Crewe and Shrewsbury Railway
The Crewe and Shrewsbury Railway was a railway owned by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) company, built to connect Crewe with the jointly owned with the GWR Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway.
Authorised in 1853, planning difficulties accessing the GWR station at Shrewsbury delayed opening until 1858. Proving so successful for both companies to transport coal from the South Wales Valleys to industrial Northwest England, and finished goods in the opposite direction, it was doubled tracked by 1862.
Amalgamated into the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923, post nationalisation into British Railways, its services reduced as motor transport proved quicker more cost effective than its various branch lines. It now forms the northern section of Network Rail's Welsh Marches Line.
On 4 July 1837, the Grand Junction Railway opened, linking the four largest cities of England by joining the existing Liverpool and Manchester Railway with the projected London and Birmingham Railway. The line, which was the first long-distance railway in the world, 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. Conceived as a through route, the GJR was not interested in serving towns en route. Wolverhampton, for instance, was by-passed by half a mile because it did not lie on the intended route.
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