Lancaster and Preston Railway

The Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway was an early British railway company, in Lancashire, England. It later merged with the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway.

The Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway Company (L&PJR) was created by Act of Parliament on 5 May 1837, to link the towns of Preston and Lancaster. The company planned to build its Preston terminus at Dock Street (off Pitt Street), near the Lancaster Canal, in the expectation that the rival North Union Railway (NUR) line from Wigan would have its terminus close by. In fact, the North Union built its station 200 yards (200 m) away, just south of Fishergate, in what seems to have been a tactical move to get the L&PJR to contribute towards the cost of a short tunnel and connecting line between the two railways. This marked the start of protracted feuding between the two companies for years to come. Eventually a deal was struck for the L&PJR to use the North Union station.

The Lancaster terminus was on the modern-day South Road, just south of the Lancaster Canal and the southern end of Penny Street.

The line was twenty miles (32 km) long and built by Joseph Locke. It opened on 25 June 1840, with a passenger service from the following day.

Traffic was at first disappointing, due to competition from the parallel Lancaster Canal, which lowered the fares on its packet boats. The canal passed much closer to the town of Garstang than the railway.

The Manchester, Bolton and Bury Railway, which was already supplying the L&PJR's locomotives, agreed to work the line. This would have allowed direct trains from Manchester to Lancaster, in competition with the NUR line. The NUR retaliated by charging a toll to use the connecting line between the L&PJR and NUR. The L&PJR refused to pay a toll to use a line that it had partly paid for. Instead, it struck a deal with the Bolton and Preston Railway (BPR) to use its Maxwell House Station near Dock Street, from 1 January 1842 (some 18 months prior to completion of the BPR's own line).

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