Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 4, 2009

Preston railway station serves the city of Preston in Lancashire, England, and is a major station on the West Coast Main Line. It is served by Northern Rail, Virgin Trains, and TransPennine Express services, plus First ScotRail overnight sleeper services between London and Scotland. When the station was first opened in 1838 by the North Union Railway, the line north of the station passed through a tunnel under the west end of Fishergate (then Preston’s major thoroughfare). It was on a slope so steep that sometimes station staff had to push trains out of the station. The station’s first expansion came in 1850 when the new East Lancashire line used new platforms staffed and managed by the East Lancashire Railway, with their own entrance and booking office in Butler Street. The condition of the station deteriorated to the extent that on 18 August 1866 part of the roof on the East Lancashire side collapsed injuring three people, one seriously. By then, 150 trains a day passed through the station. Eventually the station was rebuilt, at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds, reopening in July 1880.