Nantwich railway station geograph-2202962

Nantwich railway station serves the town of

Nantwich Nantwich ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It has among the highest concentrations of listed buildings in England, with notably good examples of Tudor and Georgian architecture. ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

, England. It is on the

Crewe Crewe () is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The Crewe built-up area had a total population of 75,556 in 2011, which also covers parts of the adjacent civil parishes of Willaston ...

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...

line south west of Crewe. Opened in 1858, it was the junction for the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

route to

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

via

Market Drayton Market Drayton is a market town and electoral ward in the north of Shropshire, England, close to the Cheshire and Staffordshire borders. It is on the River Tern, and was formerly known as "Drayton in Hales" (c. 1868) and earlier simply as "Dray ...

until 1963.

History

The town was initially considered as potential calling point for the

Grand Junction Railway The Grand Junction Railway (GJR) was an early railway company in the United Kingdom, which existed between 1833 and 1846 when it was amalgamated with other railways to form the London and North Western Railway. The line built by the company w ...

route between London, Birmingham and Manchester/Liverpool, but opposition from coaching and canal interests therein led to the Grand Junction being routed through instead. The

Crewe and Shrewsbury Railway The Crewe and Shrewsbury Railway was a railway company which was previously owned by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), built to connect Crewe with the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway which was jointly owned with GWR. Authorised in 1 ...

would end up being the first route into the town – authorised by Parliament in 1852, it was eventually opened in September 1858 and was operated by the

London and North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the L&NWR was the largest joint stock company in the United Kingdom. In 1923, it became a constituent of the Lo ...

. This subsequently became part of a busy through route between the north west of England and South Wales (the modern day Welsh Marches Line). The Nantwich and Market Drayton Railway linking the titular towns opened five years later, making the station a junction in the process – known locally as the "Gingerbread Line" (Market Drayton being renown for the production of said confectionery), it was later extended to Wellington and officially became part of the

system in 1897. This line was a busy freight artery but in pre-grouping days was also used by the GWR to run expresses all the way to Manchester London Road (albeit using running rights over the LNWR north of Nantwich). Passenger services over the Market Drayton line were withdrawn by the

British Railways Board British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

on 9 September 1963. Freight continued to run for the next four years (the line was utilised as a diversionary route during the electrification of the

West Coast Main Line The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is one of the most important railway corridors in the United Kingdom, connecting the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest ...

), but it eventually closed completely in 1967 and was lifted by 1970. There are three

level crossings A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an overpass or tunnel. The term also ...

at or near to the station and until the late 1960s each had its own

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

; a fourth was also provided to the south to control the junction with the Market Drayton branch. All but the station box were removed in the 1970s when the crossings were automated, with the latter also succumbing when the line was re-signalled in late 2013 (the crossings are now remotely monitored from the South Wales

rail operating centre A rail operating centre (ROC) is a building that houses all signallers, signalling equipment, ancillaries and operators for a specific region or route on the United Kingdom's main rail network. The ROC supplants the work of several other signal ...

in Cardiff). After two years of disuse, the structure was dismantled by

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

in January 2016 for reuse at its training academy at Crewe.

Stationmasters

*S.S. Durrad 1858 *George May 1858 - 1863 *G. Clark 1863 - 1864 *Isaac Dunton 1864 - 1874 *J. Marston 1874 - 1877 *John Augustus Vaughan 1877 - 1881 *H. Gilrap 1881 - 1885 *T. Reid 1885 - 1889 *Frank J. Cooke 1889 - 1893 *Jesse Wycherley 1893 -1898 *William Dale 1898 - 1903 *J. Howell 1903 - 1913 *Charles Harding 1913 - 1916 (formerly station master at Wrenbury, afterwards station master at Whitchurch) *W.G.H. Haycock 1916 - 1929 (formerly station master at Malpas) *E. Howarth 1930 - 1941 *J.B. Grocott 1941 - 1947 *J.W. Tate 1947 - 1957 (from 1950 also station master at Willaston) *George Wilkinson 1957 - 1962 (afterwards station master at Newcastle-Under-Lyme) *Samuel Lawton from 1962

Facilities

The station is now unstaffed but has a self-service ticket machine available, which can be used for pre-paid ticket collection and buying before travel. The main building on the northbound platform still stands, but has been converted for use as an Indian restaurant; shelters are located on each side for passenger use. Train running information is provided by CIS screens, customer help points and timetable poster boards. The footbridge linking the platforms has steps, but level access is possible via the crossing and ramps to each platform.

Services

The station is served by two-hourly services between Crewe and Shrewsbury. There are some longer distance services between and (with some extensions further west to and and two trains to Swansea via the

Heart of Wales Line The Heart of Wales line ( cy, Llinell Calon Cymru) is a railway line running from Craven Arms in Shropshire to Llanelli in southwest Wales. It serves a number of rural centres, including the nineteenth-century spa towns Llandrindod Wells, Llanga ...

) on Mondays to Fridays.GB National Rail Timetable, December 2018; Table 131 There is an infrequent service (five trains northbound, six southbound) which runs on Sundays.

References

External links