Hampton-in-Arden railway station
Hampton-in-Arden railway station serves the village of Hampton-in-Arden in the West Midlands of England. It is situated on the West Coast Main Line between Birmingham; the station, all trains serving it, are operated by West Midlands Trains. The present station dates from 1884, when it was built by the North Western Railway, it replaced an earlier station dating from the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1837, located approxiamtely 470 metres further north-west. From 1839, Hampton-in-Arden became a junction at the southern end of the Stonebridge Railway; this line, which connected with the Birmingham-Derby line at Whitacre Heath, closed to passengers in 1917 and in 1935. Prior to the opening of nearby Birmingham International station in 1976, fast trains between Birmingham New Street and London Euston called at Hampton-in-Arden, to provide a stop between Birmingham and Coventry and to serve Birmingham Airport. Evidence of the stopping of these longer trains remains with the exceptionally long platforms.
The original L&BR station booking hall building still stands today on Old Station Road. This small red brick building is a Grade II listed building and is a rare surviving example of architecture from the beginning of the railway age, it is one of two remaining intermediate station buildings in Britain from the early railways, the other being the original Watford station in Hertfordshire. On Mondays to Saturdays, Hampton-in-Arden is served by two trains an hour to Birmingham New Street and two to London Euston; some peak period and evening trains start or terminate at Coventry or Northampton and there is a single late evening through train to Wolverhampton and Crewe. On Sundays, there is an hourly service between Birmingham New Euston via Northampton. Train times and station information for Hampton-in-Arden railway station from National Rail Rail Around Birmingham and the West Midlands: Hampton-in-Arden station Hampton in Arden Station at WarwickshireRailways.com
Bristol Temple Meads railway station
Bristol Temple Meads is the oldest and largest railway station in Bristol, England. It is an important transport hub for public transport in the city. In addition to the train services there are bus services to many parts of the city and surrounding districts, a ferry to the city centre. Bristol's other major station, Bristol Parkway, is on the northern outskirts of the conurbation. Temple Meads was opened on 31 August 1840 as the western terminus of the Great Western Railway from London Paddington, 116 miles 31 chains from Paddington; the railway was the first to be designed by the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Soon the station was used by the Bristol and Exeter Railway, the Bristol and Gloucester Railway, the Bristol Harbour Railway and the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway. To accommodate the increasing number of trains, the station was expanded in the 1870s by Francis Fox and again between 1930 and 1935 by Percy Emerson Culverhouse. Brunel's terminus is no longer part of the operational station.
The historical significance of the station has been noted, most of the site is Grade I listed. The platforms are numbered 1 to 15 but passenger trains are confined to just eight tracks. Most platforms are numbered separately at each end, with odd numbers at the east end and numbers at the west. Platform 2 is not signalled for passenger trains, there is no platform 14. Temple Meads is managed by Network Rail and the majority of services are operated by the present-day Great Western Railway. Other operators are South Western Railway. In the 12 months to March 2014, 9.5 million entries and exits were recorded at the station. In Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations by Simon Jenkins, the station was one of only ten to be awarded five stars; the name Temple Meads derives from the nearby Temple Church, gutted by bombing during World War II. The word "meads" is a derivation of "mæd", an Old English variation of "mædwe", referring to the water meadows alongside the River Avon that were part of Temple parish.
As late as 1820 the site was undeveloped pasture outside the boundaries of the old city, some distance from the commercial centre. It lay between the Floating Harbour and the city's cattle market, built in 1830; the original terminus was built in 1839–41 for the Great Western Railway, the first passenger railway in Bristol, was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the railway's engineer. It was built to accommodate Brunel's 7 ft broad gauge; the station was on a viaduct to raise it above the level of the Floating Harbour and River Avon, the latter being crossed via the grade I listed Avon Bridge. The station was covered by a 200-foot train shed, extended beyond the platforms by 155 feet into a storage area and engine shed, fronted by an office building in the Tudor style. Train services to Bath commenced on 31 August 1840 and were extended to Paddington on 30 June 1841 following the completion of Box Tunnel. A few weeks before the start of the services to Paddington the Bristol and Exeter Railway had opened, on 14 June 1841, its trains reversing in and out of the GWR station.
