Smithy Bridge railway station serves the village of

Smithy Bridge Smithy Bridge is a suburb of Littleborough in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Hollingworth Lake Country Park is close by. It also has a link to the Rochdale Canal and has its own railway station. It was once a ...

and

Hollingworth Lake Hollingworth Lake is a reservoir at Smithy Bridge in Littleborough, Greater Manchester, England. It was originally built as the main water source for the Rochdale Canal, but developed as a tourist resort from the 1860s. Hotels were built arou ...

near

Rochdale Rochdale ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, at the foothills of the South Pennines in the dale on the River Roch, northwest of Oldham and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The station is on the

Caldervale 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 rou ...

north of

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 ...

on the way to

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 ...

Facilities

The station is unstaffed, but there are ticket machines available to allow intending passengers to purchase or collect tickets prior to travelling. Both platforms have waiting shelters and step-free access.

Services

There is a basic half-hourly service (with peak period extras) from the station to Manchester Victoria southbound and to northbound on weekdays. From there, trains continue alternately to via and to Leeds via . Most westbound services run beyond Manchester to and . In the early morning and evenings trains to Leeds run via Halifax but on the same frequency, whilst in Sundays the service is hourly and provided by the Southport/Manchester to Blackburn trains. From the December 2019 timetable change, services will start or terminate at Wigan westbound, with passengers needing to change there for onward connections to Southport.

History

The station was first opened by the

Lancashire & 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 ...

in October 1868. In 1915, the station was the scene of a tragic accident involving an express train and an empty stock train. Four people died and many others were injured. It was closed on 2 May 1960 by

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

but reopened on its original site, albeit with a slightly different platform layout, on 19 August 1985 with financial assistance from Greater Manchester PTE. The signal box here, which controlled the level crossing and acted as a 'fringe' box to Preston PSB from 1973 onwards, was downgraded in late 2011 from a block post to a crossing box. The signalling is remotely operated from the new 'Rochdale West' panel at (which also supervises the layout at and will eventually replace another box at Castleton East Junction) and the crossing is now automatic. Smithy Bridge Crossing box was closed early in 2014 and has since been demolished."Train leaving Smithy Bridge (2015)"
Thwaite, Peter ''Geograph.org''; Retrieved 19 November 2016

Notes

References

*The Weighvers Seaport by A W Colligan in association with George Kelsall ()

External links

{{coord, 53.6333, -2.1134, region:GB_type:railwaystation, display=title Railway stations in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale DfT Category F1 stations Former Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1868 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1960 Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1985 Railway stations opened by British Rail Reopened railway stations in Great Britain Northern franchise railway stations Littleborough, Greater Manchester