For more than a century pretty much the only way of getting between Manchester's two main railway stations was on foot. Piccadilly and Victoria might have been two of the busiest stations in the North of England - but for a long time it was impossible to catch a train from one to the other.
The bizarre situation was a hangover from the Wild West of Victorian railway mania, when hugely powerful companies competed to build tracks across the country, without any thought for how the network might join up. But those petty rivalries left Manchester with a headache that town planners and rail chiefs are still trying to cure almost two centuries later.
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