Stalybridge railway station

History

Stalybridge station was built by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway and opened on 23 December 1845. There was a Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway station adjacent, which acted as the terminus of that company's line from Manchester Victoria but this closed in 1917. The main function of the station was as a junction for the Stockport-Stalybridge Line, which allowed passengers from London and the South to transfer to the Huddersfield Line. This role has been lost since it is now possible for passengers to change at Manchester Piccadilly station. The Micklehurst Loop also diverged from the original 1849 Huddersfield & Manchester main line here - it was closed in October 1966, but the disused tunnel it used to pass below the town's northern suburbs can be seen alongside the original one that is still used today by trains heading to and from Yorkshire.

Facilities

The station has an entrance block with a ticket office. Ramps and a passenger subway lead up to the platforms. The station is one of very few to retain its original buffet, the 1998 refurbishment of which won awards from CAMRA and English Heritage. At the 2008 Tameside food and drink festival it was voted best bar.

Following further refurbishment in 2012 Lord Pendry of Stalybridge, who often uses the buffet bar and contributed over half of the £6,000 costs, unveiled a plaque to mark the works.

Michael Portillo visited the buffet bar in "Manchester Piccadilly to Silkstone Common", a 2017 episode of Great British Railway Journeys.

In a £1.5m overhaul of the station, which began in 2007, the platforms were raised and the toilets, information services and shelters on the westbound platform were improved. In December 2008 the new entrance was completed.

Recent developments

Further work to expand the station was completed in 2012 - this saw major alterations to the track layout (including the opening of two new platforms) and signalling, with control of the latter passing to the Manchester East signalling centre at Stockport. The project cost £20 million as the station closed on Sundays throughout the summer of 2012 followed by a nine-day line blockade at the end of October but gives improved operational flexibility and reliability, allowed the line speed through the station and junction to be increased to 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) and left it ready for the proposed electrification of the Leeds - Manchester trans-Pennine route in 2022. The two new platforms were opened on 5 November 2012; the former platform 1 was renumbered 4, and a new bay on the northern side is Platform 5.

An Access for All scheme, funded by the Department for Transport, gave easier access to all of the platforms. Lifts were built to give step-free access to the entire station, though the station had no steps previously as there were ramps to all platforms.

TransPennine Express

There is generally a half-hourly service daily westbound to Manchester Piccadilly, with one per hour onwards to Liverpool Lime Street and eastbound twice-hourly towards Leeds and beyond (to either Scarborough, Hull or Newcastle) with extra trains to and from Manchester Piccadilly during peak hours.

Northern

Monday to Saturday daytimes there are two trains per hour from Stalybridge to either Manchester Victoria or Wigan Wallgate, some of which continue westbound to Southport and an hourly local service to Huddersfield eastbound. Evenings and Sundays there is an hourly service in each direction.

The "parliamentary service" from Stockport

One train a week still travels along the whole Stockport-Stalybridge Line, in one direction only, with no return service. An attempt was made to close the line to passenger services in the early 1990s (the service having been drastically cut in May 1989 after the re-routing of trans-Pennine expresses from Manchester Victoria to Manchester Piccadilly), but closure was refused by the Department of Transport which ordered that a regular service continue. The train is the only one to call at Denton and Reddish South. The train runs on a Friday as the 09:22 Stockport to Stalybridge.