Railways

A whistle-stop tour of the railways from the perspective of Chester

A freight ticket from around 1950 showing an unusual route through Chester.

In 1000 words I want to tell the story of the railways from the perspective of the medium-sized node that is Chester. There is plenty to tell, from Brassey to Beeching and beyond. We also consider the future and how the railways should be at the heart of sustainable transport.

Early railways around Chester

We start with the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), the first to use entirely steam locomotives. The L&MR supercharged the movement of cotton arriving in Liverpool to the Manchester mills, where it was transformed into textiles and sent back to Liverpool and out to the world. Geordie George Stephenson built the L&MR which took his team four years and involved 63 bridges. The L&MR opened in 1830 and formed the blueprint for what was to come.

Between 1830 and 1845, 35 new lines sprang up across Britain during ‘Railway Mania’ and this is where Chester comes in. The diagram below shows the current networks from Chester:

A network map showing the connections immediately accessible from Chester. Based on a design by Project Mapping.

The first route was the Chester to Birkenhead line which opened in September 1840 and would connect to the Chester to Crewe line (when built). George Stephenson was the engineer and the line ended at Birkenhead Grange Lane station (which closed four years later).

Next up was the line between Crewe and Chester which now forms part of the North Wales Main line. Again, George Stephenson was the engineer. Crewe was chosen by Grand Junction Railways to be the site of its locomotive works and the railway company itself built much of the town.

In the early 1840s Chester had two stations – one to Crewe and the other to Birkenhead. It was decided that a joint station was needed and in 1847 the rather splendid Italianate Chester Railway Station was opened. Just outside the station is a plaque in honour of Thomas Brassey (“The Greatest Railway Builder in the World”) who built the station. Francis Thompson was the architect and Charles Groves (who we met in Composers) was the project manager.

Thomas Brassey was born in 1805 into a farming family in Buerton, a small village six miles south of Chester. At 12 he went to the King’s School in Chester. He built his first bridge at Saughall Massie on the Wirral in 1829. Soon after he met George Stephenson who advised him to go into the railways. By 1847 Brassey had built a third of Britain’s railways and by the time he died he had built one mile in every twenty across the world.

The Chester and Holyhead Railway was designed to speed up connections between London and Ireland. With the railway network around Chester starting to take shape and Holyhead being the safest and easiest port to access Ireland, the scheme gained Royal Assent in 1844. Being 85 miles long and through challenging terrain the project took five years and required several bridges.

One of the bridges (designed by Robert Stephenson, only son of George) was across the River Dee between the Roodee and Curzon Park. In 1847 a passenger train was travelling to Ruabon and the carriages fell through the bridge into the river, with five people being killed. Stephenson was accused of negligence although the inquest returned a verdict of accidental death. The bridge was rebuilt using wrought iron rather than cast iron.

The most impressive bridge on the Chester and Holyhead Railway was the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait. The revolutionary design by Robert Stephenson used wrought iron tubes large enough to carry a train. In 1970 the bridge was partially destroyed by a fire and was rebuilt. (The Grade I-listed bridge at Conwy still uses this design and is the only remaining design of its type in the world).

During the 19th and 20th centuries the railways brought millions of visitors through Chester to the North Wales coast: Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Rhyl and Prestatyn were popular destinations which grew significantly. Colwyn Bay was one cottage and a toll bar on the coast road until Manchester merchant John Pender MP bought land there and engaged the architect John Douglas to build a new resort.

In 1875 you could catch a train from Chester Northgate to Manchester Central along the lines operated by the Cheshire Lines Committee. Chester Northgate was closed in 1969 and a new junction at Mickle Trafford routed trains to Chester General station.

Following the ravages of the war and the huge growth in the motor car the railways needed reshaping in the middle of the twentieth century. Many of the train stations around Chester were closed in the 1960s following the Beeching Report: Blacon, Chester Liverpool Road, Mickle Trafford, Saltney, Saltney Junction, Upton, Waverton.

The future

The railways are the most efficient way of moving lots of people and goods from one place to another. Steel wheels on steel rails means very little friction compared to a car tyre on a road. For every 100 miles a train hauls one tonne, a road vehicle can only haul it 35 miles using the same amount of energy.

The UK Government Statistics on Greenhouse Gas Emissions show that domestic travel is now the major contributor to emissions (29%) and of that 29% some 89% of emissions comes from road travel and only 1% from rail:

At the last count in 2023, 9% of passenger transport miles were by rail with 90% by car and 1% by air. If we were able to increase the 9% to 25% by 2050 then it would make a huge contribution to reducing emissions. (Car tyres are also the biggest source of microplastics in our environment and the environmental impact of lithium batteries is huge).

But we first need to fix the railways and our wider transport system (for example local bus links). Interestingly the 2021 Williams-Shapps Plan for rail has on its front cover Chester Railway Station (see below). Could the railways – initially a tool of expansion and commercial exploitation – help us tackle the climate emergency and other issues such as health inequalities? I think it could, but it requires a bold vision and detailed, long-term planning.

A photograph of Chester Railway Station from the front cover of the Williams -Shapps plan from 2021.