Manchester London Road Railway Station
1840 A section of the new Manchester and Birmingham Railway was opened between Heaton Norris and a temporary station at Travis Street in Manchester.
1841 the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway also began running into Travis Street.
1842 May 8th: Store Street station opened for use of both companies; it later became known as London Road.
London Road was the terminus for two trunk lines approaching the city from the south and east - the Manchester and Birmingham Railway from Stockport and Crewe, and the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway, which ran only as far as Godley, but would eventually be extended to Sheffield via the Woodhead route.
Even in the early days, it was clear that the dead-end terminal at London Road would need to be connected to the other railway lines serving Manchester. The Manchester and Birmingham and the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester companies proposed an extension of their lines, which would skirt the southern part of Manchester city centre on a 2.4 km (1½ mile) viaduct and join the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at Ordsall Lane in Salford. This was promoted as the South Junction Line. A branch line was also proposed, leaving the South Junction line at Castlefield (west of today’s Deansgate station) and travelled beside the Bridgewater Canal to Altrincham. This became the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway
1881 the London Road terminus was rebuilt as a curved island platform connected to the main-line station via a footbridge. This arrangement survives today as the busy Platforms 13 and 14 at Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station.
1960 The station was renamed Piccadilly.