Leek Brook railway station

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Leekbrook station before closure

Leekbrook station under preservation

Leekbrook station is a closed passenger station on the Churnet Valley Railway in Staffordshire, Great Britain.

[edit] History

Leekbrook station, better called Leekbrook Junction to distinguish it from the other Leekbrook station (see below), situated on the Churnet valley line (opened 13 July 1849) of the North Staffordshire Railway, was opened to both passengers and goods sometime in 1899.

The station was a very quiet station not even advertised in timetables. It was a down platform only and so only trains from the south could stop there. It was mainly used as an interchange platform with the Cheddleton mental asylum electric tramway using the other side of the platform. Passengers to Leekbrook usually boarded and alighted on another Leekbrook station on the nearby line from Leek to Stoke, with passengers wishing to reach the hospital walking over to the platform being discussed here.

As with many stations in the 1950s, passenger numbers decreased to such an extent that the station was closed to both passengers and goods in 1956.

[edit] Re-opening, and the Churnet Valley Railway

During the 1970s a railway preservation base was setup at nearby Cheddleton station. This was later to become the base of the Churnet Valley Railway (CVR). The CVR had slowly been progressing in preserving the line when in the late 1990s they had reached the station site which, however, was not judged worthy of re-opening due to the large amount of other preservation projects being undertaken by the CVR at the time.

The first CVR's passenger service to the station site was on 24 August 1996. There is no public access to the station, so neither boarding not alighting is not possible there. The station is the northern end of the CVR and the trains stop there only to detach the locomotive from one end of the train and attach it to the other.