'Awkward' towns without railway stations

[Western 52]

Gorseinon, near Swansea, has about 21000 population but no station since 1964. Walkable to/from Gowerton station in 20-30 minutes, although some busy roads to cross.

 

[D6130]

Kilbirnie in Ayrshire....no station since 1970-ish and about 20-30 minutes walk to Glengarnock station.

 

[JD2168]

Louth for me is a candidate for this thread, probably too far from Skegness & a bit too rural to support a service on it’s own.

 

[brad465]

Shepton Mallet is decent sized now: not enough to reinstate the S&D railway but a parkway station could be built on the western end of the East Somerset railway, which links to the mainline to Frome, Westbury and London via the existing branch to Torr works quarry.

Langport has expanded, with Huish Episcopi now merged into it and the Reading-Taunton line passes right through; there has been talk of opening a station between there and Somerton to serve those two towns.

If we're counting towns with a heritage station but no mainline services, Bishops Lydeard has a heritage line station on the West Somerset railway and in the past summer special shuttles have run to Taunton, but no mainline service, although the town has seen housing developments and suggestions for it to act as a park and ride station in future. Likewise Minehead is even larger at the other end of the West Somerset railway, but I imagine the relevant parties think the 28 bus service is good enough.

 

[Pacco]

Caernarfon should still have a station, would carry a lot of holiday traffic.

 

[Howardh]

Garstang. Adjacent to the WCML, and a heck of a drag by car or bus up or down the A6 to the nearest stations. If it were on a branch line I'm sure it would have a station!

 

[Killingworth]

Nope - and the mapping doesn’t support this either. The Town station had 4 terminus platforms - it was effectively in the middle with a right divergence heading north to the harbour and a left divergence going south to Portpatrick. I cannot find any maps showing the Cairnryan Jcn but as this would have been classed as ‘sensitive’ it’s not surprising it’s not shown, as it’s west of Dunragit but much closer than Castle Kennedy, apparently it was at Lime Kiln, a few 100 yds from the Harbour Jcn - however, with talk of passenger numbers reportedly falling off a cliff for southbound travel from Girvan, I wonder if the costs of keeping even this part of the line open will reach break-even? I’m all for supporting its retention but it must be at risk in the long term? Moving the station (and end of line buffers to a single platform in the town might restore confidence?

One inch map from 1963; https://maps.nls.uk/view/197253157

Before WW2 my grandfather took the boat train from Newcastle to Stranraer several times a year. Today? He'd have taken the car on the boat. In the 1950's his daughter went with the car by plane, a service that didn't last long. There are two possible sites for a station off the pier. The line and current station is an economic nonsense - but there may have been threads about this in the past.

 

[Buzby]

Thanks for the map - it would have been so incredibly useful to have retained the route and switched the traffic to Cairnryan in addition to closing the Harbour station, but with the original ‘Port Road’ gone, I’m surprised they didn’t chop it at Girvan.

 

[izvor]

Caernarfon should still have a station, would carry a lot of holiday traffic.

Agreed, but I believe there was a local referendum on this some years ago, and the proposal was rejected. Can anyone confirm (or deny) this? It does seem rather bizarre.

 

[robspaceman]

Oswestry seems a relevant candidate. Reasonably size market town with large catchment area. I very much doubt there’s a sound business case (despite the govt hilariously suggesting so recently when culling HS2) to reopen the line up to Gobowen 3 miles away.

 

[Trackman]

Garstang. Adjacent to the WCML, and a heck of a drag by car or bus up or down the A6 to the nearest stations. If it were on a branch line I'm sure it would have a station!

Good call. But it did have a branch line once upon a time. Looking at Google Maps, it looks sort-of quite feasible to re-open it - but it's never going to happen.

 

[Howardh]

Good call. But it did have a branch line once upon a time. Looking at Google Maps, it looks sort-of quite feasible to re-open it - but it's never going to happen.

Yes, think the branch ended up at Knott End, the wrong side of Fleetwood ie. the east of the Wyre river, we might one day get the Fleetwood/Poulton line re-opened but that will be nowhere near Garstang. However if the town grows, there might be calls for a station just off the main line, but so many fast trains I doubt there's the capacity.

