Hereford railway station

History

There were originally two stations in Hereford - Barton, and Barrs Court.

Barton (52.0563°N 2.7245°W / 52.0563; -2.7245 (Hereford Barton railway station)) lay to the west of the city and had been built by the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway (NA&HR). However, Barton was small and in a cramped location, and was not big enough nor could it be enlarged for the greater traffic that would entail from the arrival of the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway from the north.

The resolution was an agreement to create a new joint railway station to the north east of the city, called Hereford Barrs Court. This would be a joint standard gauge/broad gauge station, sponsored jointly by the standard-gauge Shrewsbury & Hereford Railway (S&HR) and the GWR-sponsored Hereford, Ross and Gloucester Railway (HR&GR). When the Midland Railway–sponsored Hereford, Hay and Brecon Railway entered the town, they were given access rights, as was the later GWR-sponsored extension of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, which joined the S&HR's route to the north of the city at Shelwick Junction.

In civil engineering preparation for this, and as the only company planning to enter the town from the north, in 1849 the S&HR built a brick works north of Dinmore Hill, which was fed by clay from the earthworks of digging a tunnel south underneath it. In 1852,  2 ¹⁄₂ years later and having used  3 ¹⁄₄ million bricks the tunnel was completed, freight traffic started in July 1852 to provide cash flow. However, construction continued, with the massive earthworks for a cutting to enter Barrs Court started in August 1852.

The plan was to jointly open both stations between all four railways on 6 December 1853, with what was planned to be a Railway Fete. However, the first S&HR passenger service arrived at Barrs Ct. on Saturday 28 October, which carried the chairman Mr Ormsby-Gore and engineer Thomas Brassey. As the negotiations and financing of the joint station had taken so long, they arrived at an incomplete facility. Whilst completion of the station would follow shortly after, significant rebuilding would occur later in the nineteenth century, when the current Victorian Gothic buildings, designed by R.E. Johnson, would be constructed. The station opened on 6 December 1853, and the name was simplified to Hereford in 1893 on the closure of Barton station to passengers.

In 1866, a line connecting the NA&HR's route to the south of the city, branching off from the line to Barton at Redhill and joining with the HR&GR's route into Barrs Court station from the south, rendered Barton station obsolete, as through north-south services could now utilise the larger and better equipped Barrs Court station. However, Barton clung onto passenger services until January 1893, the last services to use it being Midland Railway trains to Hay-on-Wye and Brecon. It would remain open as a goods only station until 1979, and the route through it from north to south, used as a goods only line to avoid Barrs Court, also remained until approximately this time.

The former branches to Brecon via Hay-on-Wye and Gloucester both closed to passenger traffic in the early 1960s - Brecon services were withdrawn from 31 December 1962, whilst the Gloucester via Ross-on-Wye line fell victim to the Beeching Axe on 2 November 1964.

Services

Hereford is served by trains operated by Arriva Trains Wales, London Midland, and Great Western Railway. It is the terminus of the routes from Birmingham New Street and London Paddington via Worcester Foregate Street and is served by all trains on the Manchester Piccadilly to Cardiff and Carmarthen route. Trains run hourly to Birmingham, Manchester, Shrewsbury and Cardiff Central (Mon-Sat) two-hourly to Wrexham General, Chester and Holyhead and less frequently to Oxford, Reading and London.

Bus Connections