Castleton railway station

Services

On Monday to Saturday daytimes, there is a half-hourly service in each direction. Two per hour southbound to Manchester Victoria, with hourly extensions to Wigan Wallgate and two per hour northbound to Todmorden, with one of these continuing on to Leeds via Hebden Bridge and Brighouse and the other to Blackburn via Burnley. There are no longer any through services to Manchester via Oldham, this is due to closure of the Oldham Loop Line which has been converted for light rail use by Manchester Metrolink.

Evenings see the same half-hourly pattern but with trains to Leeds via Bradford Interchange rather than via Dewsbury; on Sundays there is an hourly service to Manchester Victoria and to Blackburn.

History

The original station opened in 1839 at Blue Pits on the other side of the Rochdale-Manchester Road bridge. It was originally called Blue Pits for Heywood. The current station opened on 1 November 1875. The Liverpool and Bury Railway from Bolton (extended through from Bolton and beyond in 1848 to join the earlier M&L Heywood branch previously opened in 1841) used to join the main line at a triangular junction a short distance south of the station. This was at one time a busy passenger & freight route often used by trains avoiding the busy Manchester area, but was closed to passengers on 5 October 1970.

Facilities

The station is not staffed, but there is a ticket machine available. Shelters and passenger information screens are located on each platform and both have step-free access from the street (there are also staircases from Manchester Road bridge to both platforms).

East Lancashire Railway Future

The eastern portion of this line was retained for freight traffic after passenger trains ceased (serving the coal depot at Rawtenstall until 1980 and subsequently to the Powell Duffryn wagon works) and it now forms the link with the East Lancashire Railway heritage route at Heywood. The heritage line plans to extend its services along and towards a possible new bay platform adjacent to the main station in the future, subject to permission being granted by Network Rail.

The bay platform (named Castleton Village) will be adjacent to the main station at Castleton, from where passengers could alight and change station sides directly to Northern Rail services on the national network. Rochdale Council commissioned a study by transport consultants Moucel in conjunction with the ELR regarding the proposals in 2010 - their report which covers the tourism and regeneration aspects of any such future development can be downloaded from the ELR website.