The Liverpool -Manchester Railway

New grand entrance to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at Lime Street, Liverpool

The Liverpool and Manchester railway was the first passenger railway in the world when it was opened in 1830 but the main reason why the rail link between these two cities was because local businessmen needed quicker methods of moving raw materials and produce. Due to the growth of the cotton industry in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the merchants and manufacturers of Liverpool and Manchester required an efficient, new system of transport. At the time, Liverpool was the major port in the United Kingdom for importing raw cotton, which came from the United States. The main route for transporting goods and people between Liverpool and Manchester was by water navigation along the Mersey, Irwell Navigation and the Bridgewater Canal. However the canals were slow, unreliable and costly and subject to drought in summer and frost in winter. Another problem was that the canal routes only went as far as Runcorn, twenty miles south east of Liverpool.

In 1824, one hundred and fifty Liverpool merchants signed a declaration expressing dissatisfaction with the existing types of transport between Liverpool and Manchester and this led to the formation of a Liverpool and Manchester Railway Committee in the same year. The problems of transport between Liverpool and Manchester were given in evidence to Parliament, which noted that it took longer to get goods from Liverpool to Manchester than it did to bring them over from America to Liverpool. Goods could take twenty one days to come from America and then be waiting in the docks for more than six weeks before getting to Manchester.

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