Earlestown railway station is a railway station in Earlestown, Merseyside, England, and one of the few "triangular" stations in Britain. History Early history The station lies on the former Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was opened on 15 September 1830. On 25 July 1831 the Warrington and Newton Railway was opened for public use, making a junction at a point in the township of Newton, facing in the direction of Liverpool. The surviving Earlestown station buildings were constructed around 1835 on the original site, at the point of intersection of these two early railways, incidentally forming the first steam railway junction, which was given the name Newton Junction. The junction had a very tight curvature and this caused problems. Train travelling on the curves were restricted to a slow maximum speed. The original building now forms the (currently unused) waiting room of Earlestown Station. The Grand Junction Railway (GJR) absorbed the Warrington and Newton company as of 31 December 1834 and from the GJR's completion of their trunk line from Birmingham on 4 July 1837 used it to access the Liverpool and Manchester line. A new "Curve" was built at Newton Junction so that trains could run towards Manchester; this gave the station a triangular formation with six platforms. To complicate matters, there was also a branch line from Richard Evans's collieries at Haydock which had a curve to join the L & M in the Manchester direction and passed through the triangle to join the Warrington and Newton line. The method of operation involved the despatch of a Grand Junction train from both Liverpool and Manchester to meet at Earlestown. These were joined together and continued as one train to Birmingham. Both portions conveyed through carriages after 1839 to London. The Grand Junction trains arriving from Birmingham were usually split at Warrington (Bank Quay) and passed through Earlestown as separate Liverpool and Manchester trains. An area between the station and the "Nine Arches" viaduct was selected in 1833 by Messrs Jones, Turner and Evans as the site of their Viaduct Locomotive Works. In 1853, the London and North Western Railway took a lease on the premises and thus established the company's carriage and wagon works, and the area developed into something of a 'company town' which, after the construction of company houses, was given the nickname "Earle's Town" after Hardman Earle, a director of the company and its predecessors,