The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 9 (December 1, 1936)

A Famous Liverpool Station

A Famous Liverpool Station.

Of the many large Home passenger stations outside London, few are more famous than Lime Street Station, Liverpool, the property of the London, Midland and Scottish line. This busy terminus recently celebrated its one hundredth birthday, an event which was marked by appropriate local celebrations. Lime Street Station was built for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway—the first Home inter-city railway, and the oldest section of the L.M. & S. system. Approached from Edge Hill by a long gradient which was originally considered too steep for locomotives, trains were for some years hauled up and let down on endless cables worked by steam winding-engines. Curiously enough, a similar practice originally prevailed at Euston Station, London.

The present Lime Street Station has eleven platforms, and is used by 370 trains a day. Whereas the earliest trains between Liverpool, Lime Street, and Euston Station, London, took nine hours on the journey, the fastest time now is only three hours twenty minutes. Adjoining Lime Street, the L.M. & S. Company own and operate an enormous hotel—one of the largest in the long chain of guest-houses controlled by the system.