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Home , Bury Line, EventCity, Manchester Metrolink, Trafford Park Line

Railway & Canal Historical Society EXPLORING THE METROLINK EXTENSION TO THE CENTRE 27th February 2020

Please note that the walk is along a canal towpath and some busy and noisy roads so due care should be taken. Although the new tramline is not open for public service, test , driver training trams and other work may be taking place on the Metrolink line. Lunch will be taken at or near and/or the Imperial War Museum (North).

©Transport for Greater

The new Metrolink line from Manchester to the is due to open on 14th April 2020. This visit to view the new line will commence at Manchester (Victoria) station and will then visit the rebuilt Metrolink station at on the where the new Trafford service will commence.

© lyrs Bury to Manchester electric train in about 1916

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The original Crumpsall station was opened by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (LYR) on 1st September 1879, the line from Victoria to Bury via Radcliffe being a rather late addition to Manchester’s railway network. The population of this area of North Manchester was increasing rapidly in the late 19th century but the LYR was facing stiff competition from the electric trams and some stations such as Crumpsall, and Whitefield suffered a significant fall in the number of passengers. The LYR had already had considerable experience of electrification with their services from Liverpool to Southport, Crossens and Ormskirk which used a 600v d.c. system. An experiment on the Holcombe Brook branch, north of Bury, was carried out using an at 3,600v but the LYR decided to install a 1200v d.c. system on the Manchester to Bury line. Despite the First World War the electric service commenced on 17th April 1916 although the full service did not commence for another four months. A proposal to extend electric services to and was never implemented. Crumpsall station closed on 17th August 1991 to allow conversion of the line to the Metrolink () service which commenced on 6th April 1992. The new bay at Crumpsall for the service was commissioned on 21st October 2019. Other changes have taken place at this station including a new entrance from Crumpsall Lane, improvements to the stairs and a pedestrian track level crossing. On the track a new crossover facing south has been installed in addition to the trailing crossover north of the station which has been retained. We will then return via Victoria to Cornbrook station where the walk will commence. Cornbrook station has also been rebuilt to provide more weather protection for passengers using this important interchange which is in a very exposed, elevated position. The canopy has been extended to cover the full length of the platform with glazed screen along the centre line of the canopy with end screens which reduce exposure to the elements. The lift and stairwell here have also seen improvements. We will then follow on foot the new line. There will be a stop for lunch and/or toilet purposes at the Imperial War Museum (North) or the Lowry Centre. The walk will end at the Trafford Centre where there are back to Manchester, and other towns nearby. THE NEW ROUTE The 5.5 km route will have six new tram stops: Wharfside: Next to and close to Manchester United Football Club

Imperial War Museum North: Situated by the world-renowned museum with access to ‘The Lowry’ and MediaCityUK via the existing footbridges.

Village: On Way, near Village Circle and Third Avenue.

Parkway: At the existing Parkway Circle roundabout. The stop will include a Park & Ride with spaces for approximately 200 vehicles.

EventCity: By Barton Square and EventCity.

Trafford Centre: At ‘intu’ Trafford Centre, Barton Dock Road The new line is expected to be completed at a cost of £350m. The city region’s leaders signed the ’s Devolution Deal for funding the line in 2014. Trafford Council also committed to providing £20m ($26.2m) for the development of the line. TfGM awarded a contract to MPact Thales (MPT) and WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff for the delivery of in December 2016. MPT is a consortium of VolkerRail, Laing O’Rourke, and Thales. VolkerRail and Laing O’Rourke are responsible for the design, construction, and maintenance of the civil works and track, whereas Thales will provide the tram operating systems. WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff will continue to be the delivery partner for TfGM for the Metrolink Trafford Park Line development.

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Soviet Map of Trafford Park (1975) This Russian map from the Cold War era shows the industrial estate at the time it was starting to decline. The extent of the then extensive railway system is clear. The map is based on the Ordnance Survey but it is clear that the Russians were able to gather of information not shown on OS maps perhaps using contribu- tions from visitors or local agents. Can you translate the Cyrillic script into familiar local place names?

