Manchester International Depot is a train maintenance depot in Manchester, England. It was constructed next to the Longsight depot in the early 1990s as part of a plan to operate Eurostar international train services to locations in the United Kingdom beyond London, known as Regional Eurostar.
By the time that Eurostar services became operational through the Channel Tunnel in 1994 it was decided that regional Eurostar services from Manchester (via the West Coast Main Line) and Glasgow (via the East Coast Main Line) to Paris and Brussels were not economic to run due to their long journey times compared to air travel: 800 km Manchester-Paris and 1,230 km Glasgow-Paris. However the depots and trains had all but been completed by this time and trial runs operated on both main lines.
The Manchester International Depot, with signs saying "Le Eurostar habite ici" and other Eurostar branding, stood empty and unused for almost ten years. Unlike the majority of the British railway network it does not belong to Network Rail but to London & Continental Stations and Property (LCSP), a subsidiary of London and Continental Railways who also jointly operate the current Eurostar service with SNCF and NMBS/SNCB via their subsidiary Eurostar (U.K.) Ltd.
The future of regional Eurostar operations is still unclear. However, in 2005 Siemens began using the depot, rented from LCSP, as a testing base for their new Class 185 DMUs for TransPennine Express until their own dedicated Manchester depot at Ardwick was completed.
Manchester International Station could revived as part of the High Speed 2 (HS2) proposal which would link high speed trains from Manchester to Paris via London if the plan is passed. Currently, plans for which station(s) would take HS2 trains north of Birmingham have not been revealed. Other sites such as reviving the unused Manchester Mayfield station next to Manchester Piccadilly and rebuilding Manchester Exchange Station on the edge of the city centre remain a possibility.
Famous quotes containing the word manchester:
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)