Malton railway station

Malton
Malton station in December 1986
Location
Place	Norton
Local authority	Ryedale
Coordinates	54°07′55″N 0°47′49″W / 54.132°N 0.797°W / 54.132; -0.797Coordinates: 54°07′55″N 0°47′49″W / 54.132°N 0.797°W / 54.132; -0.797
Grid reference	SE787713
Operations
Station code	MLT
Managed by	First TransPennine Express
Number of platforms	1
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2004/05	0.237 million
2005/06	0.252 million
2006/07	0.271 million
2007/08	0.282 million
2008/09	0.282 million
2009/10	0.291 million
2010/11	0.296 million
2011/12	0.292 million
2012/13	0.295 million
History
Key dates	Opened 1845 (1845)
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Malton from Office of Rail Regulation statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

The signal box in 1988

Malton railway station serves the towns of Malton and Norton-on-Derwent in North Yorkshire, England. It is operated by First TransPennine Express that provide all passenger train services, running on the York to Scarborough Line.

Services

The typical Monday-Saturday off-peak service is the following:

• 1 train per hour (tph) to Liverpool Lime Street, calling at York, Leeds, Huddersfield, Stalybridge, Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Oxford Road, Birchwood and Warrington Central
• 1 tph to Scarborough, calling at Seamer

On Sundays this is reduced to the following:

• 1 train per 2 hours (tp2h) to Liverpool, calling at York, Garforth, Leeds and then as above
• 1 train per 2 hours to Scarborough as above

A half-hourly service, with timetable and fares integration with Yorkshire Coastliner buses, has been suggested as a means of providing relief to the parallel A64 trunk road that would be considerably cheaper than the option of dual carriageway.^[1]

History

The station is only served by trains between Scarborough and York (and beyond), however prior to the Beeching Axe Malton station was also served by the Pickering Branch of the York and North Midland Railway with trains heading north (diverging at Rillington junction) to Pickering and then onwards to Grosmont and Whitby. This line closed entirely north of Pickering in 1965, with a freight-only service to Pickering surviving until 1966.

Trains still run from Pickering to Grosmont as part of the preserved North Yorkshire Moors Railway, but the tracks between Rillington, where the line branched, and Pickering have since been lifted.

Until 1958 the Malton & Driffield Railway, with trains heading south to Driffield, survived for freight and the occasional (summer-only) through excursion to the coast, after 1958 these excursion trains had to reverse at Scarborough Road junction on the easterly edge of Malton, back down towards Malton station before reversing again and heading off to Scarborough. Prior to 1950, there had been a passenger service nicknamed the 'Driffield Dodger' between Malton and Driffield.

As an interchange between three lines, Malton station was considerably busier than it is now.

Though Malton station now has only one platform in use, at its peak, there were two through platforms and an additional bay platform serving (mainly) Whitby local trains. The George Townsend Andrews overall roof was removed in 1989 and replaced by the canopy recovered from the Whitby platform.

One of Malton station's claim to fame was the novel solution adopted to allow passengers to access the second (island) platform, instead of a footbridge or barrow crossing the NER installed a removable section of platform, in the form of a wheeled trolley running on rails set at right-angles to the (single) running line. When a train had to use the platform, the trolley was wheeled back under the up (York) platform; the trolley was interlocked, with the signals giving access to the platform.

Until Northern Rail took over in 2004, Arriva Trains Northern had services that stopped at Malton, the current York to Blackpool service to Scarborough alongside TransPennine Express services. This service was usually worked by a Metro liveried Class 158 DMU, occasionally a Class 155 DMU. There was also a local service from York to Scarborough usually worked by a Pacer DMU or a Class 156.

Future

There has been talk of reopening the old line between Rillington Junction and Pickering for some years, most notably in 2003,^[2] but no attempt has come to fruition.

There was a petition on 10 Downing Street to reopen the line and upgrade the North Yorkshire Moors railway to cope with higher speeds (40-50 mph as opposed to 25 mph), to improve transport in the region, and to provide relief for the A64 more cheaply than dualling it in its entirety. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway eventually have plans to extend the line beyond Pickering to Malton, which depend on the level crossing at Pickering being reinstated.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Malton railway station.

• Train times and station information for Malton railway station from National Rail
• Historic England. "Details from image database (329717 )". Images of England. 
• Malton Station from Ryedale on the Web
• Malton station at The Yorkshire Wolds Railway Restoration Project

Preceding station		National Rail		Following station
York		First TransPennine Express North TransPennine		Seamer
	Historical railways
Huttons Ambo Station closed; Line open		Y&NMR York to Scarborough Line		Rillington Station closed; Line open
	Disused railways
Terminus		Malton & Driffield Railway		Settrington