Wilmslow railway station

Infobox UK station
name= Wilmslow
code= WML


manager= Northern Rail
locale= Wilmslow
borough= Macclesfield
start=
platforms= 4
usage0405= 0.570

Wilmslow railway station serves the large south Manchester suburb and former village of Wilmslow, in the borough of Macclesfield and the county of Cheshire, England. The station is 19 km (12 miles) south of Manchester Piccadilly on the Crewe to Manchester Line.

This station is a junction on the Crewe to Manchester Line line six miles south of Stockport with the Styal Line from Wilmslow to Manchester Airport, with some trains then continuing to Manchester.

Both the Main Line and the Styal Line were electrified in 1959 as the first and, to a degree, the proving stage of the West Coast Main Line electrification and modernisation programme. A significant feature of that stage was the construction and installation of a state of the art signal box and control centre located near the end of the Styal Line down platform at Wilmslow and serving virtually the entire railway from Crewe to Manchester via both routes. The complexity of that installation was not repeated for the remainder of the electrification scheme, which had its control and signalling systems renewed in ways that were less highly automated.

In March 1997 the IRA exploded two bombs in relay boxes near this signal box, thereby causing great disruption to rail and road services, but fortunately there were no casualties. The railway reopened the following day. In April 2006 as part of the total renewal of the railway from Crewe to Cheadle Hulme near Stockport, the massive 1959 signal box has been totally demolished.

Large scale resignalling of the line through Wilmslow was completed behind schedule in the Autumn of 2006.

ervices

There is a regular service northbound with Northern Rail, Arriva Trains Wales and some Virgin Trains stopping at Wilmslow towards Manchester Piccadilly.

Southbound Monday to Saturdays there are three trains per hour to Crewe with the hourly Arriva Trains Wales service going onwards towards Cardiff Central, Swansea and beyond. Some London Euston-bound Virgin Trains from Manchester stop at Wilmslow.

External links

* [http://www.crewe2manchesterrail.org.uk Crewe-Manchester Community Rail Partnership]

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