SIGNALLING & TELECOMS
TE
R
CREWE COAL YARD SB
Crewe Basford Hall and Independent Lines resignalling
M
ES
AN
AL W
CH
ES
H RT
O
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LIVERPOOL/GLASGOW
CREWE SIGNALLING CONTROL CENTRE
CREWE NORTH JUNCTION
SB
CREWE STATION
INDEPENDENT FREIGHT LINES SALOP GOODS JUNCTION
SB
CREWE SOUTH JUNCTION
SHREWSBURY
KE
O ST
CREWE SORTING SIDINGS NORTH
SB
BASFORD HALL YARD
PAUL DARLINGTON
LONDON/BIRMINGHAM
60
SB
BASFORD HALL JUNCTION
Rail Engineer | Issue 189 | Mar-Apr 2021
I
f you have ever stood on Crewe station, you may have noticed that hardly any freight trains pass through it. This is because they are diverted via a separate four-track railway in a deep cutting to the west. Known as the Crewe Independent Lines, it is tunnelled beneath the North Junction layout to join the main lines going to Manchester and Liverpool/Warrington. The signalling is old and in need of renewal, which is currently underway and called Crewe Basford Hall and Independent Lines resignalling. The line is only a few miles long, but has in the order of 161 signalled routes and 70 signals, and the scheme has a number of challenges to overcome. Crewe has always been an important major junction on the West Coast Main Line; therefore, its signalling infrastructure is extensive and complicated. The station opened in July 1837 and was built where the line crossed the turnpike road linking the Trent & Mersey and Shropshire Union Canals. Crewe became the junction where the lines to Manchester Piccadilly and North Wales diverged, and it is the last major station before the branch to Liverpool Lime Street, with the main line going on to Scotland. South of the station there are lines to Stoke-on-Trent/Derby and Shrewsbury/South Wales, along with the main line to London and Birmingham. Looking to the future, HS2 services are also planned to call at Crewe, with Basford Hall controlling HS2 trains into the station. Crewe Works was built in 1840 and one of the reasons Crewe was chosen by the Grand Junction Railway for train building was its clay, providing a solid base for the heavy machinery. This has implications for the new signalling of the Independent Lines, which we will come back to later. By the 1890s, 1,000 trains passed through Crewe every 24 hours, with many being freight trains which did not need to call at the station. So, the Independent Lines were approved in 1895 and constructed between 1896 and 1901, with over 1,000 labourers digging the fourtrack cutting with tunnels under North Junction. The work also included the construction of a large marshalling yard to the south of the station at Basford Hall.
