Wilmslow railway station is in

Wilmslow Wilmslow ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England, south of Manchester city centre. The population was 24,497 at the 2011 Census. History Toponymy Wilmslow derives its name from Old ...

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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, south of

Manchester Piccadilly Manchester Piccadilly is the principal railway station in Manchester, England. Opened as Store Street in 1842, it was renamed Manchester London Road in 1847 and became Manchester Piccadilly in 1960. Located to the south-east of Manchester city ...

on the

Crewe to Manchester Line 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, ...

. This station is a junction on the

Crewe–Manchester line The Crewe–Manchester line is a railway line in North West England, running between Crewe and Manchester Piccadilly. It is a spur of the West Coast Main Line. History The line was built by the Manchester and Birmingham Railway Company, which d ...

south of Stockport with the Styal line from Wilmslow to

Manchester Airport Manchester Airport is an international airport in Ringway, Manchester, England, south-west of Manchester city centre. In 2019, it was the third busiest airport in the United Kingdom in terms of passenger numbers and the busiest of those n ...

, with some trains then continuing to

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. The station has four platforms with disabled access to each, two waiting rooms, public toilets and also has a double-staffed booking office below the platforms.

History

Both the Main Line and the Styal line were electrified in 1959 as part 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 ...

electrification and modernisation programme with the construction and installation of a state of the art signal box and control centre near the end of the Styal line down platform at Wilmslow and serving virtually the entire railway from

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 ...

to Manchester via both routes. The complexity of that installation was not repeated for the remainder of the electrification scheme, which had its control and signalling systems renewed in ways that were less highly automated. In March 1997, the

Provisional IRA The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, fa ...

exploded two bombs in relay boxes near this signal box, causing disruption to rail and road services. The railway reopened the following day. In April 2006, as part of the total renewal of the railway from Crewe to near

Stockport Stockport is a town and borough in Greater Manchester, England, south-east of Manchester, south-west of Ashton-under-Lyne and north of Macclesfield. The River Goyt and Tame merge to create the River Mersey here. Most of the town is within ...

, the large 1959

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'' ...

was demolished. Large-scale resignalling of the line through Wilmslow was completed behind schedule in the Autumn of 2006.

Services

Monday to Saturday, there are five trains per hour northbound with

Avanti West Coast Avanti West Coast is a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by FirstGroup (70%) and Trenitalia (30%) that operates the West Coast Partnership franchise. During November 2016, the Department for Transport (DfT) announced the Inter ...

Northern Trains Northern Trains, branded as Northern, (legally Northern Trains Limited) is a State-owned enterprises of the United Kingdom, publicly owned train operating company in England. It is owned by DfT OLR Holdings for the Department for Transport (DfT) ...

and

Transport for Wales Transport for Wales (TfW; cy, Trafnidiaeth Cymru; cy, TrC, label=none) is a not-for-profit company owned by the Welsh Government and managed at arms length by its appointed board. TfW oversees the Transport for Wales Group (TfW Group) consi ...

services stopping at Wilmslow en route to . One Northern Trains service operates via (all stations via ), the remainder all run via . Since May 2018, some

services run beyond Piccadilly to either

Liverpool Lime Street Liverpool Lime Street is a terminus railway station and the main station serving the city centre of Liverpool. Opened in August 1836, it is the oldest still-operating grand terminus mainline station in the world. A branch of the West Coast ...

via or via . Southbound Monday to Saturdays there are four trains per hour to . These consist of two

trains per hour that terminate at (local stopping service), an hourly

fast service that continues via to , and West Wales and an hourly bound

express service. There is also one local

train per hour that terminates at . A small number of

CrossCountry CrossCountry (legal name XC Trains Limited) is a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Arriva UK Trains, operating the Cross Country franchise. The CrossCountry franchise was restructured by the Department for Transport (DfT) ...

services stop at Wilmslow on the route between and during peak times. On Sundays, there are hourly main line services to South Wales and London but the local routes run less frequently i.e. two trains per hour to - one via and one via continuing to via Chat Moss. Southbound there is an hourly local stopping service to . The service from terminates here.

Future high speed services

The economic case for

High Speed 2 High Speed 2 (HS2) is a planned high-speed railway line in England, the first phase of which is under construction in stages and due for completion between 2029 and 2033, depending on approval for later stages. The new line will run from its m ...

Phase 1 includes one train per hour each way stopping at Wilmslow, travelling between London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly.

References

External links

Crewe-Manchester Community Rail Partnership
{{Railway stations served by CrossCountry Railway stations in Cheshire DfT Category C2 stations Former London and North Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1842 Railway stations served by CrossCountry Northern franchise railway stations Railway stations served by Transport for Wales Rail Railway stations served by Avanti West Coast Wilmslow

History

Services

Future high speed services

References

Further reading

External links