Place Clapham Station code CPY DfT category F2 Address Clapham LA2 8ES, UK Number of platforms 2 | Grid reference SD732678 Managed by Northern 2011/12 7,390 Phone +44 808 156 1606 | |
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Similar Bentham railway station, Giggleswick railway station, Kildale railway station, Great Ayton railway st, Commondale railway station | ||
Clapham railway station serves the village of Clapham in North Yorkshire, England. The station is 48 miles (77 km) north-west of Leeds on the Leeds to Morecambe Line towards Lancaster and Morecambe. It is managed by Northern who provide all passenger train services.
Contents
The station (which is unstaffed) is situated just over a mile outside of Clapham. Immediately to the east, the line crosses the River Wenning on a tall, five-arch viaduct.
The station was formerly known in the national timetable as Clapham (Yorkshire), to distinguish it from Clapham (London), until the latter was renamed Clapham High Street.
History
The station was opened by the "little" North Western Railway (NWR) on 30 July 1849 on their line from Skipton to Ingleton and became a junction the following year when the link along the Wenning Valley from Bentham was completed on 1 June 1850 to finish the route from Lancaster to Skipton.
The Ingleton route was subsequently extended northwards, as the Ingleton Branch Line, through Kirkby Lonsdale and Sedbergh to join the West Coast Main Line at Low Gill (near Tebay) by the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway (L&C) in 1861, but disagreements between the L&C's successor, the London and North Western Railway, and the Midland Railway (who had leased the NWR in 1859) over running rights and the subsequent construction of the Settle-Carlisle Line, meant that it never became the major Anglo-Scottish route that the NWR had originally intended.
The Ingleton Branch was closed to passenger traffic on 1 February 1954 and completely in July 1966, although regular goods traffic had ended some months earlier. Lifting of the track followed in April 1967. A sharp curve (with a permanent 35 mph speed restriction) marks the site of the former junction, immediately west of the station.
The station ceased to handle goods traffic in 1968, when the remaining sidings were taken out of use & dismantled and the station signal box closed.
Facilities
Waiting shelters are present on each platform, along with train information notice boards. No ticket machine is available, so tickets can only be purchased on the train or in advance. The footbridge linking the platforms doesn't have ramps, so the westbound platform isn't accessible for disabled passengers (step-free access is possible on the eastbound side).
Services
Monday to Saturdays, five trains a day head from Clapham eastbound to Leeds and westbound to Lancaster and Morecambe. On Sundays there are now four trains each way all year, an improvement on the previous level of two each way all year plus a further two return workings in the summer months only.