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Central
Station
 In 1872 permission was granted
for the
Midland Railway, the Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway and
the Great Northern Railway to extend their lines into the centre of
Manchester. Lewis Moorsom was commissioned to build a new station and
in 1875 the work began on the construction of Central Station. It was
to cost £124,778. The station featured a single span roof that was 210
feet wide, 550 feet long and 90 feet high. The roof spanned six
platforms and nine tracks. At the main entrance there were wooden
buildings that accommodated the booking office. The station opened in
1880 with trains running to Liverpool, Chester, Stockport, and London
St. Pancras.
 The image above is shown with the generous permission of Phil Evans. It comes from his web site Old UK Photos.com Below is an image, shown here
with the generous permission of Ben
Brooksbank, that shows the station
in operation during the 1960s.
 The station closed in 1969 and laid vacant and increasingly derelict for many years.   The images above were taken by Peter Whatley in
1980. ![Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]](http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif)
©
Copyright
Peter
Whatley
and
licensed
for
reuse
under
this Creative
Commons Licence.
(Image above taken in 1982 by
Terry
Eyres and generously contributed by him to this site.)
The Greater Manchester Council acquired
control of the site in 1978. In the photograph above you can see
that
the station was being used as an NCP Car Park but the McAlpine signs
and scaffolding in front of the clock indicate that the restoration was
underway. Subsequently Central Station was
converted, at a cost of £20Million into the Greater Manchester
Exhibition and Events Centre, which was a mouthful so condensed into
G-Mex.
Above you can see the original version of the
"Greater Manchester
Exhibition and Event Centre". Since then the entrance has gone
through
at least two "make-overs".   The G-Mex was opened Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 1986. It was regarded as one of England's finest exhibition centres. It is one of the country's largest, the whole space being open without interior supporting pillars. The hall can seat over 9000 people with on-site parking for over 1,500 cars. The station had an extensive undercroft which has been converted into parking and the nearby Great Northern Warehouse offers additional parking.
Notice the turntable and the rails still in place in this former goods storage and trans-shipment area before it was converted into parking.
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