Barnetby railway station
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Barnetby | |
 |
|
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Place | Barnetby-le-Wold |
| Local authority | North Lincolnshire |
| Operations | |
| Station code | BTB |
| Managed by | Northern Rail |
| Platforms in use | |
| Annual entry/exit 04/05 | 0.047 million ** |
| National Rail - UK railway stations | |
| ** based on sales of tickets in 2004/05 financial year which end or originate at Barnetby. Disclaimer (PDF) | |
Barnetby railway station serves the village of Barnetby-le-Wold in North Lincolnshire. The station area still (2005) uses semaphore signals. It operated by First TransPennine Express, with Central Trains and Northern Rail also serving the station.
Barnetby railway station is unstaffed, and is popular with railway enthusiasts for the freight which passes through.
The railway first came to Barnetby in 1848 when the Great Grimsby & Sheffield Junction Railway was constructed. This line ran from Sheffield, through Retford, Torksey, Lincoln and Market Rasen before reaching Barnetby - then on to Grimsby. A year later, and the section of route between Gainsborough and Barnetby was opened, thus establishing the villages future a a railway centre. The most important connection - and still is to this day, was the building of the Trent, Ancholme and Grimsby Railway in 1866 - through the steel town of Scunthorpe. Over the following years, these railways - and several others became part of the Great Central Railway.
The Great Central Railway recognised the importance of the Humber ports. As well as developing Grimsby, the company invested heavily in Immingham Docks. Immingham was unique among the Humber ports in that a deep water channel made easy access for ships to the port. This suited the Great Central Railway as one of its chief forms of traffic was coal from the East Midlands coalfields. Now part of the Associated British Ports empire, it is sad that Sir Nigel Gresley is remembered more amongst the road names on the dock, when it was Sir Sam Fay who was instrumental in making Immingham what it is today. Yet, Sam Fay doesn't even have a road named after him.
With the increased traffic through Barnetby, the track infrastructure needed more investment. At the time, Barnetby had a fairly simple layout based on a standard double track. It even had a level crossing near to where the Kings Road bridge is today. In order to make passage easier, the Great Central Railway invested in the quadrupling of the track between Wrawby Junction and Brocklesby Junction - together with much improved signalling. The level crossing was removed and the Kings Road underbridge was built. In order to handle the traffic, new signalboxes were built at Wrawby Junction, Barnetby West, Barnetby East, Melton Ross and Brocklesby Junction.
In 1923, the Great Central Railway became part of the London & North Eastern Railway, then in 1948 as part of British Railways. In later years the infrastructure became part of Railtrack -and ultimately Network Rail.
Whilst most railway freight traffic passes through the village, in years past the village generated a small amount of its own business. The nearby malt kilns was opened in 1875, and the village cattle market used rail transport. Sadly, the cattle market is long gone and the malt kilns is crumbling away.
An event - which still causes controversy today happened at Wrawby Junction on December 9th 1983. A train of oil tanks hauled by Class 47 47299 collided with a class 114 DMU when a set of points which had been hand-cranked but not clipped had reset themselves in front of the freight train. The class 47 smashed into the side of the DMU killing one person and injuring twelve.
In late 1981 a Class 47 locomotive, 47216 had been taken out of traffic at Immingham TMD. No modifications were made to the locomotive. In fact, the only alteration was the allocated number - 47299. Rumours were rife, and the most popular story was of a clairvoyant who had predicted a fatal accident involving a train of oil tanks and a passenger train. She even picked out the number - 47216. It is believed that British Rail reneumbered the locomotive in order to deflect any possibility of this prediction coming true. But sure enough, on December 9th 1983 - the inevitable happened. As the saying goes..."you can run - but you can't hide!"
Despite the throughput of traffic becoming very uniform with few locomotive classes hauling the large number of freight trains, Barnetby is still very popular with trainspotters. At the present time, the freight trains are operated by EWS and Freightliner Heavy Haul. The passenger services are as shown in the panel below. The Manchester Airport Transpenninexpress services are worked by the new Siemens-built class 185 DMU.
[edit] External links
- Train times and station information for Barnetby railway station from National Rail
- Map and aerial photo of Barnetby railway station from Multimap.com
| Preceding station | National Rail | Following station | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Habrough | Northern Rail Cleethorpes – Sheffield |
Brigg Limited Service |
||
| Scunthorpe | First TransPennine Express South TransPennine |
Habrough | ||
| Market Rasen | Central Trains Nottingham-Grimsby |
Habrough | ||