© University of Manchester Library

Trafford Park Industrial Estate The new line as well as serving the Trafford Centre and such attractions as Event City and the Imperial War Museum (North) also passes through the Trafford Park Industrial Estate. The history of this area is too com- plex to be dealt with in detail here but a summary of the main events follows. Trafford Park is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of , opposite on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, 3.4 miles (5.5 km) southwest of and 1.3 miles (2.1 km) north of . Until the late 19th century, it was the ancestral home of the de Trafford family, who sold it to financier Ernest Terah Hooley in 1896. Occupying an area of 4.7 square miles (12 km2), it was the first planned industrial estate in the world, and still one of the largest in Europe. Trafford Park is almost entirely surrounded by water; the forms its south-eastern and south-western boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, at its north eastern and north -western boundaries. Hooley's plan was to develop the Ship Canal frontage, but the canal was slow to generate the predicted volume of traffic, so in the early days the park was largely used for leisure activities such as golf, polo and boating. British Westinghouse was the first major company to move in, and by 1903 it was employing about half of the 12,000 workers then employed in the park, which became one of the most important engineering facilities in Britain. British Westinghouse came Metropolitan-Vickers (Metro-Vicks) then AEI and GEC. The Ford Motor Company opened its first British plant here before moving to Dagen-

3 ham in the late 1920’s. Other major companies based here were W T Glover (electric cables), CWS, Hovis, ICI, Courtaulds, Massey Harris/Massey Ferguson and in 1937 Kelloggs opened their factory in the park. Much of the original development was on the east side of the park but some companies chose to locate on the west side of the estate so as to be near the ship canal. The Manchester Patent Fuel Company was one of the first top locate near the Bridgewater Canal in 1898 Nicholls, Nagle Ltd was a small corn milling and glucose refinery that had located to Trafford Park in 1911 and set up their factory near the Ship Canal at the west side of the industrial estate. They were taken over by Corn Products in 1922. Corn Products acquired Brown & Polson (a company form in Paisley in 1842) in 1935 and operated the Trafford Park factory as Brown & Polson. The facilities were improved and modern- ised. in the 1950’s and a new 700ft wharf was built on the Ship Canal which allowed sea-going ships to un- load their cargos of grain direct into the company’s silos. In 1987 the Feruzzi Group acquired the European operations of Corn Products and changed the trading name to Cerestar. In 2002 Cargill plc, a US company acquired the Manchester site with the purchase of Cerestar. The business is still called Cerestar and although Salford and Manchester docks are closed Arklow Shipping Company cargo vessels with their distinctive emerald green hulls are regular callers at the works. They bring in grain from northern France and return to Spain with a load of scrap metal from another wharf in Salford. Cerestar did have a railway siding but I don’t think it has been used for many years.

Trafford Park was a major supplier of equipment in the First and Second World Wars, producing the Rolls- Royce Merlin engines used to power both the Spitfire fighter and the Lancaster bomber. At its peak in 1945, an estimated 75,000 workers were employed in the park. Employment began to decline in the 1960s as compa- nies closed in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere. By 1967 employment had fallen to 50,000, and the decline continued throughout the 1970s. The new generation of container ships was too large for the Manchester Ship Canal, which led to a further decline in Trafford Park's fortunes. The workforce had fallen to 15,000 by 1976, and by the 1980s manufacturing industry had virtually disappeared from the park. The Trafford Park Urban Development Corporation, formed in 1987, reversed the estate's decline. In the 11 years of its existence, the park attracted 1,000 companies, generating 28,299 new jobs and £1.759 billion of private-sector investment. By 2008, there were 1,400 companies within Trafford Park, employing an es- timated 35,000 people Trafford Park Railways The system's history started at the end of the 19th century, when there were no public transport routes in Trafford Park. The size of Trafford Park meant that the Estates Company was obliged to provide some means of travelling around the park, and so a gas-powered tramway was commissioned to carry both people and freight. The first tram ran on 23 July 1897. The service was operated by the British Gas Traction Company, which paid a share of its takings to the Es- tates Company, but by 1899 the company was in serious financial difficulty, and entered voluntary liquida- tion. Salford Corporation then refused to provide any more gas for the trams, and the service was once again suspended until the Estates Company bought the entire operation for £2,000 in 1900. A separate electric tramway was installed in 1903, and was taken over and operated by Manchester and Salford Corporations in 1905. The takeover did not affect the gas trams however, which continued to run until 1908, when they were replaced by steam locomotives. Between 1904 and 1907 the Estates Company also operated a horse-drawn

