Central Station in its heyday
Central Station was one of the main railway terminals in Manchester for some eighty-nine years. Opened on 1st July 1880 by the Cheshire Lines Committee, it served trains and passengers to several destinations, including London's St. Pancras Station. As part of the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, it was defined as being surplus to requirements and closed to passengers on 5th May 1969. It lay deretict for some thirteen years, being used as a car park and, on at least one occasion as a film set for Granada Television's series A Family At War. Purchased by Manchester City Council in 1982, they converted it into the Greater Manchester Exhibition and Conference Centre, or G-Mex, which opened on 21st March 1986. In January 2007, it was renamed "Manchester Central" to invoke its past as a major railway station.
Dennis Tanner waits in the station in a location shot from Episode 247 (24th April 1963)
In April 1962 Billy Walker rang his mother Annie from the station after he arrived from London, playing a joke on her by pretending to be a reporter. Exactly one year later, Dennis Tanner waited at the station for girlfriend Mavis Fox to arrive from the capital but she had got there before him and made her own way to Coronation Street.
In January 1964, pop singer Walter Potts left for London from Central Station. His fans who had been besieging him inside 11 Coronation Street for over a week had gone to Piccadilly Station, thinking that was his departure point.
In September 1964, Trevor Ogden left for London from the station, intending to make his fortune in the capital. The ticket for the journey had been paid for with the proceeds of a thieving spree on the residents of Coronation Street on the night that they were evacuated to the Glad Tidings Mission Hall after an unexploded wartime bomb had been found under the flags of 1 Coronation Street.
In July 1968, ten months before the station closed, Stan and Hilda Ogden went out to celebrate Stan becoming his own boss when he purchased a window cleaning round from I-spy Dwyer. Hilda feared that as the only eatery that Stan knew was the buffet restaurant in the station, that was going to be their destination. Emily Nugent suggested they try the Golden Mandarin Restaurant on Market Street instead.