The third railway at Temple Meads was the Bristol and Gloucester Railway, which opened on 8 July 1844 and was taken over by the Midland Railway on 1 July 1845. This used the GWR platforms, diverging onto its own line on the far side of the bridge over the Floating Harbour. Both these new railways were engineered by Brunel and were broad gauge. Brunel designed the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway, but this was not opened until 25 August 1863, nearly four years after his death, it terminated at Temple Meads. In 1845 the B&ER built its own station at right angles to the GWR station and an "express platform" on the curve linking the two lines so that through trains no longer had to reverse; the wooden B&ER station was known locally as "The Cowshed". The Bristol and Portishead Pier and Railway opened a branch off the Bristol and Exeter line west of the city on 18 April 1867, the trains being operated by the B&ER and using its platforms at Temple Meads. In 1850 an engine shed had been opened on the south bank of the River Avon on the east side of the line to the B&ER station.
Between 1859 and 1875, 23 engines were built in the workshops attached to the shed, including several distinctive Bristol and Exeter Railway 4-2-4T locomotives. The GWR built a 326-by-138-foot goods shed on the north side of the station adjacent to the Floating Harbour, with a small dock for transhipment of goods to barges. Wagons had to be lowered 12 feet to the goods shed on hoists. On 11 March 1872, a direct connection to the harbour was made in the form of the Bristol Harbour Railway, a joint operation of the three railways, which ran between the passenger station and the goods yard, across the street outside on a bridge, descended into a tunnel under the churchyard of St. Mary Redcliffe on its way to a wharf downstream of Bristol Bridge; the B&ER had a goods depot at Pylle Hill from 1850, the MR had an independent yard at Avonside Wharf on the opposite side of the Floating Harbour from 1858. On 29 May 1854 the Midland Railway laid a third rail along their line to Gloucester to provide mixed gauge so that it could operate 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in standard gauge passenger trains while broad gauge goods trains could still run to collieries north of Bristol.
Sidings at South Wales Junction allowed traffic to be transhipped between wagons on the two different gauges. The GWR continued to operate its trains on the broad gauge, but on 3
Tutbury and Hatton railway station
Tutbury and Hatton Station is a railway station on the Crewe-Derby Line in England. The station is served by trains on the Crewe to Derby Line, a Community rail line known as the North Staffordshire line; the station is managed by East Midlands Trains train operating company. The full range of tickets for travel are purchased from the guard on the train at no extra cost; the original station, called Tutbury, was opened on 11 September 1848 by the North Staffordshire Railway. Nestlé have a historical presence in the village of Hatton due to the surrounding farmland, which supported a strong dairy farming industry. Nestlé's factory is labelled by the company as their Tutbury factory; until the late 1970s the factory had its own private siding, which gave access to milk trains from the station. The factory since has developed into a major coffee producer, the sole UK facility producing the Dolce Gusto range, Nescafé, made in Hayes; the original Tutbury station closed to passengers on 7 November 1966.