4 for the use of "gentlemen" staying at Trafford Hall, then a hotel. The service, available 24-hours a day, was replaced by a motor car in 1907. Under an 1898 agreement between the Estates Company and the Ship Canal Company, the latter committed to carry freight on their dock railway between the docks and the park and to the construction of a permanent connection between the two railway networks. The West Manchester Light Railway Company was set up the following year to take over the operations of the tramway and to lay additional track. In 1904 responsi- bility for all of the parks roads and railways passed to the Trafford Park Company, as a result of the Trafford Park Act of that year. The railway network could subsequently be extended as required, without the need to seek additional permissions from Parliament. The network was also connected to the Manchester, South Junction and Railway near Corn- brook. At its peak, the estate's railway network covered 26 route miles (42 km), handling about 2.5 million tons of cargo in 1940. Like the rest of the park, it fell into decline during the 1960s, exacerbated by the in- creasing use of road transport, and it was closed in 1998. By the mid-1980s most of the network had become overgrown and neglected. Throughout the 1990s, as Trafford Park was redeveloped, much of the track was dismantled and crossings removed or tarmacked over However, sections of line do remain albeit isolated and unusable. The branch to Barton Dock freight terminal adjacent to the Trafford Centre became the last part of the maintained system (entirely within Trafford Park) to close. The track was lifted in 2014. Trafford Park Euroterminal rail freight terminal, which is on the eastern side of Trafford Park, was formally opened on 5 October 1993 at a cost of £11 million. The 20 acres (8.1 ha) site has the capacity to deal with 100,000 containers a year. It uses a small section that was part of the original branch that once connected Trafford Park Railway with the lines of the pre-grouping . The end of wagon load traffic on spelled the end for the freight activity in industrial estate. An interesting relic of the Manchester Ship Canal Railway is the Detroit pedestrian bridge which crosses the former No. 9 dock between the Eric and Huron basins and links Harbour City to the Lowry development. This 80-metre, 300 structure was originally a double-track railway swing bridge and crossed the Ship Canal between the Trafford Wharf and the extensive railway sidings to the north of the canal. It was installed in 1943 and replaced a single-track swing-bridge which was causing a bottle-neck for the extensive war time traffic. Special permission had to be obtained from the Government to use the steel. It closed to rail traffic in about 1981 and moved to its current location in 1988 as part of the regeneration of Salford Docks. We will see the site of the original bridge near the new Wharfside .

The Trams

The Bombardier M5000 is a model of light rail passenger vehicle assembled in Derby. It is part of Bom- bardier Transportation’s Flexity Swift range vehicles, built specifically as a high-floor, articulated bi- directional tram to operate solely on the system in . Unlike many continental systems where the trams have street level access the Manchester trams are ‘high-floor’ reflecting the ‘heavy- rail’ origins of some of the routes. The Metrolink system is the only tram network in the United Kingdom

5 capable of running vehicles in multiple and consequently the M5000s can operate as either a single vehicle or coupled together to form a "double" unit. The first M5000 entered service on 21 December 2009. Following the withdrawal of the last of the original T-68 and T-68A trams in May 2014, the M5000s have operated all Metrolink services The 27 new ‘Flexity’ M5000 trams (the same model as the existing fleet), costing £72M and due for delivery in spring 2020, have been delayed until August due to manufacturing issues. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester had announced that the first of the new trams, being built by Bombardier, would arrive in February but Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) stated they were only due to enter service in April 2020. There are already 120 trams in service on Metrolink and the order increases capacity by 15% (allowing for maintenance etc), or 4,800 'spaces' and permits more double trams to be used. The trams are able to operate as triple and quadruple units however this only happens in case of emergency such as a tram unit breaking down. Each vehicle is 28.4 metres (93 ft) long and has three bogies, the outer two of which are powered, while the unpowered central bogie supports the articulation gangway. Numbers 3001 to 3074 have 52 standard seats with a further 8 "perch" seats, while numbers 3075 upwards have 60 standard seats and 6 perch seats. On numbers 3001 to 3074 there are two wheelchair spaces, one in each half of the tram; which increased to four spaces for numbers 3075 upwards. At a standard 4 persons per square metre there is space for 146 standing passengers, giving each vehicle a total peak capacity of 206 passengers. The trams are equipped with a pas- senger information system. In the winter, vehicles can be fitted with special ‘ice-breaker’ pantographs and run across the network over night to remove ice from the overhead lines and keep it from re-forming to an extent that might disrupt the first trams of the day. The M5000s are fitted with electronic whistles and the frequent 'toot' sounds are a recognisable symbol of the Metrolink network and familiar background sound in Manchester City Centre. The original trams that were delivered and put into service when the Metrolink first opened in 1992 were built by Ansaldo Breda Firema at Naples in Italy and classified as Type T68s (26 built) and carried numbers in the 1000 series. A later modified type T68As (6 built) was introduced and the trams were numbered in a 2000 series. They continued to operate until the introduction of the Bombardier M5000s but were gradually phased out and scrapped. Four were retained for preservation and their current status (at February 2020) is as follows: Nos 1020 and 2001 cut up for scrap – February 2020. No 1007 carrying the name is now preserved at Manchester Tram Museum in Hea- ton Park. The number 1007 was specifically chosen as it was also the number of the last Manchester Corpo- ration Tram to operate a service back in 1949. No 1023 is stored at Metrolink’s Depot awaiting transfer to Crewe Heritage Centre.

