Hebden Bridge railway station

Hebden Bridge railway station serves the town of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, England. The station is on the Calder Valley Line, operated by Northern since April 2016 from York and Leeds towards Manchester Victoria and Preston. The station is 8.5 miles (14 km) west of Halifax and 26 miles (42 km) west of Leeds.

Hebden Bridge
A view of platform 2 in 2015
Location
PlaceHebden Bridge
Local authorityCalderdale
Coordinates53.7377°N 2.0088°W / 53.7377; -2.0088
Grid referenceSD994268
Operations
Station codeHBD
Managed byNorthern
Number of platforms2
DfT categoryE
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections
from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2014/15 0.764 million
2015/16 0.757 million
2016/17 0.774 million
2017/18 0.796 million
2018/19 0.792 million
– Interchange  23,906
Passenger Transport Executive
PTEWest Yorkshire (Metro)
Zone5
History
Original companyManchester and Leeds Railway
Pre-groupingLancashire and Yorkshire Railway
Post-groupingLondon, Midland and Scottish Railway
5 October 1840Opened
1893Current station buildings opened
1997Refurbished
National Rail – UK railway stations
  • Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Hebden Bridge from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.

History
Some of the L&YR-style signs

The Manchester and Leeds Railway, authorised in 1836 for a line from Manchester to Normanton,[1] was opened in stages; the second section, between Normanton and Hebden Bridge, opened on 5 October 1840.[2] Trains arrived at Hebden Bridge from Normanton and passengers would then continue to Littleborough by road.[3] The section between Hebden Bridge and Summit Tunnel opened on 31 December 1840, allowing trains to reach Todmorden; after Summit Tunnel opened on 1 March 1841, trains continued to Littleborough and Manchester.[3][4] 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.[5] Trains began operating to Halifax and Bradford in 1852, and could run through to Leeds via this route from 1854.[3]

The current buildings date from 1893, construction having started in 1891.[3] By this point there was a goods yard alongside the station. This closed in 1966 and the site is now the station car park.[3] In 1997 the station was renovated, and signage in the original Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway style was installed.[3]

Facilities

The station has a staffed ticket office, waiting rooms, toilets and a cafe.[6][7] New lifts have been installed to make both platforms fully accessible (commissioned in March 2019),[8] 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.[9] Previously, passengers had to rely on automated public-address system announcements.

Services
Northern Class 150s with a service to Leeds

The station is the only station on the Calder Valley Line where every service calls. On Monday to Saturday during daytime there are four trains per hour to Leeds - one via Brighouse and Dewsbury and the other three via Bradford Interchange (one serving all stations to Bradford and two calling at Halifax only). Of the latter, one runs through to York. 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 Blackpool North via Burnley and Blackburn (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 Wigan Wallgate.[10] The other Manchester service now extends through to Warrington Bank Quay and Chester.

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
Hebden Bridge signal box is Grade II listed[11]

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 here in October 2018, with control passing over to the Rail Operating Centre at York. New rolling stock and timetable improvements will follow, with regular through trains to Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Airport and Chester by late 2019 (the latter service began at the May 2019 timetable change).[12] 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.[13]

gollark: Also perhaps that LoRa thing for slow but robust data communications.
gollark: Maybe you could use really directional antennae or something.
gollark: Simply buy a megaphone.
gollark: I too want Google to have all my communication data, what a great idea.
gollark: Anyone know how to get TempestSDR to work? I finally made it compile for Linux with RTL-SDR drivers but I just get a fuzzy black and white screen. Perhaps my hardware is bad somehow but I don't know.

See also

References
  1. Marshall, John (1969). The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, volume 1. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. p. 39. ISBN 0-7153-4352-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  2. Marshall 1969, p. 48
  3. "Station History". Friends of Hebden Bridge Station. Archived from the original on 20 April 2013. Retrieved 30 September 2010.
  4. Marshall 1969, p. 49
  5. Marshall 1969, pp. 50–51
  6. "Station details: Hebden Bridge". National Rail Enquiries. Retrieved 30 September 2010.
  7. "Facilities". Friends of Hebden Bridge Station. Archived from the original on 16 July 2012. Retrieved 30 September 2010.
  8. "Passenger Lifts open". Retrieved 21 July 2020. Making our station accessible by installing lifts has been an aim of the Friends of Hebden Bridge Station since our formation in 2007. After much hard work and dogged persistence, we have finally achieved this aim because on 18 March 2019 at 11:38 am the lifts took their first passengers.
  9. "Customer Information Enhancements at Rail Stations". Archived from the original on 12 May 2013. Retrieved 11 July 2012.
  10. Table 41 National Rail timetable, December 2019
  11. Historic England. "Hebden Bridge Signal Box, Hebden Royd (1412056)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
  12. "Track and signalling works target journey time and capacity" Halifax and District Rail Action Group; Retrieved 10 August 2017
  13. "What do we want the Calder Valley Line service to do?" Waring, J.S HADRAG news article; Retrieved 5 December 2019
Preceding station National Rail Following station
Todmorden   Northern
Caldervale Line		   Mytholmroyd
Burnley Manchester Road     Halifax
Disused railways
Eastwood   L&YR
Caldervale Line		   Mytholmroyd
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