An amazing afternoon spent at Liverpool Lime Street station which is the western terminus of the West Coast Mainline where we see plenty of services from London Northwestern Railway, Avanti West Coast, Northern, Transpennine Express, East Midlands Railway and Transport For Wales.
Liverpool Lime Street was built by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1833 once they realised that they needed a new station located more central to the city.
It only took six years after opening for more work to be carried out on the station because of the amount of people coming through. New platforms were built and the existing ones lengthened to allow more trains to come into the platforms.
In 1867 the station went through further work in order to cope with the growing demands. One of the biggest changes was to the arched train shed which still stands to this day, the train shed was the first in the world to be made with iron throughout its structure. Liverpool Also played a vital role in the development of mail trains with the first post office train despatched from this station. This was done when the LMS came into existence.
When British Rail entered the scene Liverpool Lime street was under the control of the London Midland region region of the group, a new signal box was commissioned in 1948 to control the comings and goings from the station and out into the country. This signal box would remain in use for around 70 years and was to be one of the last lever framed boxes in use of the mainline before it was finally laid to rest in 2017. In 1955 the station concourse was given a make over because of the West Coast Mainline modernisation taking place across the entire line from London up to Liverpool. It wasn't until 1965 until the first intercity service left Liverpool on a regular service to the capital.
The next major engineering works to be undertaken at the station was the introduction of a suburban rail network running around Liverpool and the surrounding areas, this was to be known as Merseyrail and would result in the closure and demolition of 4 different stations which would result in Liverpool Lime Street being the sole terminus station which meant way more people would be coming through its doors.
Every other bit of work taking place has been modernising the platforms for new trains.
My next station is Edinburgh Waverley.
You can now find me on Facebook through the group Tornado922, there you will find regular updates, videos and photos from all of my goings on throughout 2020.
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15 окт 2024
