The Castlefield corridor (also known as the Deansgate corridor) is a railway corridor between Castlefield junction and Fairfield Street junction in

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tamesid ...

, England. The corridor forms the eastern end of the southerly Liverpool–Manchester line. The route is recognised as a significant bottleneck, magnified further by the opening of the

Ordsall Chord Ordsall Chord, also known as the Castlefield Curve, is a short railway line in Ordsall, Salford, England, which links and Manchester Oxford Road to , designed to increase capacity and reduce journey times into and through Manchester. It allow ...

in 2017 and timetable change in May 2018 which increased the number of services through Manchester city centre from 12 to 15 trains per hour. This uplift in services had a detrimental impact on punctuality and reliability, ultimately playing a major factor in the failure of the

Arriva Rail North Arriva Rail North, branded as Northern by Arriva (legal name Arriva Rail North Limited) was a train operating company in Northern England which began operating the Northern franchise on 1 April 2016 and inherited units from the previous operat ...

franchise in 2020. As of August 2021, 12 trains per hour pass through the Castlefield corridor.

Route

The twin-track corridor extends from Castlefield junction to the west of , through and , to Fairfield Street junction just beyond Piccadilly station. Oxford Road station is the only point on the route where there are four through lines. At the western end of the corridor, lines from , , and converge. Lines from , and converge at the east. The corridor is on a

viaduct A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide va ...

, built by the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway in the late 1840s as a near continuous series of

red brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

vaulted arch In architecture, a vault (French ''voûte'', from Italian ''volta'') is a self-supporting arched form, usually of stone or brick, serving to cover a space with a ceiling or roof. As in building an arch, a temporary support is needed while ring ...

es, interspersed with iron or steel bridges. The structure is

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

from the

River Irwell The River Irwell ( ) is a tributary of the River Mersey in north west England. It rises at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately north of Bacup and flows southwards for to meet the Mersey near Irlam. The Irwell marks the boundary b ...

to Piccadilly station. The route carries a mixture of local and long-distance passenger trains, as well as intermodal freight from the

Trafford Park Trafford Park is an area of the Trafford, Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Unt ...

container terminal.

Current congestion

The corridor is a significant bottleneck to rail traffic; it is one of three officially recognised congested infrastructure rail hotspots in the United Kingdom, and is uniquely still in need of major investment. In an attempt to obligate the

Department for Transport The Department for Transport (DfT) is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that have not been devolved. The ...

to provide funding for the Oxford Road upgrade to improve punctuality,

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

declared the Castlefield corridor 'congested' in September 2019. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

, services on the line were scaled back in line with a 90% reduction in demand, as the United Kingdom went into a lockdown in March 2020. Since the partial return from that lockdown, services were steadily increased. However, the phased recovery process enabled both Northern and

TransPennine Express TransPennine Express (TPE), legally First TransPennine Express Limited, is a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup that operates the TransPennine Express franchise. It runs regional and inter-city rail services between the major c ...

to achieve a higher percentage of reliability and service than in the period immediately before the lockdown. Throughout 2020, there was a limit of 12 trains per hour (12 tph) rather than the previous 15 tph.

Proposed improvements

As a trade-off, a temporary reduction in the number of passenger services using the corridor has been suggested, as a short-term measure to improve service reliability. In 2010, a study for the Manchester Hub ruled out quad-tracking the corridor with a new viaduct. A rail tunnel has been proposed for the corridor, as part of the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy 2040. UK rail advocacy group

Railfuture Railfuture (formerly the Railway Development Society) is a UK advocacy group which promotes better rail services for passengers and freight across a bigger rail network. The group's national policies are determined by its national board of dir ...

has noted that the reinstatement of the Glazebrook East Junction–Skelton Junction line, along with its former branch to Carrington Power Station and an extension of the branch to , would help to relieve the Castlefield corridor of freight traffic.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Castlefield Corridor Rail transport in Greater Manchester