Trafford Park Hotel

The Trafford Park Hotel built in 1902 is a Grade II listed building and one of the few buildings remaining from the early days of the industrial estate. It has been empty for some years but there are proposals to re- open it a ‘boutique’ hotel. For a time the hotel was occupied by squatters and they seem to have cared for the property and probably discouraged any serious vandalism to the building.

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For those with an architectural bent the details of the building are: Brick with terra-cotta dressings and C20 concrete tile roof. 3 x 8 bays with 3 storeys. Mixed Renaissance style. Symmetrical elevation with an abun- dance of detailed enrichment. Plinth, quoins, sill bands, first and second floor bands and panelled parapet. Double central doors with fanlight is flanked by paired Ionic flat pilasters. Pilasters with enriched panels al- so flank the windows on the first and second floors of bay 2 and are repeated above the parapet on a central clock tower with scrolls to either side, modillion cornice and swept lead roof. Bays 1 and 3 have 3-storey canted bay windows set within recesses and with pilaster surrounds and strapwork cartouches at the top. Shaped gables with moulded finials. Similar details are used on the other elevations which are asymmetrical. The left return has a large stair window, the right has the name of the hotel within a gable as well as on a decorative cartouche. Shaped chimney stacks with barley-sugar pots add interest to the skyline. Interior: many original fittings remain including timber panelling, a grand staircase, doors, one with a pilaster sur- round and pulvinated frieze, plaster cornices and glazed tiles in the porch which have been painted over

©BLS Railway Swing Bridge No.2 (1970’s) in its original location

Sources Alan Godfrey Maps, Salford Docks & Ordsall, 1932; Trafford Park 1937; Old Trafford 1931; Trafford Park (South) 1937. Karen Cliff & Patricia Southern, Trafford Park from Old Photographs, Amberley, 2008 Ted Gray, Trafford Park Tramways, 1897 – 1946, Northern Publishing Services, 1996 John Marshall, The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway (Vol. 2), David & Charles, 1970 Don Thorpe. The Railways of the Manchester Ship Canal, Oxford Publishing Company, 1984 Terry Wyke, Brian Robson & Martin Dodge, Manchester – Mapping the City, Birlinn, 2018 and, of course Wikipedia

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Railway Swing Bridge No. 2 (now called Detroit Bridge) in its new location over former Dock 9

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Frank Shackleton, Bernard Halliwell, Gerald Leach and Roger Brice for their comments on drafts of these notes. Any errors are, of course, mine. A safety survey of the route was carried out on Tuesday, 18th February, 2020. Richard Coulthurst, February 18th, 2020

These notes are intended for use by those joining the visit and RCHS members at other times. They should not be copied or stored in a retrieval system, electronic or otherwise. Copyright of illustrations is acknowledged where known.

The Railway & Canal Historical Society is a Company Limited by Guarantee (922300) and a Registered Charity (256047). Registered Office: 34 Waterside Drive, Market Drayton, Shropshire, TF9 1HU’

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