Earlestown railway station

Earlestown railway station is a railway station in Earlestown, Newton-le-Willows in Merseyside, England. Since recent restoration of a platform for Warrington Bank Quay to Liverpool trains, it is one of the few "triangular" stations in Britain (see below).Early historyThe station lies on the former Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was opened on 15 September 1830. On 25 July 1831 the Warrington and Newton Railway was opened for public use, making a junction at a point in the township of Newton, facing in the direction of Liverpool.The surviving Earlestown station buildings were constructed around 1835 on the original site, at the point of intersection of these two early railways, incidentally forming the first steam railway junction, which was given the name Newton Junction.The junction had a very tight curvature and this caused problems. Train travelling on the curves were restricted to a slow maximum speed. The original building now forms the (currently unused) waiting room of Earlestown Station.The Grand Junction Railway (GJR) absorbed the Warrington and Newton company as of 31 December 1834 and from the GJR's completion of their trunk line from Birmingham on 4 July 1837 used it to access the Liverpool and Manchester line. A new "Curve" was built at Newton Junction so that trains could run towards Manchester; this gave the station a triangular formation with six platforms. To complicate matters, there was also a branch line from Richard Evans's collieries at Haydock which had a curve to join the L & M in the Manchester direction and passed through the triangle to join the Warrington and Newton line.

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