Manchester Central - was closing it a mistake?

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Mayfield doesn't serve a purpose that Piccadilly doesn't, large number of bay platforms except Piccadilly is closer to the city centre.

I am wondering how near the proposed new through platforms 15 and 16 at Manchester Piccadilly will be to Mayfield Station, when they are finally constructed. Have any provisional plans been published which show their positioning?

 

[Nym]

None at all, although I've heard pre-tensioned concrete mentioned, so I'd expect end supports to be in place where the old PSB used to be, some viaduct structure in the Car Park next to the Hotel and Transformer, then another pre-tensioned section to a support on the Eastern side of London Road, with the junction and pointwork being West of London Road, borrowing some road from the UMIST campus at the Eye Centre.

 

[WatcherZero]

They will be over the road anyway, directly next to the existing through platforms. Might be a tight squueze in some places but they arent four tracking the whole viaduct, just the area immediately adjacent to the platforms.

 

[Nym]

Yep, and one hopes they'll see sense and provide some centre road reversal sidings in the place of the Mayfeild Loop on the piccadilly approach so that services can terminate in 14, run into the sidings, and come out onto 15 for return without buggering up all the other paths, one hopes, don't know if it will appear, one hopes for somthing similar at Victoria too though.

 

[WatcherZero]

Dont know about past Piccadilly towards the airport but there wont be any possibility of that between Pic and Oxford Road. The signalling going in for the high frequency essentially makes it platform-platform signal clearances with no possibility of wrong direction running.

 

[Holly]

It's main line down to Derby was closed and there were few enough lesser routes to be diverted to the other terminals. Would have been around 1967-68 ?

I travelled from Hartford and Greenbank (as it was then called) to Central daily throughout that era. The Miller's Dale line closed in mid 1968 but Central soldiered on for about a year until platform alterations at Oxford Rd. were completed. At that time there were no through passenger trains at Oxford Rd., both directions turned back there.
The last vestiges of the former grandiosity at Central was an advertising arch one passed under to reach the platform from which The Master Cutler left (London via Sheffield obviously).
It was not a happy time, Britain was clearly a country in industrial decline at every turn. Engineering companies were involved in takeovers and mergers with breath-taking frequency actively encouraged, unfortunately, by the misguided policies of the Wilson government. Investment in railways was just about non-existent and everyone expected the huge declines that indeed followed.
The Wilson government did a lot of good things for Britain, but somehow got the idea that the way to achieve world competitiveness in export industry was by creating merged companies "big enough to compete with the Americans". This may have been true for aircraft but it was totally the wrong policy for most industry. Vast amounts of expertise in electromechanical systems that could have been applied to robotics and machine tools were simply lost to the NIH attitudes of merged companies everywhere. The only really successful industries were the state owned energy industries. The 1970 collapse of Rolls-Royce was a watershed but the dark ages continued as industrial relations just got worse and worse for years.
Sorry about waffling on, I just got started and then got carried away.

 

[yorksrob]

companies were involved in takeovers and mergers with breath-taking frequency actively encouraged, unfortunately, by the misguided policies of the Wilson government.

This seems to have been a policy that has continued into the present day. Our financial establishment has always been more interested in selling out for a fast buck than developing British industry.

Needless to say, our partners abroad have never agreed with this policy, hence why their companies are more likely to end up buying ours than the other way round.

 

[CosherB]

Rolls Royce of course is now a world beating manufacturer of aircraft engines, at the top of the game. It's just not true that manufactering is dead in UK - the really top notch high value stuff we still do very well.

Back to trains. Yes, I remember when the 1,500VDC electrics terminated in the bays at Oxford Road, and the 25KVAC electrics terminated at the main platforms, with buffers at the 'Knott Mill (Deansgate)' end of those platforms. But I think the two roads furtherest from the bays were run-through Picc to Knott Mill, but no regular passenger trains used them.

later, of course all the main platforms were converted to 'run through' when 25KV was installed to Altrincham, and the bay was reduced to a single track as the EMUs then ran Crewe or Alderley Edge to Altrincham and back.