The present station was opened in 1989 and serves the villages of Tutbury in Staffordshire, Hatton in Derbyshire. The platforms are not opposite one another due to operational restrictions caused by the presence of a level crossing with the A511 road, supervised by a signal box; the station is unmanned. All services are provided by East Midlands Trains. A basic hourly service operates from here on Mondays to Saturdays, eastbound to Derby and westbound to Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe. On Sundays, there are no trains before 14:00 but an hourly service runs thereafter until late evening. Mitchell, Vic. Derby to Stoke-on-Trent. West Sussex: Middleton Press. Figs. 13-18. ISBN 9781908174932. OCLC 954271104. Train times and station information for Tutbury and Hatton railway station from National Rail www.burton-on-trent.org.uk/station-historyPage at Dudley Mall
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands of England. It borders with Cheshire to the northwest and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, West Midlands and Worcestershire to the south, Shropshire to the west; the largest city in Staffordshire is Stoke-on-Trent, administered separately from the rest of the county as an independent unitary authority. Lichfield has city status, although this is a smaller cathedral city. Major towns include Stafford, Burton upon Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Tamworth. Smaller towns include Stone, Uttoxeter, Burntwood/Chasetown, Eccleshall and the large villages of Wombourne, Tutbury, Barton-under-Needwood and Abbots Bromley. Cannock Chase AONB is within the county as well as parts of the National Forest and the Peak District national park. Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Smethwick are within the historic county boundaries of Staffordshire, but since 1974 have been part of the West Midlands county. Apart from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire is divided into the districts of Cannock Chase, East Staffordshire, Newcastle-under-Lyme, South Staffordshire, Staffordshire Moorlands, Tamworth.
Staffordshire was divided into five hundreds: Cuttlestone, Pirehill and Totmonslow. The historic boundaries of Staffordshire cover much of what is now the metropolitan county of West Midlands. An administrative county of Staffordshire was set up in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888 covering the county except the county boroughs of Wolverhampton and West Bromwich in the south, Hanley in the north; the Act saw the towns of Tamworth and Burton upon Trent united in Staffordshire. In 1553 Queen Mary made Lichfield a county corporate, meaning it was administered separately from the rest of Staffordshire, it remained so until 1888. Handsworth and Perry Barr became part of the county borough of Birmingham in the early 20th century, thus associated with Warwickshire. Burton, in the east of the county, became a county borough in 1901, was followed by Smethwick, another town in the Black Country in 1907. In 1910 the six towns of the Staffordshire Potteries, including Hanley, became the single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent.
A significant boundary change occurred in 1926 when the east of Sedgley was transferred to Worcestershire to allow the construction of the new Priory Estate on land purchased by Dudley County Borough council. A major reorganisation in the Black Country in 1966, under the recommendation of the Local Government Commission for England led to the creation of an area of contiguous county boroughs; the County Borough of Warley was formed by the merger of the county borough of Smethwick and municipal borough of Rowley Regis with the Worcestershire borough of Oldbury: the resulting county borough was associated with Worcestershire. Meanwhile, the county borough of Dudley a detached part of Worcestershire and became associated with Staffordshire instead; this reorganisation led to the administrative county of Staffordshire having a thin protrusion passing between the county boroughs and Shropshire, to the west, to form a short border with Worcestershire. Under the Local Government Act 1972, on 1 April 1974 the county boroughs of the Black Country and the Aldridge-Brownhills Urban District of Staffordshire became, along with Birmingham and Coventry and other districts, a new metropolitan county of West Midlands.
County boroughs were abolished, with Stoke becoming a non-metropolitan district in Staffordshire, Burton forming an unparished area in the district of East Staffordshire. On 1 April 1997, under a recommendation of the Banham Commission, Stoke-on-Trent became a unitary authority independent of Staffordshire once more. In July 2009 the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold found in Britain was discovered in a field near Lichfield; the artefacts, known as The Staffordshire Hoard have tentatively been dated to the 7th or 8th centuries, placing the origin of the items in the time of the Kingdom of Mercia. This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of the non-metropolitan county of Staffordshire at current basic prices published by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British pounds sterling; some nationally and internationally known companies have their base in Staffordshire. They include the Britannia Building Society, based in Leek. JCB is based in Rocester near Uttoxeter and Bet365, based in Stoke-on-Trent.
