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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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