 

[Tayway]

I believe Renfrew (24k) is the largest town in Scotland without a railway station, and is likely to remain as such given its location sandwiched between Paisley, Glasgow and the Clyde, with no easy way to connect it to the network. Interestingly the nearest station to most of it is Yoker on the other side of the river.

A few similarly sizeable towns have their stations on their outer peripheries, such as Newton Mearns (Williamwood and Whitecraigs stations), Kirkintilloch (Lenzie station), Glenrothes (Markinch and Glenrothes with Thornton stations), and Broxburn (Uphall station).

There's a few more smaller towns which are a few miles or so from a station so it's not really worth building a branch to serve them. Haddington (4 miles from Drem), Bo'ness (3.5 miles from Linlithgow), Erskine (3 miles from Bishopton), Tranent (1.5 miles from Prestonpans), and Whitburn (2 miles from Armadale) would all be in the category. Grangemouth would be here too if it didn't have the branch to the refinery which could fairly easily be upgraded for passengers.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Llangefni is a town that was once served by a branch line from the North Wales coast line.

 

[leytongabriel]

Waterlooville ( pop. 65,000) in the S Hants conurbation must be a good candidate, had a SWT direct bus connection at one point to Petersfield I think. Otherwise it's local buses to Bedhampton for Coastway stoppers lol, Cosham or Havant. Same for other places up the A3 corridor such as Horndean.

Minster (pop. 21,000) lost its staton in 1950 and you have to get the bus a couple of miles to Sheerness.

And then there's good old Dunstable (pop. 40,000) again, busway at least part of the way, three miles to Luton

 

[BwniCymraeg]

Kirkintilloch (Lenzie station)

My absolute pipe dream is that the old kelvin valley line can be rebuilt so the good folk of Kirky can have their own line to Glasgow. Any benefit for Kilsyth would be purely coincidental, of course

 

[Buzby]

My absolute pipe dream is that the old kelvin valley line can be rebuilt so the good folk of Kirky can have their own line to Glasgow. Any benefit for Kilsyth would be purely coincidental, of course

The building of the route of ‘Initiative Road’ put paid to this permanently as this uses all of the route from Lenzie to Kirkintilloch and the alternatives are fully built up. With First Bus offering a 15min service to Campsie Glen and Harestanes (X85/X87) there’s no need to fill. As for Kilsyth, they’ve got the massive park and ride at Croy and express it fast stoppers into both Glasgow and Edinburgh that route will never return!

 

[Falcon1200]

Kilbirnie in Ayrshire....no station since 1970-ish and about 20-30 minutes walk to Glengarnock station.

Not far away is Beith, which once had two stations but now none. The branch from Lugton to Beith Town will never return, and given its distance from the town I am not surprised that, AFAIK, there have been no calls to re-open Beith North on the Glasgow/Ayr line.

 

[Jimini]

Rushden is one that comes to mind here, particularly if you fold in the surrounding area (Higham Ferrers etc.). Nowadays, the best you could probably do is crowbar in a "Rushden Parkway" station on the MML I guess.

 

[Captain Bigwig]

When it comes to towns "awkwardly" not on the railway network the granddaddy of them all has surely got to be Gosport. Population 81,000, no railway to Gosport itself, but Portsmouth Harbour station is just a few hundred metres away from Gosport town centre. Only problem is it's on the other side of the harbour, and you need to use the ferry to get there.

 

[A S Leib]

Waterlooville ( pop. 65,000) in the S Hants conurbation must be a good candidate, had a SWT direct bus connection at one point to Petersfield I think. Otherwise it's local buses to Bedhampton for Coastway stoppers lol, Cosham or Havant. Same for other places up the A3 corridor such as Horndean.

When it comes to towns "awkwardly" not on the railway network the granddaddy of them all has surely got to be Gosport. Population 81,000, no railway to Gosport itself, but Portsmouth Harbour station is just a few hundred metres away from Gosport town centre. Only problem is it's on the other side of the harbour, and you need to use the ferry to get there.

Presumably not enough demand for Gosport, Lee-on-the-Solent or Waterlooville to Southampton for lines there either, I'd guess? (And any spare capacity would probably be better used for a third Portsmouth – Southampton.)