The theme park Alton Towers is in the Staffordshire Moorlands and several of the world's largest pottery manufacturers are based in Stoke-on-Trent. Staffordshire has a comprehensive system with eight independent schools. Most secondary schools are from 11–16 or 18, but two in Staffordshire Moorlands and South Staffordshire are from 13–18. Resources are shared. There are two universities in the county, Keele University in Newcastle-under-Lyme and Staffordshire University, which has campuses in Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford and Shrewsbury; the modern county of Staffordshire has three professional football clubs – Stoke City and Port Vale, both from Stoke-on-Trent, Burton Albion, who play in Burton upon Trent. Stoke City, one of the oldest professional football clubs in existence, were founded in 1863 and played at the Victoria Ground for 119 years from 1878 until their relocation to the Britannia Stadium in 1997, they were among the 12 founder members of the Football League in 1888. By the late 1930s, they were establi
Leeds railway station
Leeds railway station is the mainline railway station serving the city centre of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. It is the third-busiest railway station in the UK outside London, it is located on New Station Street to the south of City Square, at the bottom of Park Row, behind the landmark Queens Hotel. It is one of 20 stations managed by Network Rail. Leeds is an important hub on the British rail network; the station is the terminus of the Leeds branch of the East Coast Main Line and is an important stop on the Cross Country Route between Scotland, the Midlands and South West England connecting to major cities such as Birmingham, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Bristol, Exeter and Penzance. There are regular inter-city services to major destinations throughout Northern England including Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, it is the terminus for trains running on the scenic Settle to Carlisle Line. Future expansion will link the station to the proposed High Speed 2 network. Leeds is a major hub for local and regional destinations across Yorkshire such as to York, Hull and Sheffield.
The station lies at the heart of the Metro commuter network for West Yorkshire providing services to Bradford, Dewsbury and Halifax. With over 31 million passenger entries and exits between April 2017 and March 2018, Leeds is the busiest railway station in the North of England and the third-busiest railway station in the United Kingdom outside London, after Birmingham New Street and Glasgow Central; the railway station is situated on a hill falling from the south of the city to the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal basin. Much of it is supported on Victorian brick-vaulted arches situated just off Neville Street which contain a centre consisting of cafés, restaurants and exhibition spaces called Granary Wharf, known locally as the Dark Arches; the railway station has 17 platforms, making it the largest by number of platforms in England outside London. There are six through platforms. Most platforms are subdivided into i.e. 1a, 1b, 1c etc.. All together including the numbers, there are 47 platforms.
Retail facilities in the station include coffee shops, fast food outlets, a bar, newsagents and supermarkets. A British Transport Police station on New Station Street houses officers who police the West Yorkshire railway stations. Leeds railway station retained manned ticket barriers through the 1990s until 2008 when they were replaced by automatic barriers by Northern to reduce congestion around the barriers at peak times. PlatformsPlatform usage varies depending on operational circumstances but is generally: 1–5 – Bay platforms used by MetroTrain services operated by Northern, towards Harrogate, Bradford Forster Square and Skipton. 6, 8 – 6 is a Bay Platform used for terminating London North Eastern Railway services from London, 8 is a through platform used for London North Eastern Railway services which both terminate and continue onward to Bradford and Skipton, as well as the early morning LNER departure to Aberdeen. 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 16 – through platforms. CrossCountry services heading north to York and beyond depart from Platforms 8, 9 or 11.
Platforms 15 and 16 are used by north/east and south/westbound TransPennine Express services to Hull, York and Middlesbrough and Huddersfield, Manchester Airport and Liverpool Lime Street. 7, 14 – Bay platforms used for local Northern services running north/east from Leeds. 10, 13, 17 – Bay platforms used for local and regional services running south/west to Manchester Victoria and Huddersfield, alongside southbound services towards Wakefield, Meadowhall and Nottingham. Leeds Interchange, located at the New Station Street exit, provides onward transport connections from the station. There are five bus stands serving Arriva and Yorkshire Tiger routes 4, 5, 16, 16A, 19, 19A, 40, 85, 87, 90, 757, 870 and DalesBus services. A 24-hour taxi rank operates at the interchange. Further bus stops are located on Neville Street below the railway station, as well as around City Square outside the railway station. Infirmary Street and Boar Lane Bus Points are a short walk for more bus connections. Leeds Interchange hosts one of the UK's first cycle hubs that allows a number of cycling services including repair and rental.
