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The Crewe and Shrewsbury Railway was a railway owned by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) company, built to connect Crewe with the jointly owned with the GWR Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway. Authorised in 1853, planning difficulties accessing the GWR station at Shrewsbury delayed opening until 1858. Proving so successful for both companies to transport coal from the South Wales Valleys to industrial Northwest England, and finished goods in the opposite direction, it was doubled tracked by 1862. Amalgamated into the London Midland and Scottish Railway in the 1920s, post nationalisation into British Railways, its services reduced as motor transport proved quicker more cost effective than its various branch lines. It now forms the northern section of Network Rail's Welsh Marches Line. ==Background== On 4 July 1837, the Grand Junction Railway opened, linking the four largest cities of England by joining the existing Liverpool and Manchester Railway with the projected London and Birmingham Railway. The line, which was the first long-distance railway in the world, ran from Curzon Street railway station in Birmingham to Dallam in Warrington, Cheshire, where it made an end-on junction with the Warrington and Newton Railway, a branch of the L&M. Conceived as a through route, the GJR was not interested in serving towns en route. Wolverhampton, for instance, was by-passed by half a mile because it did not lie on the intended route. Having been turned down by Nantwich, a station was built in the township of Crewe which formed part of the ancient parish of Barthomley, on the junction of a turnpike road linking the Trent and Mersey and the Shropshire Union canals. As soon as the station opened it was seen to be at a useful point to begin a branch line to the county town of Chester, facilitated by the 1840 construction of the Chester and Crewe Railway, extended in 1841 to Holyhead to provide the fastest route to Ireland. In 1845 the GJR merged with the L&B and L&M to form the London and North Western Railway Company, which until its demise in 1923 was the largest company in the world. The new company extended the Warrington line to Lancaster and Carlisle, the Manchester line to Leeds, and built a new line to Shrewsbury to join the now jointly financed with the GWR Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway, which provided connections to South Wales. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Crewe and Shrewsbury Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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