The works, which was originally opened by the Grand Junction Railway in March 1843, employed around 7,000 to 8,000 workers at its peak.

In particular, Whale's 1912 superheated G1 Class 0-8-0 developed from a locomotive introduced by Webb in 1892, lasted, in many cases until 1964, near the end of steam in 1968.

Creating notable steam engines such as Sir William Stanier's locomotives as well as the 'Jubilee' and Class 5 4-6-0s, the 'Princess Royal' and the 'Princess Coronation' 4-6-2s.

The works continued to produce engines under British Railways such as the Britannia 4-6-2s and the Franco-Crosti boilered Class 9 freight locomotives.

The directors of the Grand Junction Railway determined to construct a works on a 3 acres (12,000 m2) site at Crewe in 1840 with the first locomotive, No.

[2] By 1846, the demand for space was such that wagon building was moved, first to Edge Hill and Manchester, then to a new works at Earlestown.

Since Crewe had experience with heavier locomotives and had its own steel making facilities, he chose it as his main production location.

6207; A Study in Steel about the construction of an LMS Princess Royal Class engine was filmed at the works.

[7] Crewe Works became a part of British Rail Engineering Limited when the former BR Workshops were set up as a separate business in 1969 and was privatised in 1989.

Around this time, British Rail Engineering Limited was sold to ASEA Brown-Boveri, which merged with Daimler Benz in 1996 to form Adtranz.

[citation needed] At its height, Crewe Works employed between 7,000 and 8,000 people; in 2005 fewer than 1,000 remained on site, with a further 270 redundancies announced in November of that year and more cutbacks or even closure possible.

[citation needed] In December 2021 the contract for delivery of HS2 rolling stock was awarded to a partnership between Hitachi Rail and Alstom.