The facility opened in summer 2010 and is designed to encourage visitors and commuters into Leeds to continue their journey from the railway station by bike. Its design is based on the Dutch cyclepoint concept; the railways arrived in Leeds in 1834. It had a terminus at Marsh Lane east of the city centre. In 1840, the North Midland Railway constructed its line from Derby via Rotherham to a terminus at Hunslet Lane to the south, it was extended to a more centrally located terminus at Wellington Street in 1846, known as Wellington Station. Another railway station, Leeds Central, was opened in 1854 by the Manchester and Leeds Railway and the London and North Western Railway, or LNWR; the railway station became owned jointly by the LNWR and the North Eastern Railway, but other companies had powers to run trains there, including the Great Northern Railway and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. In 1869 New Station opened as a joint enterprise by the North Eastern Railway, it connected the former Leeds and Selby Railway Line to the
Coalville Town railway station
Coalville Town was a railway station at Coalville in Leicestershire on the Leicester to Burton upon Trent Line. Passenger business was carried out at the "Railway Hotel" when the line opened in 1833 until the first Coalville station was opened by the Midland Railway in 1848, replaced in 1894 and closed in 1964, although the line remains in use for freight; the Leicester and Swannington Railway was built to carry coal and there was little provision for any passenger traffic. When the railway opened at Long Lane, now Coalville, in 1833 passenger business had to be carried out at the "Railway Hotel" adjacent to the level crossing; the first proper Coalville station was opened in 1848 after the line had been taken over by the Midland Railway. This in turn was rebuilt in 1894, being renamed Coalville Town in 1924 to distinguish it from Coalville East on the rival Charnwood Forest Railway. British Railways closed Coalville Town on 7 September 1964 when passenger services were ended on the line; the line remains open for freight only.
Coalville Town was the most important station between Leicester and Burton-on-Trent and was built to fuller dimensions to reflect this. The station was to the north of the A50 road beside the level crossing, controlled by a signal box, removed in 1986 and re-erected at the former Snibston Colliery. All the other station buildings have been demolished; the former Railway pub next to the level crossing is now a children's nursery. British Railways closed Mantle Lane motive power depot at Coalville in 1990, its "Category A" status was a clerical error, was in fact a "Category C". The British Railways depot on the site was unusual in that it had no fuelling points, fitters or any other shed facilities. Locomotives would be taken in ferries to nearby Burton-on-Trent or Leicester for refuelling and sandbox filling; this shows why it was a surprise to find it as an A-listed depot. Little remains at the site which hints at its busy railway past. Two tracks remain. In the 1990s BR planned to restore passenger services between Leicester and Burton as the second phase of its Ivanhoe Line project.
However, after the privatisation of British Rail in 1995 this phase of the project was discontinued. In 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies published a £49 million proposal to restore passenger services to the line that would include reopening a station at Coalville
Plymouth railway station
Plymouth railway station serves the city of Plymouth, England. It is on the northern edge of the city centre, close to the North Cross roundabout, it Is the second busiest station in the county of Devon, is the largest of the six surviving stations in the city, being the only one served by InterCity trains. It is on the route from London Paddington to Penzance, 245 miles 75 chains from Paddington, is the junction for the Tamar Valley Line to Gunnislake; the station is managed by Great Western Railway. Services are operated by CrossCountry; the Panel Signal Box at the station controls all trains between Totnes in Devon, Liskeard in Cornwall. Named Plymouth North Road, it was opened in 1877 as a joint station for the Great Western Railway and the London and South Western Railway, it was expanded in 1908 but a major rebuilding scheme that started in 1938 was delayed by the Second World War and was not completed until 1962. John Betjeman commented unfavourably on its new form in his introduction to The Book of the Great Western: Plymouth dullest of stations and no less dull now it has been rebuilt in copybook contemporary.