 

[BwniCymraeg]

The building of the route of ‘Initiative Road’ put paid to this permanently as this uses all of the route from Lenzie to Kirkintilloch and the alternatives are fully built up. With First Bus offering a 15min service to Campsie Glen and Harestanes (X85/X87) there’s no need to fill. As for Kilsyth, they’ve got the massive park and ride at Croy and express it fast stoppers into both Glasgow and Edinburgh that route will never return!

The tragic reality. In fairness, I’d be less of a whinger if only Canavan Travel learnt what a bus timetable is so that reaching Croy without a car wasn’t like pulling hen’s teeth.

 

[leytongabriel]

Presumably not enough demand for Gosport, Lee-on-the-Solent or Waterlooville to Southampton for lines there either, I'd guess? (And any spare capacity would probably be better used for a third Portsmouth – Southampton.)

Seems a very car-centred part of the world

 

[D6130]

Presumably not enough demand for Gosport, Lee-on-the-Solent

Seems a very car-centred part of the world

Passenger services on the Fareham-Gosport branch (once the London & Southampton Railway's first main line to Portsmouth - via the ferry) were withdrawn in 1953 and those on the Lee-on-the-Solent branch about twenty years earlier....both succumbing to intensive local bus competition. However the major commuter flow from Gosport - mainly naval personnel and dockyard workers - has always been to Portsmouth. Single journeys on the ferry in the Portsmouth-Gosport direction are free of charge, reflecting the main peak passenger flow.

 

[ChrisC]

Passenger services on the Fareham-Gosport branch (once the London & Southampton Railway's first main line to Portsmouth - via the ferry) were withdrawn in 1953 and those on the Lee-on-the-Solent branch about twenty years earlier....both succumbing to intensive local bus competition. However the major commuter flow from Gosport - mainly naval personnel and dockyard workers - has always been to Portsmouth. Single journeys on the ferry in the Portsmouth-Gosport direction are free of charge, reflecting the main peak passenger flow.

Lee on Solent may have had intensive bus competition all those years ago but it certainly doesn’t have a very intensive bus service these days. I visited the area for the first time a couple of months ago and was surprised how few buses served the town. The only bus now serving Lee on Solent is the Gosport to Southampton X5 which runs approx every 45 minutes. There are no buses after 7pm on this route.

 

[yorksrob]

Leigh, the nearest station is Newton Le Willows, although the railhead for Leigh is Wigan.

Atherton's quite handy if you want to stay in the GMPTE area.

 

[317 forever]

Leigh, the nearest station is Newton Le Willows, although the railhead for Leigh is Wigan.

So, this is a Greater Manchester town whose nearest station is in Merseyside.

Are there many other towns in 1 county whose nearest station is in another? An example is Haverhill, Suffolk whose nearest station is Dullingham, Cambridgeshire.

 

[A S Leib]

So, this is a Greater Manchester town whose nearest station is in Merseyside.

Are there many other towns in 1 county whose nearest station is in another? An example is Haverhill, Suffolk whose nearest station is Dullingham, Cambridgeshire.

I've set up a new thread as otherwise I suspect that would take up a lot of posts on this thread.

Going back to towns which would be awkward to serve, Bushey and Elstree both have stations with their name with a good service (I think 4 slow and 2 semi-fast tph at Bushey and 4 at Elstree & Borehamwood) which are both quite a way from the town centres.

 

[Acfb]

Oswestry immediately comes to mind (close enough to Gobowen).


I don't know if Haddington would count (about 4-6 miles each from Drem, Longniddry and East Linton) and already has a pretty excellent bus service.


Penicuik would also be a tricky one (due to capacity constraints joining up with the northern end of the Borders railway) as there is demand but you'd want the train to take a maximum of 30 minutes into Edinburgh as people can just take the existing 'express' buses such as the 101, X62 and X37.

 

[D365]

East Anglia has lots of towns with no railway station. Here are a few that have an open station nearby:

Hoddesdon/Broxbourne (prior to electrification the station was called Broxbourne and Hoddesdon)
Saffron Walden/Audley End
Shefford/Arlesey
Ampthill/Flitwick

There are plenty more examples a bit further away from the railway.

I’d add Godmanchester, St Ives and several Fen towns that are loosely in the Huntingdon/Peterborough orbit.