverpool to Crewe, siting the works to the north of the junction between the Warrington and Chester lines. To house the workforce and company management the town of Crewe was built by the company to the north of the works.
caption: Crewe station looking NE and showing the six converging railway routes
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