Stalybridge railway station

Stalybridge National Rail
Stalybridge railway station
Location
Place Stalybridge
Local authority Tameside
Coordinates 53°29′03″N 2°03′53″W / 53.4841°N 2.0647°W / 53.4841; -2.0647Coordinates: 53°29′03″N 2°03′53″W / 53.4841°N 2.0647°W / 53.4841; -2.0647
Grid reference SJ958986
Operations
Station code SYB
Managed by TransPennine Express
Number of platforms 5
DfT category D
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections
from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2012/13 Decrease 1.028 million
2013/14 Increase 1.105 million
2014/15 Decrease 1.086 million
2015/16 Increase 1.129 million
2016/17 Increase 1.151 million
Passenger Transport Executive
PTE Transport for Greater Manchester
History
Key dates Opened 1845 (1845)
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Stalybridge from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Stalybridge railway station serves Stalybridge, Greater Manchester. It lies on the Huddersfield Line, 7 1⁄2 miles (12.1 km) east of Manchester Piccadilly and 8 1⁄4 miles (13.3 km) east of Manchester Victoria. The station is managed by TransPennine Express.

History

Stalybridge station was built by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway and opened on 23 December 1845. There was a Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway station adjacent, which acted as the terminus of that company's line from Manchester Victoria but this closed in 1917. The main function of the station was as a junction for the Stockport-Stalybridge Line, which allowed passengers from London and the South to transfer to the Huddersfield Line. This role has been lost since it is now possible for passengers to change at Manchester Piccadilly. The Micklehurst Loop also diverged from the original 1849 Huddersfield & Manchester main line here - it was closed in October 1966, but the disused tunnel it used to pass below the town's northern suburbs can be seen alongside the original one that is still used today by trains heading to and from Yorkshire.

Facilities

Stalybridge Buffet Bar on platform 4.

The station has an entrance block with a ticket office. Ramps and a passenger subway lead up to the platforms. The station is one of very few to retain its original buffet, the 1998 refurbishment of which won awards from CAMRA and English Heritage.[1] At the 2008 Tameside food and drink festival it was voted best bar.[2]

Following further refurbishment in 2012 Lord Pendry of Stalybridge, who often uses the buffet bar and contributed over half of the £6,000 costs, unveiled a plaque to mark the works.[3]

Michael Portillo visited the buffet bar in "Manchester Piccadilly to Silkstone Common", a 2017 episode of Great British Railway Journeys.[4]

In a £1.5m overhaul of the station, which began in 2007, the platforms were raised and the toilets, information services and shelters on the westbound platform were improved. In December 2008 the new entrance was completed.[5]

Recent developments

Construction work, on platform 3, to add lifts to the station subway.

Further work to expand the station was completed in 2012 - this saw major alterations to the track layout (including the opening of two new platforms) and signalling, with control of the latter passing to the Manchester East signalling centre at Stockport. The project cost £20 million[6] as the station closed on Sundays throughout the summer of 2012 followed by a nine-day line blockade at the end of October but gives improved operational flexibility and reliability, allowed the line speed through the station and junction to be increased to 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) and left it ready for the proposed electrification of the Leeds - Manchester trans-Pennine route in 2022. The two new platforms were opened on 5 November 2012; the former platform 1 was renumbered 4, and a new bay on the northern side is Platform 5.[7]

An Access for All scheme, funded by the Department for Transport, gave easier access to all of the platforms. Lifts were built to give step-free access to the entire station,[8] though the station had no steps previously as there were ramps to all platforms.

Services

A First TransPennine Express Class 185 arrives at platform 4.

TransPennine Express

A major change in calling pattern was implemented at the May 2018 timetable change, though the base 30-minute service frequency remains unchanged. Eastbound departures will now serve the intermediate stations on a "skip-stop" pattern en-route to Huddersfield and Leeds (replacing the former Northern local service), with alternate trains continuing to Hull. Westbound trains will now all terminate at Manchester Piccadilly, with no regular service to Manchester Victoria and Liverpool (though connections will still be available at Piccadilly).[9]

Northern

Since the May 2018 timetable change, all Northern trains from Manchester Victoria now start and terminate here. The base frequency remains two per hour on weekdays and Saturdays, with one of them continuing to Bolton and Wigan North Western. A limited peak-only weekday service remains on the line eastwards to Huddersfield, but this now runs to and from Manchester Piccadilly.[10]

An hourly service runs on Sundays.

The "parliamentary service" from Stockport

A parliamentary service still travels along the whole Stockport-Stalybridge Line, which for many years was in one direction only and with no return service. An attempt was made to close the line to passenger services in the early 1990s (the service having been drastically cut in May 1989 after the re-routing of TransPennine Express services from Manchester Victoria to Manchester Piccadilly), but closure was refused by the Department of Transport which ordered that a regular service continue. The train is the only one to call at Denton and Reddish South. The train ran on a Friday as the 09:22 Stockport to Stalybridge;[11] however, from the start of the summer 2018 timetable, the service shifts to Saturday and operates in both directions. The new southbound train leaves at 08:46 for Stockport and returns from there at 09:45.[12][13]

References

  1. ↑ Heritage Pubs, National Inventory
  2. ↑ Edition 47 of Tameside Citizen Online Archived 14 July 2014 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑
  4. ↑ http://www.beerhouses.co.uk/stalybridge-buffet-bar/michael-portillos-great-british-railway-journeys-visits-stalybridge-buffet-bar/
  5. ↑ "£1.5m refit is on track". Tameside Advertiser. 2008-12-08. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
  6. ↑ Refurbishment of Stalybridge Station begins Rail.co news article; Retrieved 2012-08-30
  7. ↑ Haddon, Mike (February 2013). Pigott, Nick, ed. "New look at Stalybridge". The Railway Magazine. Horncastle: Mortons Media Group. 159 (1342): 78. ISSN 0033-8923.
  8. ↑ Major Engineering Work at Stalybridge Station Archived 3 June 2014 at Archive.is Accessed 2014-06-03
  9. ↑ North Route Timetables - Major changes from 20 May 2018 TransPennine Express website news article; Retrieved 7 May 2018
  10. ↑ Northern Timetable 25 - Manchester to Stalybridge and Huddersfield May 20 - 8 December 2018 Northern website; Retrieved 19 July 2018
  11. ↑ Table 78A National Rail timetable, May 2017
  12. ↑ 2J44 0846 Stalybridge to Stockport, 26 May 2018Realtime Trains website; Retrieved 7 May 2018
  13. ↑ 2J45 0945 Stockport to Stalybridge, 26 May 2018Realtime Trains website; Retrieved 7 May 2018
Preceding station   National Rail   Following station
Manchester Piccadilly   TransPennine Express
North TransPennine		   Greenfield
    Mossley
Northern
Huddersfield Line
Terminus
Northern
Parliamentary service
Terminus
Disused railways
TerminusLondon and North Western Railway
Line and station closed
Line and station closed
London and North Western RailwayTerminus
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