Cable Operation at Liverpool and London page 1

Resource Type: Image | Posted on 21st September 2012 by Liam Physick

This is the first of four pages describing the use of cables on the Liverpool to London line. Services between Liverpool and London Euston were first established in 1838 when the London and Birmingham Railway was opened: the new line ran from Euston to Birmingham station (renamed Birmingham Curzon Street in 1852, closed in 1966), which was also the terminus of the Grand Junction Railway, and whose adjacent platforms linked to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was connected to to the Grand Junction at Earlestown. In 1845, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was absorbed by the Grand Junction, which the following year merged with the London and Birmingham Railway and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway to form the London and North Western Railway: in turn, the LNWR became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway after 1923. This page, beginning with the Bury print “Entrance of the Railway at Edge-Hill, Liverpool”, explains that when the Liverpool to London service was first established, neither terminus was used by locomotives, with cable traction being used between Camden and Euston, and the lines west of Edge Hill. When an incoming train arrived at Edge Hill, the locomotive would be detached and placed on a short dead-end siding between the station and the mouth of the Wapping Tunnel. Each coach would then be illuminated by oil lamps hung outside each window, and the train would be pushed by hand towards the Tunnel, descending the 1 in 93 gradient by gravity. Prior to 1869, horses were used to marshal trains at Lime Street, but, with the vehicles becoming heavier, locomotives were used to form the heavier trains, though horses continued to be used to marshal the lighter coaches. The page ends by mentioning the beam engines used at Edge Hill.

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Categorised under: The Station & Railway Pioneers