A great, cold and very wet time spent at Preston on the West Coast Mainline where we see plenty of services from Northern, Avanti West Coast and Transpennine Express along with freight from DB Cargo UK, Royal Mail and DRS.
is so much to tell about Preston station but I will go straight to the nitty gritty of the history of the place.
The station was first opened in 1838 by the North Union Railway, when the station was opened the line leading North out of the station went through a tunnel and under the West end of Fishergate, the slope leading to the tunnel was so steep that bizarrely the station staff sometimes manually pushed trains up the hill. Yeah I know that idea just seems ludicrous nowadays. By 1846 the station was getting stupidly busy with 6 different lines coming in and out of station carrying bulk freight and passengers from all across the north of the UK, various freight loops were created to send traffic around the station. Mostly coal sidings continued to operate long after the Lancaster Canal had ceased commercial operations.
The stations first expansion came in 1850 when the East Lancashire Line used new platforms managed by the staff from the East Lancaster Railway, they had built their own station entrance and booking office.
The station became insanely busy over the next 30 years where the station was seeing over 150 trains every day, because of the fact that the station was getting hit hard on a daily basis it quickly started falling into disrepair which eventually meant that it had to be rebuilt and in 1880 it was done so. It opened with Severn through platforms and four bay platforms.
Skipping forward to the 1930's the station had been fiddled around with and allowed for terminating trains to turn around at the station without affecting the timetables of every other service. Local trains would stop and long distance trains could pass through without any issue.
So many things have come and gone from this station and I really can't begin to break them all down, the station is steeped in history and if you guys are really keen on that sort of thing you can find so many records.
My next film is from Gidea Park.
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