BIGGER PICTURE
NICK BRODRICK looks at one of Britain’s historic railway towns, which will now no longer welcome HS2 trains
If there was one station on which the northern section of High Speed 2 pivoted, it was Crewe.
The town was to have been base camp for Phase 2, planned to arrive in the historic railway centre by 2041 before HS2’s final engineering push to its ultimate destination - Manchester.
Plans, though not finalised, were to have brought about the most significant change to the station area since its major resignalling in 1985.
This time, the biggest rebuilding of the station itself since 1867 was envisaged, featuring 500-metre-long platforms to accommodate new high-speed trains and traditional services beneath a Birmingham New Street-style ‘transfer deck’, with much improved passenger access and circulation space.
The wider benefits of HS2 to Crewe embraced its ability to alleviate the crowded West Coast Main Line north of the town, enabling more ‘stoppers’ to take advantage of the freed-up capacity. In the opposite direction, the quickest services to London would be cut from the current 1hr 30mins to just 56mins.
But following the Prime Minister’s axing of the northern leg and the scrapping of Phases 2a and 2b on October 5, none of those things will happen (with the possible exception of the transfer deck).
What that will likely leave is pretty much what you see here. The London & North Western Railway’s brick and steel construction, handed down through the generations, has remained broadly intact - albeit the canopies at the southern e
