Halesworth railway station is on the East Suffolk Line in the east of England, serving the town of

Halesworth Halesworth is a market town, civil parish and electoral ward in north-eastern Suffolk, England. The population stood at 4,726 in the 2011 Census. It lies south-west of Lowestoft, on a tributary of the River Blyth, upstream from Southwold. T ...

, Suffolk. It is also the nearest station to the seaside town of

Southwold Southwold is a seaside town and civil parish on the English North Sea coast in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk. It lies at the mouth of the River Blyth within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town is ...

. It is down the line from and measured from

London Liverpool Street Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, in the ward of Bishopsgate Without. It is the t ...

; it is situated between and . Its three-letter station code is HAS. It is managed by Greater Anglia, which also operates all trains that call.

History

The first station at Halesworth was opened in 1854 but closed four years later and a new station opened in 1859 on an adjacent site. The station was formerly situated on a

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an overpass or tunnel. The term a ...

. However, it was unusual in that the

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

s swung across the road rather than having typical crossing gates. The crossing is now permanently closed. The cabin from the mechanical signal box at Halesworth has been preserved at the

Mangapps Railway Museum The Mangapps Railway Museum (previously Mangapps Farm Railway Museum) is a heritage railway centre located near Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cam ...

. On the afternoon of 18 December 1941 a German Dornier bombed the station-house, killing the stationmaster, his wife and their young maid. The station-house was rebuilt but with a reduced size. The Halesworth and District Museum and the offices of Halesworth Area Community Transport now occupy the station building. The station has been "adopted" by volunteers from the East Suffolk Lines Community Rail Partnership who maintain the planting and remove litter. (The station is unstaffed by Greater Anglia.)

Services

the typical Monday-Saturday off-peak service at Halesworth is as follows: On Sundays frequency reduces to one train every two hours in each direction. Trains direct to and from

were withdrawn in 2010. One weekday early-morning train is extended through to and there is a return from there in the evening.

Southwold Railway

From 1879 to 1929 Halesworth was also the western terminus of the 3 ft (914 mm) gauge Southwold Railway which ran to . The terminus was located alongside the main railway station, allowing

cross-platform interchange A cross-platform interchange is a type of interchange between different lines at a metro (or other railway) station. The term originates with the London Underground; such layouts exist in other networks but are not commonly so named. In the U ...

of passengers and having transfer sheds for the exchange of goods between the narrow gauge wagons of the Southwold Railway and the standard gauge wagons used on the main line. In 1933 a siding was laid to serve the dairy (the big building in the picture) and milk tanks ran from Halesworth to Ilford (London) on a daily basis. The dairy closed on 30 April 1968 although rail traffic may have ceased before that date.

References

External links

Railway stations in Suffolk DfT Category F1 stations Former Great Eastern Railway stations Greater Anglia franchise railway stations Former Southwold Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1854 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1858 Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1859 Halesworth {{EastEngland-railstation-stub