Wennington is a railway station on the Bentham Line, which runs between and via . The station, situated east of Lancaster, serves the village of Wennington in

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancas ...

. It is owned by

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's len ...

and managed by

Northern Trains Northern Trains, branded as Northern, (legally Northern Trains Limited) is a publicly owned train operating company in England. It is owned by DfT OLR Holdings for the Department for Transport (DfT), after the previous operator Arriva Rail N ...

History

Originally opened by the

"Little" North Western Railway The North Western Railway (NWR) was an early British railway company in the north-west of England. It was commonly known as the "Little" North Western Railway, to distinguish it from the larger London and North Western Railway (LNWR). The NWR w ...

in 1849 on their line between and , the station was rebuilt and expanded in 1865 prior to the opening of the

Furness and Midland Joint Railway The Furness and Midland Joint Railway was a joint railway in England owned by the Furness Railway and the Midland Railway. Construction was agreed in 1862 for a line from Carnforth, on the Furness system, to Wennington, on the Midland Railwa ...

from in 1867. Thereafter it became a busy junction, with many passenger trains calling to detach through carriages for Carnforth from the main Morecambe portion if heading west or attaching them if heading east - a bay platform was provided at the east end of the station for this purpose, along with several sidings on the opposite side of the line for locomotive and carriage stabling (all since removed, along with the extra platform line). A number of local services (mainly from the Carnforth line) also originated or terminated there. Much of this activity ended with the withdrawal of local stopping trains on the Carnforth line in 1960 (though it remained in use for through services) and the closure of the Lancaster line to passengers in January 1966. The latter was then closed to all traffic the following year and subsequently lifted, although the abandoned trackbed can still be seen. The original station buildings have also been demolished and replaced by shelters, although the

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' ...

remained in use as the last remaining block post on the line until 1988 – it was then closed & permanently "switched out" but was not formally abolished and removed until 2006.

Accidents and incidents

The junction was the site of a derailment on 11 August 1880 in which eight people were killed.

Facilities

The station is unstaffed and has no ticket-buying facilities. Passengers therefore must purchase these on the train or in advance of their journey. Train running information is provided by telephone and information posters. Step-free access is limited to the eastbound platform, as the westbound one can only be reached by footbridge.

Services

From Monday to Saturday, there were formerly five daily services to (journey time 25mins) and to & (1hr20). All but the first of the daily westbound departures continue onwards to . On Sundays there were four services in each direction all year round since the May 2011 timetable change - prior to this the first two departures each way ran only during the summer months. From the start of the May 2018 summer timetable, additional services have been introduced. Seven trains each way run to Lancaster and Skipton, with three of the former continuing to Morecambe and six of the latter to Leeds (though the direct train to and from Heysham has ceased). One additional train each way runs on Sundays. As of May 2019, one further service has been introduced each way, to bring the weekday frequency to eight in each direction. Five of these run to/from Morecambe.

References

Sources

* Binns, D. (1982), ''The Little North Western Railway'', Wyvern Publications, Skipton, .

External links

* {{Railway stations served by Northern Trains Railway stations in Lancaster DfT Category F2 stations Former Midland Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1849 Northern franchise railway stations