The book I read to research this post was Rail Centres: Manchester by Stanley Hall which is an excellent book which I bought from Amazon. This book is a little bit more expensive and a longer book than the rest of the series. Manchester was at the heart of the Rail Revolution & Stanley does say he could easily have written several volumes on the subject. He has concentrated on the rail network within 5 miles of Manchester. One of the earliest railways was the Manchester to Liverpool railway. Obviously Liverpool was a major port and Manchester was a major industrial centre so the potential was obvious. In the old days Victoria was the main station & Manchester Piccadilly was built later on. In 1948 a Labour Government nationalized the railways but considered the many loss making routes a mill stone around their neck and closed many of them. There has been talk of a channel express to Manchester which will take people to Brussels, Amsterdam or Paris. Also recently they built a metrolink which is a 2 car tram that seats 96 passengers and has standing room also. Manchester is at the forefront of transport networks even nowadays. It also has one of the most important airports in the country which is well served by trains. There was a bit of a hiccup with an earlier metro network where they used class 141 trams where as 210′s which would have cost around the same amount would have been a better choice. The 210′s were more reliable, had a longer working life & seated more passengers with plenty of room for standing passengers. The 141 by contrast had very little room for standing passengers and they had to install extra seats to cope with demand at extra cost.
