Redruth station serves the town of

Redruth Redruth ( , kw, Resrudh) is a town and civil parishes in Cornwall, civil parish in Cornwall, England. The population of Redruth was 14,018 at the 2011 census. In the same year the population of the Camborne-Redruth urban area, which also inc ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, United Kingdom, and is situated on the

Cornish Main Line The Cornish Main Line ( kw, Penn-hyns-horn Kernow) is a railway line in Cornwall and Devon in the United Kingdom. It runs from Penzance to Plymouth, crossing from Cornwall into Devon over the famous Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash. It directly ...

between

Truro Truro (; kw, Truru) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cornwall, England. It is Cornwall's county town, sole city and centre for administration, leisure and retail trading. Its ...

and

Camborne Camborne ( kw, Kammbronn) is a town in Cornwall, England. The population at the 2011 Census was 20,845. The northern edge of the parish includes a section of the South West Coast Path, Hell's Mouth and Deadman's Cove. Camborne was formerl ...

. The station is from via .

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

manage the station and operate most of the trains, with some others provided by

CrossCountry CrossCountry (legal name XC Trains Limited) is a train operating company in the United Kingdom owned by Arriva UK Trains, operating the Cross Country franchise. The CrossCountry franchise was restructured by the Department for Transport (DfT) ...

History

First station

''Located at '' The

Hayle Railway The Hayle Railway was an early railway in West Cornwall, constructed to convey copper and tin ore from the Redruth and Camborne areas to sea ports at Hayle and Portreath. It was opened in 1837, and carried passengers on its main line from 1843. ...

opened a station on the west side of Redruth on 31 May 1838. The railway had been built to move goods to and from local mines and the harbours at

Hayle Hayle ( kw, Heyl, "estuary") is a port town and civil parish in west Cornwall, England. It is situated at the mouth of the Hayle River (which discharges into St Ives Bay) and is approximately seven miles (11 km) northeast of Penzance. ...

and

Portreath Portreath ( kw, Porthtreth or ) is a civil parish, village and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The village is about three miles (5 km) northwest of Redruth. The village extends along both sides of a str ...

. A passenger service started on 26 May 1843; nearly 200 people travelled on the first train from Redruth to Hayle.

Second station

The

West Cornwall Railway The West Cornwall Railway was a railway company in Cornwall, Great Britain, formed in 1846 to construct a railway between Penzance and Truro. It purchased the existing Hayle Railway, and improved its main line, and built new sections between Pen ...

(WCR) was authorised by an

Act of Parliament Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation, are texts of law passed by the Legislature, legislative body of a jurisdiction (often a parliament or council). In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of ...

passed on 3 August 1846 to take over the Hayle Railway and extend its line westwards to and eastward to . It took possession of the line on 3 November 1846 and set about rebuilding it. A viaduct was built above the streets of Redruth and a new station was opened at the east end of this on 11 March 1852. On 25 August 1852 the line was continued through a short tunnel at the east end of Redruth station to a temporary station at Truro Highertown. It was completed to a station at Newham Wharf in Truro in 1855. The present day station at Truro was reached in 1859 but through trains over the

Cornwall Railway The Cornwall Railway was a broad gauge railway from Plymouth in Devon to Falmouth in Cornwall, England, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was constantly beset with shortage of capital for the construction, and was eventu ...

could not start until 1867 due to the two railways being built to different gauges. The main station buildings were replaced by the

(GWR) in the 1930s but an old wooden shelter survives on the westbound platform and the footbridge is marked as being erected in 1888. The original Hayle Railway station became a goods depot when the new WCR station opened, access to it being controlled by 'Redruth Junction'

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'' ...

which also controlled access to the goods branch line to

Tresavean Tresavean is a hamlet in the parish of Lanner, Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. ...

mine. Goods sidings were also provided on both sides of the line at the new station, with a large

goods shed A goods shed is a railway building designed for storing goods before or after carriage in a train. A typical goods shed will have a track running through it to allow goods wagons to be unloaded under cover, although sometimes they were built ...

on the north side of the line. A new goods depot for Redruth was opened at Drump Lane, east of the tunnel, in 1912. The original viaduct was built in timber to the designs of

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "one ...

, but it was replaced in 1888 by a masonry structure by P.J. Margery for the GWR. The line had until now been just a single track with a passing loop in the station, but the new viaduct was wide enough for two tracks once the gauge rail was no longer required following the abandonment of

broad gauge A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union (CIS ...

services in 1892. The second line was brought into use over the viaduct in February 1894 and extended eastwards beyond the station in 1911.

Stationmasters

*J.G. Bone ca. 1863 - 1865 (afterwards station master at ) *John Lovell ca. 1871 - 1896 *Alfred Uren 1896 - 1912 (formerly station master at ) *C.H.W. Isaac 1912 - 1926 (formerly station master at ) *Joseph Mortlock Williams 1926 - 1935 *F.R. Sherman 1935 - 1950 (formerly station master at , also station master at ) *William Thomas John Protheroe 1950 - 1953 *A.C. Smith 1953 - 1954 (afterwards station master at Falmouth) *Marcel H. Kingdon 1954 - 1965

Description

2018 at Redruth station - from the north

Platform 1, the westbound platform, is used by trains towards and . Platform 2 is used by trains towards Truro, ,

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

, and

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

. The station is on the side of a hill with the road climbing steeply from beneath the viaduct at the west end of the station, to climb over the tunnel at the east end. Where the road and railway are on the same level is the entrance to the station. The main offices are on the eastbound platform and a footbridge to the westbound platform spans the tracks near the entrance. There is step-free access to this platform from an approach road on that side of the line. Buses call at the main entrance to the eastbound platform. A car park is also on this side of the station between the main building and the viaduct on the site formerly occupied by the goods shed.

Services

Redruth is served by all

trains on the

between Penzance and Plymouth with two trains per hour in each direction. Some trains run through to or from London Paddington, including the ''

Night Riviera The ''Night Riviera'' is a sleeper train operated by Great Western Railway (GWR). It is one of only two sleeper services on the railway in the United Kingdom (the other being the ''Caledonian Sleeper'' services between London and Scotland). T ...

'' overnight sleeping car service and the mid-morning '' Cornish Riviera''. There are a limited number of

trains providing a service to ,

Manchester Piccadilly Manchester Piccadilly is the principal railway station in Manchester, England. Opened as Store Street in 1842, it was renamed Manchester London Road in 1847 and became Manchester Piccadilly in 1960. Located to the south-east of Manchester city ...

(Sundays only) or in the morning and returning in the evening (three each way in the summer 2019 timetable).

References

External links

*{{stn art lrnk, RED Railway stations in Cornwall Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1852 Railway stations served by Great Western Railway Railway stations served by CrossCountry 1852 establishments in England Redruth DfT Category D stations