Crewe Rail, Cheshire Live Cam

Crewe station lies at the meeting of the West Coast main line and the routes to Manchester, Chester and Shrewsbury. The camera looks over the north end of the layout from the heritage centre.

The town is here because of the junction rather than the other way round. When the line opened in 1837 there was almost nothing at the spot; the railway built a works, then houses, schools and a hospital, and the place grew to fifty thousand people around them.

The works turned out something like eight thousand locomotives before it wound down. The centre the camera sits in keeps part of the site, including a signal box moved here from the station throat.