Consall railway station is a former passenger

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

of the

North Staffordshire Railway The North Staffordshire Railway (NSR) was a British railway company formed in 1845 to promote a number of lines in the Staffordshire Potteries and surrounding areas in Staffordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Shropshire. The company was based i ...

(NSR) and is now a preserved station on the

Churnet Valley Railway The Churnet Valley Railway is a preserved standard gauge heritage railway in the Staffordshire Moorlands of Staffordshire, England. It operates on part of the former Churnet Valley Line.which was opened by the North Staffordshire Railway. ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

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 ...

History

Consall station, situated on the Churnet Valley Line of the NSR, was opened to both passengers and goods on 3 March 1902. The station was a quiet country station serving the needs of workers involved in the forge and nearby

lime kiln A lime kiln is a kiln used for the calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate) to produce the form of lime (material), lime called quicklime (calcium oxide). The chemical equation for this chemical reaction, reaction is :Calcium carbonate, Ca ...

s. It was however, opened mainly for the small, nearby village. As with many stations in the 1960s, passenger numbers decreased to such an extent that the station was closed in 1965.

Re-opening, and the Churnet Valley Railway

During the 1970s a

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

preservation base was set up at nearby Cheddleton station. This was later to become the base of the Churnet Valley Railway. The CVR had been slowly progressing in preserving the line when in the late 1990s they had reached the station site. The down (western) platform was still in existence but without any platform edging stones. These were replaced and this platform opened for passengers 11 July 1998. Construction later began on the replica station buildings which opened on 3 March 2002. The second track running through the station, which had served as a run-round loop, was made redundant when the line was extended to

Froghall Froghall is a village situated approximately ten miles to the east of Stoke-on-Trent and two miles north of Cheadle in Staffordshire, England. Population details as taken at the 2011 Census can be found under Kingsley. Froghall sits in the C ...

, so work began on resignalling this loop to allow two train operation on the line. This involved the addition of signals and a

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'' ...

to the station (the original line was double track throughout, so no box was ever located at Consall). To finish, the wooden up (eastern) platform was reconstructed so that the original 1902 shelter could be put back into use and so passing trains had a platform to call in the up direction. This platform was opened on 22 April 2005 and now the station is relatively complete and is the nerve centre of train operations on peak days due to the new passing loop and signal box.

Notes

External links

Churnet Valley Railway homepage
{{Staffordshire railway stations Heritage railway stations in Staffordshire Staffordshire Moorlands Former North Staffordshire Railway stations Beeching closures in England Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1902 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1965