Hereford railway station

Hereford
Location
Place	Hereford
Local authority	Herefordshire
Coordinates	52°03′41″N 2°42′30″W / 52.06139°N 2.70833°W / 52.06139; -2.70833Coordinates: 52°03′41″N 2°42′30″W / 52.06139°N 2.70833°W / 52.06139; -2.70833
Grid reference	SO515405
Operations
Station code	HFD
Managed by	Arriva Trains Wales
Number of platforms	4
DfT category	C1
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2012/13	1.086 million
2013/14	1.104 million
2014/15	1.193 million
2015/16	1.226 million
2016/17	1.228 million
History
Original company	Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway
Pre-grouping	Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway
Post-grouping	Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway
6 December 1853 (1853-12-06)	Opened as Hereford Barr's Court
1893	Renamed Hereford
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Hereford from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Hereford railway station serves the city of Hereford, England. Managed by Arriva Trains Wales, it lies on the Welsh Marches Line between Leominster and Abergavenny, is the western terminus of the Cotswold Line and also has an hourly West Midlands Trains service from Birmingham New Street. The station has four platforms for passenger trains, and two additional relief lines for goods services.

Accorded "Secure Station" status in 2004,^[1] the station has a staffed ticket office, self-service ticket machines, a café, and indoor waiting rooms. Automated ticket barriers have been in operation since 28 February 2006.^[2]

History

There were originally two stations in Hereford - Barton, and Barrs Court.

Barton (52°03′23″N 2°43′28″W / 52.0563°N 2.7245°W / 52.0563; -2.7245 (Hereford Barton railway station)) lay to the west of the city and had been built by the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway (NA&HR). However, Barton was small and in a cramped location, and was not big enough nor could it be enlarged for the greater traffic that would entail from the arrival of the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway from the north.

The resolution was an agreement to create a new joint railway station to the north east of the city, called Hereford Barrs Court. This would be a joint standard gauge/broad gauge station, sponsored jointly by the standard-gauge Shrewsbury & Hereford Railway (S&HR) and the GWR-sponsored Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway (HR&GR). When the Midland Railway–sponsored Hereford, Hay and Brecon Railway entered the town, they were given access rights, as was the later GWR-sponsored extension of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway,^[3] which joined the S&HR's route to the north of the city at Shelwick Junction.

In civil engineering preparation for this, and as the only company planning to enter the town from the north, in 1849 the S&HR built a brick works north of Dinmore Hill, which was fed by clay from the earthworks of digging a tunnel south underneath it. In 1852, ​2 ¹⁄₂ years later and having used ​3 ¹⁄₄ million bricks the tunnel was completed, freight traffic started in July 1852 to provide cash flow. However, construction continued, with the massive earthworks for a cutting to enter Barrs Court started in August 1852.^[3]

The plan was to jointly open both stations between all four railways on 6 December 1853, with what was planned to be a Railway Fete. However, the first S&HR passenger service arrived at Barrs Ct. on Saturday 28 October, which carried the chairman Mr Ormsby-Gore and engineer Thomas Brassey.^[3] As the negotiations and financing of the joint station had taken so long, they arrived at an incomplete facility.^[4] Whilst completion of the station would follow shortly after, significant rebuilding would occur later in the nineteenth century, when the current Victorian Gothic buildings, designed by R.E. Johnson,^[5] would be constructed.^[2] The station opened on 6 December 1853, and the name was simplified to Hereford in 1893 on the closure of Barton station to passengers.^[6]

2-6-0 on pilot duty in 1959

In 1866, a line connecting the NA&HR's route to the south of the city, branching off from the line to Barton at Redhill and joining with the HR&GR's route into Barrs Court station from the south, rendered Barton station obsolete, as through north-south services could now utilise the larger and better equipped Barrs Court station. However, Barton clung onto passenger services until January 1893,^[7] the last services to use it being Midland Railway trains to Hay-on-Wye and Brecon. It would remain open as a goods only station until 1979, and the route through it from north to south, used as a goods only line to avoid Barrs Court, also remained until approximately this time.

The former branches to Brecon via Hay-on-Wye and Gloucester both closed to passenger traffic in the early 1960s - Brecon services were withdrawn from 31 December 1962,^[8] whilst the Gloucester via Ross-on-Wye line fell victim to the Beeching Axe on 2 November 1964.^[9]

This station has bilingual signage, both in Welsh and English, and is one of the relatively few stations in England to have bilingual signage, others being Wallsend (Latin), Southall (Punjabi), and St Pancras International, Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International (all French).

Services

Railways in Hereford
Welsh Marches line (S&HR) Cotswold Line (OW&WR) Hereford, Hay & Brecon Rly Hereford Barrs Court Hereford Barton River Wye Rotherwas Junction Welsh Marches line (NA&HR) Hereford, Ross & Gloucester Rly

Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway
Welsh Marches line (S&HR) Cotswold Line (OW&WR) Hereford, Hay and Brecon Railway Hereford Barrs Court Hereford Barton River Wye Rotherwas Junction ROF Rotherwas Welsh Marches line (NA&HR) Dinedor tunnel Holme Lacy Ballingham tunnel Ballingham River Wye (Ballingham Bridge) Fawley Tunnel Fawley River Wye Backney Halt River Wye Ross-on-Wye Ross and Monmouth Railway Weston under Penyard Halt Mitcheldean Road & Forest of Dean Junction Railway Mitcheldean Road Lea Line tunnel Longhope Blaisdon Halt Gloucester–Newport line Grange Court Grange Court Junction Gloucester–Newport line

Hereford is served by trains operated by Arriva Trains Wales, London Midland, and Great Western Railway. It is the terminus of the routes from Birmingham New Street and London Paddington via Worcester Foregate Street and is served by all trains on the Manchester Piccadilly to Cardiff and Carmarthen route. Trains run hourly to Birmingham, Manchester, Shrewsbury and Cardiff Central (Mon-Sat) two-hourly to Wrexham General, Chester and Holyhead and less frequently to Oxford, Reading and London.^[10]

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Abergavenny		Arriva Trains Wales Welsh Marches Line		Leominster
Abergavenny		Arriva Trains Wales North-South "Premier" service		Ludlow
Terminus		West Midlands Railway Hereford to Birmingham		Ledbury
		West Midlands Railway Hereford to Dorridge
		Great Western Railway Cotswold Line
	Historical railways
Holme Lacy		Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway British Railways		Terminus

See also

• Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal

References

Further reading

• Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2004). Worcester to Hereford. West Sussex: Middleton Press. figs. 112-120. ISBN 9781904474388. OCLC 862604858.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hereford railway station.

• Train times and station information for Hereford railway station from National Rail