Hebden Bridge railway station serves the town of

Hebden Bridge Hebden Bridge is a market town in the Upper Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, England. It is west of Halifax and 14 miles (21 km) north-east of Rochdale, at the confluence of the River Calder and the Hebden Water. The town is the largest ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

, England. The station is on the

Calder Valley Line The Calder Valley line (also previously known as the Caldervale line) is a railway route in Northern England between the cities of Leeds and Manchester as well as the seaside resort of Blackpool. It is the slower of the two main rail routes ...

, operated by

Northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...

since April 2016, from

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

and

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

towards

Manchester Victoria Manchester Victoria station in Manchester, England is a combined mainline railway station and Metrolink tram stop. Situated to the north of the city centre on Hunts Bank, close to Manchester Cathedral, it adjoins Manchester Arena which was ...

and Preston. The station is west of Halifax and west of Leeds.

History

2019 at Hebden Bridge station - platform 1 signs

The

Manchester and Leeds Railway The Manchester and Leeds Railway was a British railway company that built a line from Manchester to Normanton where it made a junction with the North Midland Railway, over which it relied on running powers to access Leeds. The line followed the ...

, authorised in 1836 for a line from

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

to , was opened in stages; the second section, between Normanton and Hebden Bridge, opened on 5 October 1840. Trains arrived at Hebden Bridge from Normanton and passengers would then continue to by road. The section between Hebden Bridge and

Summit Tunnel Summit Tunnel in England is one of the world's oldest railway tunnels. It was constructed between 1838 and 1841 by the Manchester and Leeds Railway Company to provide a direct line between Leeds and Manchester. When built, Summit Tunnel was the ...

opened on 31 December 1840, allowing trains to reach ; after Summit Tunnel opened on 1 March 1841, trains continued to Littleborough and Manchester. An 1841 timetable shows five Manchester to Leeds trains per day calling at Hebden Bridge (two on Sundays), all but one of which called at all stations; a similar service ran in the opposite direction. Trains began operating to Halifax and

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

in 1852, and could run through to Leeds via this route from 1854. The current buildings date from 1893, construction having started in 1891. By this point there was a goods yard alongside the station. This closed in 1966 and the site is now the station car park. In 1997 the station was renovated, and signage in the original

Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was a major British railway company before the 1923 Grouping. It was incorporated in 1847 from an amalgamation of several existing railways. It was the third-largest railway system based in northern ...

style was installed. On 21 June 1912 a train derailed nearby, killing four people and injuring many others. The official inquiry found that the train was running too fast on the Charlestown Curve, a tight curve near the station.

Facilities

The station has a staffed ticket office, waiting rooms, toilets and a cafe. New lifts have been installed to make both platforms fully accessible (commissioned in March 2019), and Information screens were installed in 2012 as part of a programme to provide screens at 18 stations on the Calder Valley Line and elsewhere in West Yorkshire. Previously, passengers had to rely on automated public-address system announcements.

Services

Hebden Bridge - Arriva 150139+150115 Leeds service

The station is the only station on the

where every service calls. On Monday to Saturday during daytime there are four trains per hour to Leeds - one via and and the other three via

Bradford Interchange Bradford Interchange is a transport interchange in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, which consists of a railway station and combined bus and coach station adjacent. The Interchange, which was designed in 1962, was hailed as a showpiece of Eur ...

(one serving all stations to Bradford and two calling at Halifax only). Of the latter, one runs through to . In the late evening, the service drops to half-hourly, all via Bradford. Westbound there are three trains per hour to Manchester Victoria (hourly evenings and Sundays), and an hourly service to via and (direct weekday services there were temporarily stopped in November 2017 but have resumed from the May 2019 timetable change). One of the Manchester trains is a limited-stop service, calling at Todmorden and Rochdale only, whilst the service via Dewsbury continues to . The other Manchester service now extends through to and . From November 2013 to late March 2014 the line to Burnley was closed for major repair work on Holme Tunnel. A replacement bus service ran, and trains from York terminated/started at Hebden Bridge.

Future improvements

The station will see a variety of improvements to facilities and train services from March 2017 onwards, as part of an investment package for the Calder Valley line as a whole. Track and signalling upgrades have helped reduce journey times in both directions and allow more trains to run to/from Bradford. This has resulted in the closure of the listed

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

here in October 2018, with control passing over to the

Rail Operating Centre A rail operating centre (ROC) is a building that houses all signallers, signalling equipment, ancillaries and operators for a specific region or route on the United Kingdom's main rail network. The ROC supplants the work of several other signal ...

at . New rolling stock and timetable improvements will follow, with regular through trains to

Liverpool Lime Street Liverpool Lime Street is a terminus railway station and the main station serving the city centre of Liverpool. Opened in August 1836, it is the oldest still-operating grand terminus mainline station in the world. A branch of the West Coast ...

, and by late 2019 (the latter service began at the May 2019 timetable change). The remaining improvements have since been indefinitely postponed because of capacity problems in central Manchester, though new rolling stock (in the form of Class 195 Civity DMUs) has started to appear on some routes."What do we want the Calder Valley Line service to do?"
Waring, J.S ''HADRAG'' news article; Retrieved 5 December 2019

References

External links