Hellifield railway station


Hellifield is a junction railway station on the Bentham Line, which runs between and via, as well as being the northern terminus of the Ribble Valley line. The station, situated north-west of Leeds, serves the village of Hellifield, in North Yorkshire, England. It is owned by Network Rail and managed by Northern Trains.

History

The first Hellifield railway station was opened by the "Little" North Western Railway in 1849. It was a modest structure, similar to those at Gargrave and Long Preston and sited to the south of the present one.
A much larger replacement was built by the Midland Railway to the designs of architect Charles Trubshaw and opened on 1 June 1880; it lay immediately to the north of the junction of the line from Leeds and the newly completed Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway route from via.
It soon became a busy junction, as it was now located on the Midland Railway's main line from to Scotland, with trains going to Clitheroe, Skipton, Leeds, Blackburn,,, and Morecambe
It was also the location of a busy locomotive depot and a large goods yard.
The line from Blackburn had its local passenger service withdrawn on 10 September 1962, but it remains open for goods traffic and periodic diversions when the West Coast Main Line is closed north of for engineering work. The adjacent locomotive shed closed the following year and local trains from the station to Carlisle ended in May 1970, although it continued to be served by expresses to and from until 1975. Thereafter it was downgraded to unstaffed halt status and served only by stopping trains between Leeds and Morecambe.
In April 1977, the main station building was designated as a Grade II listed building.
By the late 1980s, the main buildings and canopies were in very poor condition and under threat of demolition; following a £500,000 cash injection from British Rail, in conjunction with English Heritage and the Railway Heritage Trust, they were refurbished and returned to private commercial use. Trains to and from Carlisle also started calling again in May 1995 to further encourage use of the station and its newly restored amenities.
Between 2005 and 2008, the station was used as the operating base for Kingfisher Railtours' Dalesman steam-hauled charter trains over the Settle-Carlisle Line. Facilities on offer to the travelling public at the station include the Long Drag cafe & gift shop and a heritage room used to exhibit items and photographs connected to the Settle-Carlisle route.
The station is also still used by special trains and steam-hauled railway tours as a water stop and traction changeover point. It has also undergone further structural refurbishment in the summer of 2013, with Network Rail carrying out £500,000 of work on the Grade II listed buildings to repair/replace the glazing and repaint the canopies.

Accidents and incidents

  • 18 December 1933: A goods brake van ran away from Hellifield South Junction while being shunted and collided head-on with an oncoming freight train, killing the driver and fireman and injuring the guard. The shunter, the guard of the train being shunted and the signaller at the south junction box were all found partially responsible. The lack of Catch points on the steep gradient was also highlighted in the report.
  • 22 December 1955: The 21:15 express train from St. Pancras to Glasgow collided with the rear of the 21:05 express to Edinburgh, which was stationary at the station. The collision was caused by South Junction signalman Thomas B. Robinson, when he failed to reset a key signal lever, allowing the Glasgow train to receive clear signals into an occupied platform. Though the train was braking, it still struck the Edinburgh train at around, resulting in significant damage to the rear brake vans and a sleeping car. Fortunately, only two passengers and three railway staff were injured, with just one requiring hospitalisation. The inquiry revealed that the signalman had a history of neglecting regulations and occasionally allowed a booking boy to operate levers, which was against the rules. The driver of the Glasgow train also appeared to rely too heavily on distant signals and missed key home signals. The accident highlighted the need for stricter supervision, adherence to procedures, and the value of modern signalling controls, which were installed shortly after the incident.

    Facilities

The station has full step-free access, via a subway with inclined ramp from the main entrance. Train running information can be obtained from timetable posters, by telephone, or from digital PIS screens; the latter were installed as part of a rolling station upgrade programme by the train operator Arriva Rail North.
The last remaining signal box at the station is one of only two manual boxes left in operation between Leeds and . It acts as the 'fringe' box to the Leeds workstation of York IECC in the Skipton direction, as well as controlling the junction and a pair of goods loops that are used to help regulate the increasingly heavy levels of freight traffic on the Carlisle, Leeds and Blackburn lines.

Services

operates regular services to Leeds, Lancaster and Carlisle:
  • Southbound, there are sixteen services on weekdays and seventeen on Saturdays
  • Northbound, there are eight trains each to Lancaster and to Carlisle plus one evening service to Ribblehead; these run about every two hours. Five of the Lancaster trains run through to Morecambe.
On Sundays, there are six trains to Carlisle, five to Morecambe and eleven to Leeds, one of which continues to.
Also on Sundays in the summer, a train operated from, Preston and Blackburn and along the Ribble Valley Line via Clitheroe to Hellifield and onwards towards Carlisle in the summer. This service, DalesRail, was operated by Northern Trains but ceased in December 2022. There are plans for more services from Clitheroe, with a twice-each-way Saturday service to/from there having started in June 2024. The Ribble Valley Rail group is campaigning for this route to be reopened.