Shrewsbury railway station Totally Explained

Everything about Shrewsbury Railway Station totally explained

Shrewsbury railway station (formerly known as Shrewsbury General) is a railway station serving the county town of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. It is the only remaining railway station in the town; Shrewsbury Abbey, as well as other small stations around the town, having long closed. The station was built in 1848 and has been extended several times since. The station is 69 km (43 miles) north west of Birmingham New Street and serves as the rail 'Gateway to Wales' as many trains coming from the Midlands, the South-east and the North have to go through the station to reach Mid and North Wales.
Shrewsbury station is the busiest station in the county of Shropshire and 6th busiest in the West Midlands region.

History

Shrewsbury railway station was originally built in October 1848 for the county's first railway - the Shrewsbury to Chester Line. The architect was T. M. Penson. The building is unusual, in that the station was later extended in 1901 by the construction of a new floor underneath the original station building. The station's platforms also extend over the River Severn. It was operated jointly by the Great Western and London and North Western Railways.
At Shrewsbury in steam days, the GWR regularly turned its locomotives by running round the triangle formed by using the Abbey Foregate loop, which links the Wellington line with the Welsh Marches Line and enables through running for freight trains, Summer Saturday specials and formerly for trains like the Cambrian Coast Express.
Today, the station is operated by Arriva Trains Wales as one of their key network hubs. It has five platforms, numbered 3 to 7 (1 and 2 have no track), with a public ticket office, public inquiry office, British Transport Police offices, a platform café (between platforms 4 and 7) and offices for some of the railway companies that use the station. Platform 3 is little used, because of its remoteness from the other platforms, which together form a single island. Platform 3 is however used to increase capacity and following signalling improvements can now accommodate trains arriving from or departing to the Hereford/Machynlleth line. Platforms 4 and 7 are through platforms, usually used for trains between Holyhead (via Chester) and Cardiff and between Manchester (via Crewe) and Cardiff, Carmarthen, and Milford Haven and also for trains between Chester and Birmingham. Platforms 5 and 6 are bay platforms, used mainly for trains to and from Aberystwyth and Birmingham (via Wolverhampton and Telford). The platforms are connected by a pedestrian subway running underneath the station.

Train operating companies

The station is currently served by Arriva Trains Wales (who operate trains to South Wales, Aberystwyth, Pwllheli, Chester and Holyhead, Manchester Piccadilly and fast trains to Birmingham New Street) and London Midland (who operate an hourly slow service from Shrewsbury to Birmingham New Street). Shrewsbury is also served by an open access operator, Wrexham & Shropshire. The new operator has restored a direct service between Shrewsbury and London that was last run by Virgin Trains in 2001, though the new service terminates at London Marylebone, making this the fourth London terminus (after Paddington, Euston and (briefly) Waterloo) to have served Shrewsbury. |}

Signalling

Severn Bridge Junction signal box (External Link

), at the south end of the station and built by the LNWR, is the largest surviving mechanical signal box in Britain, with a frame accommodating 180 levers, and is a listed building. Whilst the line beyond Abbey Foregate signal box to Wolverhampton has been updated to electronic signalling, Shrewsbury itself is set to remain lever operated for the foreseeable future - BBC News

. As a result of Shrewsbury's joint (GWR/LNWR) history, and having been transferred at different times between the Western and London Midland regions of BR and more recently Network Rail - it's now in the Great Western territory again - the signalling is a diverse mixture of lower-quadrant and upper-quadrant semaphore signals, with a few colour lights too. Crewe Junction(External Link

), on the north end of the station, accommodates around 120 levers and is of the same design as Severn Bridge Junction. The other Shrewsbury signal boxes are at Abbey Foregate (External Link

) (to a GWR design), controlling the eastern corner of the triangle, Sutton Bridge Junction(External Link

) where the Aberystwyth line diverges from the Hereford line, Crewe Bank(External Link

) (now to be closed(External Link

) on 4/4/2009) just beyond the station towards Crewe, and Harlescott Crossing(External Link

), slightly further on towards Crewe.

Station usage

In the SRA's 2002/03 financial year 632,653 people joined the railway system at Shrewsbury station, and 625,593 left it there (tickets sold at Shrewsbury, and tickets sold to Shrewsbury; figure doesn't include passengers interchanging between one rail service and another).

Future development

It has been proposed that Shrewsbury should have a Parkway railway station built on the Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury Line, east of the town at either Preston or Emstrey, adjacent to the A5 road. This new station would act as a fourth Park & Ride site to simultaneously serve shoppers and commuters from Telford and the West Midlands as well as provide parking for commuters on their way from the county town to the West Midlands and beyond. Reasons cited for this project include the poor provision of car parking at Shrewsbury's current only railway station and the lack of a park and ride site to serve visitors to the town from the east, who presently need to use Meole Brace in the south or Harlescott in the north of the town. Another proposed station is at Harlescott in the north of the town - a recent masterplan drawn up for the area includes the potential provision of a halt near to Harlescott Crossing. One local councillor has mooted the idea of reinstating the Severn Valley Line from Bridgnorth, via Ironbridge, to the southern outskirts of the town. However, a connection to the railway station following the original route would now be prohibitively expensive due to a new housing estate having been built over the line just south of Sutton Bridge Junction.

Images

Image:Shrewsbury railway station 1 samluke777.jpg|Station building's tower Image:ShrewsburyStation1.jpg|Platforms 3 & 4 Image:railway at Shrewsbury.jpg|Railway lines leading east and south of Shrewsbury Image:ShrewsburyStation06.jpg|Looking along platform 4 at the station Image:SevernBridgeJunction06.jpg|Severn Bridge Junction signal box. The church in the distance is Shrewsbury Abbey. Further Information

Get more info on 'Shrewsbury Railway Station'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://shrewsbury_railway_station.totallyexplained.com">Shrewsbury railway station Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.