Place Hartford, Cheshire Station code GBK DfT category F1 Number of platforms 2 Original company West Cheshire Railway | Grid reference SJ644728 Managed by Northern 2011/12 116,812 | |
 | ||
Address Northwich CW8 4AS, United Kingdom Similar Northwich railway station, Cuddington railway station, Knutsford railway station, Lostock Gralam railway st, Plumley railway station | ||
Greenbank railway station serves the village of Hartford, Cheshire as well as the Greenbank and Castle areas of Northwich, Cheshire, England. The station is situated on the A559 road from Northwich to Chester.
Contents
History
The station was built by the West Cheshire Railway, a constituent of the Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) and opened to passengers on 22 June 1870. The CLC continued to operate both goods and passenger services from the station, unaffected by the railway grouping of 1923, until the railway nationalisation of 1948. The station name was Hartford and Greenbank until 7 May 1973 when British Railways renamed the station Greenbank, to avoid confusion with the nearby Hartford station on the West Coast Main Line. Greenbank was served by CLC trains from Manchester Central via Northwich to Chester Northgate. From the closure of Manchester Central on 5 May 1969 & Chester Northgate on 6 October that year, trains from Greenbank were diverted to Manchester Oxford Road and the LNWR & GWR Joint Chester station, previously Chester General.
CLC trains were headed by locomotives in LNER livery. A link to LMS service was made by a shuttle service to Acton Bridge using LMS stock (this normally continued via Northwich, Middlewich & Sandbach to Crewe). This service was nicknamed "The Dodger", but was withdrawn in 1942.
Facilities
The station has a free car park. There is a public phone box opposite the station and a row of shops nearby. The Greenbank public house is next to the station and Mid Cheshire College is about 440 yards (400 m) away, with a Sainsburys store opposite the college. The main station buildings are on the north-west side of the line and are presently used as a Christian church. The signal box is situated to the north of the station - this supervises the line from Cuddington through to Plumley and the various branches & siding connections from it (including the line to Sandbach and the now-disused link into the defunct Brunner-Mond chemical works at Winnington).
The station is also an interchange for Hartford's main station, which is about one mile (1.6 km) to the west. Trains are available from there to Liverpool Lime Street, Runcorn, Winsford, Crewe and Birmingham New Street.
Services
The service to and from Manchester Piccadilly and Chester on weekdays and Saturdays is basically hourly (with a couple of weekday peak period extras to/from Stockport).
On Sundays the trains run every two hours each way and the eastbound service runs through to Southport via Bolton & Wigan Wallgate. There is no ticket office, ticket machine or PA system. There is an information screen on both platforms
The majority of trains used on the line are Class 142 or Class 150, together with the occasional Class 156.