Castleton railway station

Castleton
Location
Place	Castleton
Local authority	Rochdale
Grid reference	SD883106
Operations
Station code	CAS
Managed by	Northern Rail
Number of platforms	2
Live arrivals/departures and station information from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2004/05	0.081 million
2005/06	0.086 million
2006/07	0.088 million
2007/08	0.100 million
2008/09	0.123 million
2009/10	0.120 million
2010/11	0.127 million
2011/12	0.153 million
History
Opened 1875 (1875)
National Rail – UK railway stations
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Castleton from Office of Rail Regulation statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Castleton railway station serves Castleton in the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. It is 8¾ miles (14 km) north of Manchester Victoria on the Caldervale Line operated and managed by Northern Rail.

Services

On Monday to Saturday daytimes, there is a half hourly service in each direction. Two per hour southbound to Manchester Victoria, with hourly extensions to Wigan Wallgate and two per hour northbound to Rochdale, with one of these continuing on to Leeds via Hebden Bridge and Brighouse. There are no longer any through services to Manchester via Oldham, this is due to closure of the Oldham Loop Line which has been converted for light rail use by Manchester Metrolink, which has to come into service as far as Rochdale Station with further extensions into Oldham and Rochdale Town Centres by 2015.

In the evenings and on Sundays there is an hourly service to Manchester Victoria and to Leeds via Rochdale and Bradford Interchange on the Caldervale Line

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Mills Hill		Northern Rail Caldervale Line		Rochdale
	Disused railways
Heywood Line closed, station open		Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway		Rochdale Line and station open

History

The original station opened in 1839 at Blue Pits on the other side of the Rochdale-Manchester Road bridge. It was originally called Blue Pits for Heywood. The current station opened on 1 November 1875. The Liverpool and Bury Railway from Bolton (extended through from Bolton and beyond in 1848 to join the earlier M&L Heywood branch previously opened in 1841) used to join the main line at a triangular junction a short distance south of the station. This was at one time a busy passenger & freight route often used by trains avoiding the busy Manchester area, but was closed to passengers on 5 October 1970.^[1]

East Lancashire Railway Future

The eastern portion of this line was retained for freight traffic after passenger trains ceased (serving the coal depot at Rawtenstall until 1980 and subsequently to the Procor wagon works) and it now forms the link with the East Lancashire Railway heritage route at Heywood.^[2] The heritage line plans to extend its services along and towards a possible new bay platform adjacent to the main station in the future,^[3] subject to permission being granted by Network Rail.

The bay platform (named Castleton Village) will be adjacent to the main station at Castleton, from where passengers could alight and change station sides directly to Northern Rail services on the national network. Rochdale Council commissioned a study by transport consultants Moucel in conjunction with the ELR regarding the proposals in 2010 - their report (which covers both the tourism & regeneration aspects of any such future development) can be downloaded from the ELR website.

Preceding station	Proposed Heritage railways			Following station
Terminus		East Lancashire Railway		Heywood Line closed, station open

Notes

References

• The Manchester and Leeds Railway by Martin Bairstow (1983), (ISBN 0-907941-06-0)
• Forgotten Railways: North-West England by John Marshall (1981), David & Charles (Publishers) Ltd, Newton Abbott. (ISBN 0-7153-8003-6)

External links

• Train times and station information for Castleton railway station from National Rail
• The Castleton and Heywood Masterplan 2010 Moucel report on potential ELR extension through to Castleton station.

[ v t e ] Railways in Rochdale (Past, Present and Future)
Legend To Bacup To Calderdale Broadley Littleborough Shawclough and Healey Wardleworth Smithy Bridge Rochdale Town Centre Rochdale Newbold Kingsway Business Park To Bury Milnrow Broadfield Newhey To Oldham Heywood Castleton Middleton Mills Hill To Manchester

Coordinates: 53°35′31″N 2°10′42″W / 53.5919°N 2.1783°W / 53.5919; -2.1783