Stockton railway station (County Durham)

Stockton National Rail
Location
Place Stockton-on-Tees
Local authority Stockton-on-Tees
Coordinates 54°34′11″N 1°19′06″W / 54.5697°N 1.3183°W / 54.5697; -1.3183Coordinates: 54°34′11″N 1°19′06″W / 54.5697°N 1.3183°W / 54.5697; -1.3183
Grid reference NZ441196
Operations
Station code STK
Managed by Northern
Number of platforms 2
DfT category F1
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections
from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2010/11 Increase 66,578
2011/12 Increase 69,660
2012/13 Decrease 68,656
2013/14 Increase 77,429
2014/15 Decrease 72,906
History
Original company Leeds Northern Railway
Pre-grouping North Eastern Railway
Post-grouping London and North Eastern Railway
2 June 1852 Opened as Stockton-on-Tees
1852/53 Renamed North Stockton
1 November 1892 Renamed Stockton-on-Tees
1985 Renamed Stockton
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Stockton from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Stockton railway station serves the town of Stockton-on-Tees, within the borough of Stockton-on-Tees and the ceremonial county of County Durham, England. The railway station is located on the Durham Coast Line and is operated by Northern who provide all of the stations passenger services. Thornaby railway station, across the River Tees from Stockton-on-Tees provides a wider range of services and acts as the main railway station for most of Stockton-on-Tees. The station originally had a roof but it was removed in 1979 due to being in a bad state of repair and it has not been replaced since.

Station facilities here have recently been improved and included new fully lit waiting shelters and the installation of CCTV. The long-line Public Address system (PA) has been renewed and upgraded with pre-recorded train announcements.

Grand Central Railway services between Sunderland and London Kings Cross pass through the station but do not stop here.

History

In 1852 the Leeds Northern Railway (LNR), which had been renamed from the Leeds and Thirsk Railway in 1849, extended its route northwards from Melmerby to Billingham-on-Tees (the now-closed original Billingham station) by way of Northallerton and Eaglescliffe.[1] One of the intermediate stations on the line was at Stockton-on-Tees, this station opening on 2 June 1852; it was very soon renamed, becoming North Stockton in either 1852 or 1853.[2] Not long after, in 1854, the LNR amalgamated with several other railways to form the North Eastern Railway (NER).[3] On 1 November 1892 it resumed its original name, and this was retained until 1985 when British Rail simplified the name to Stockton.[2]

The current station is not at the same location as the former terminus of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (though using the same name) - it was constructed in 1892/3 by the NER to replace the earlier one referred to above, which was shared by the LNR and the Stockton and Hartlepool Railway.[4]

The station was also served (albeit indirectly) by the Clarence Railway lines from Ferryhill and Simpasture Junction via Redmarshall, which joined the Leeds Northern line at Norton and also by the NER-built route to Wellfield (where it connected to the West Hartlepool - Haswell - Sunderland line) from 1880. These routes were built primarily to convey coal from the many collieries in the area to the docks at Middlesbrough, but the Ferryhill & Wellfield lines also had local passenger services that called here. Trains on the Wellfield route were withdrawn by the LNER in November 1931, whilst the Ferryhill service ended in March 1952.[5]

Services

There is an hourly service from the station in each direction (with a few peak hour extras), northbound to Sunderland and Newcastle and southbound to Middlesbrough. Many northbound trains continue to Hexham, whilst most southbound trains run through to Nunthorpe.[6]

On Sundays there is an hourly service in each direction between Middlesbrough and MetroCentre, plus two additional services between Darlington and Hartlepool that avoid Middlesbrough using the original 1852 link via Stockton Cut Junction. These are the last remnants of the much more frequent direct service (approx two-hourly Mon-Sat plus some Sunday trains) that ran between Darlington & Hartlepool up until 1991.

Notes

  1. Allen 1974, pp. 100,102–3
  2. 1 2 Butt 1995, pp. 174,220
  3. Allen 1974, p. 107
  4. Body 1988, pp. 161–2
  5. "When Coal Was King: Chapter 2 - Railways" www.east-durham.co.uk; Retrieved 2013-12-18
  6. UK National Rail Timetable May 2016, Table 44 (Network Rail)

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stockton railway station (County Durham).
Preceding station   National Rail   Following station
Northern
Durham Coast Line
Historical railways
TerminusNER
Line open, station closed
TerminusNER
Norton-on-Tees
Line open, station closed
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.