The Chester and Crewe Railway was an early British railway company absorbed by the Grand Junction Railway

Grand Junction Railway

The Grand Junction Railway was an early railway company in the United Kingdom, which existed between 1833 and 1846 when it was merged into the London and North Western Railway...

 in 1840. The line was 11 miles in length, the engineer was Robert Stephenson

Robert Stephenson

Robert Stephenson FRS was an English civil engineer. He was the only son of George Stephenson, the famed locomotive builder and railway engineer; many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually the joint efforts of father and son.-Early life :He was born on the 16th of...

 and the contractor for the work was Thomas Brassey

Thomas Brassey

Thomas Brassey was an English civil engineering contractor and manufacturer of building materials who was responsible for building much of the world's railways in the 19th century. By 1847, he had built about one-third of the railways in Britain, and by time of his death in 1870 he had built one...

. It was the absorption of this company that led the Grand Junction Railway to building its locomotive

Locomotive

A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...

 works at Crewe

Crewe

Crewe is a railway town within the unitary authority area of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. According to the 2001 census the urban area had a population of 67,683...

 which led to Crewe becoming a major railway town

Railway town

A railway town is a settlement that originated or was greatly developed because of a railway station or junction at its site.In Victorian Britain, the spread of railways greatly affected the fate of many small towns...

.