The first railway station in Plymouth was opened by the South Devon Railway on 2 April 1849 at Millbay, on the site now occupied by the Plymouth Pavilions. This company amalgamated with the GWR in 1876, just as the LSWR was completing its rival route from London to Plymouth. North Road station was opened on 28 March 1877 to provide a joint facility for trains of both companies, it was just west of the earlier Mutley railway station, while at its west end a new junction allowed direct access to the Cornwall Railway and the LSWR's Devonport Kings Road railway station. The station was built of wood and the platforms were covered by train sheds, it had just two through platforms but additional platforms were added in a scheme executed in 1908. Further major rebuilding work started in 1938. Work was soon stopped due to the Second World War but on North Road was increased when Millbay station had to be closed to passengers in 1941 following an air raid; the old LSWR Friary station was closed from 15 September 1958, following which North Road was renamed as just'Plymouth'.
Further closures during the next few years of former LSWR stations and GWR branch lines has left just six stations in the city – although local passengers come from stations a little further afield such as Saltash, St Germans and Ivybridge. The rebuilding work was resumed in 1956 to the designs of architect Howard Cavanagh and Ian Campbell and the new station with its large office block,'Intercity House', was formally opened by Dr Richard Beeching, the British Railways Chairman, on 26 March 1962; the office block was intended to be the northern point of Armada Way, counterbalancing the tower of the Civic Centre at the southern end, in the Abercrombie/Paton-Watson'Plan for Plymouth'. The station now had seven through platforms, although two of these were converted to terminal bay platforms in 1974. One of these at the west end is used for the Tamar Valley Line service but the longer east end bays were used for parcels and for Royal Mail trains until the withdrawal of this traffic from the area in 2003.
Outside the station a car park was provided, rebuilt in its current multistorey form in the 1970s. In recent times there have been updates to the station. South West Trains operated two trains per day to and from London Waterloo, one weekend service would continue to Penzance, but South West Trains services were withdrawn beyond Exeter St Davids in December 2009. On 3 April 2016, Class 150 diesel multiple unit 150219 collided with a stationary InterCity 125 High Speed Train at platform 6. Class 43 power car 43160 and the DMU were damaged. Forty-six people were injured; the station was controlled from two signal boxes.'North Road East' was on the north side of the line to the east of the station, while'North Road West' was on the south side of the line at the west end of the station where it could control the junction of the original lines to Millbay with the new Cornwall Loop Line to Devonport. The adjacent signal boxes were at Mutley to the east, Cornwall Junction on the Millbay line, Devonport Junction at the far end of the Cornwall Loop.
Both of the North Road boxes were closed in November 1908 and replaced by new ones with the same names. The West box was now on the north side of the line and had 59 levers, while the East box needed just 48, they were each 38 feet long. Mutley box closed at the same time, the next box now being at Mannamead on the other side of Mutley Tunnel, which had opened about three years earlier; the rebuilding work of 1938 meant more signalling alterations. On 22 January 1938 the timber West box was lifted up and moved to a new position clear of the proposed works, being brought back into use on 27 January 1938. At the other end of the station the East box was closed and a new 79 feet structure built, again on the north side of the line, brought into use on 25 June 1939. Both signal boxes were closed on 26 November 1960 when a new'Plymouth Panel Signal Box' was opened on the west end of the new Platform 1. Multiple-aspect signals have controlled movements of trains throughout the Plymouth area since the opening of this new signal box in 1960.
The adjacent boxes were at Laira Junction in the east and Keyham in the west. The area of control was extended westwards on 2 July] 1973 to
0.710 million
National Rail
.svg)
