Today’s Treasurers – Stalybridge – an Amazing Train Journey

There are some amazing train journeys from Whitchurch Railway Station.

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One Friday morning, I was travelling by train to a conference in Wakefield.  It was a long journey and I had to change trains 3 times so I was not looking forward to it – I thought it would be really boring – how wrong can you be?

I got off at Stockport to find that I was getting the one train a week to Stalybridge. Evidently it was featured on Paul Merton’s TV programme about ‘Request Stops’ – except there are no request stops on the Stockport to Stalybridge weekly service – as the train has to run at least once a week by Government decree and the train has to stop at every station. It’s mainly a freight train line but has to have at least one passenger train a week in order to stay open.

I was about to get on the train when someone said:  “I hope you’re not planning to come back on this train.”  Puzzled I asked why:  “Because it only goes one way once a week.  If you want to get back to Stockport you have to go via Manchester.”  The speaker got on the train with me – and I discovered that most of the people on the train were travelling for fun – I was probably the only person for a long while who had actually used the service to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’.  One of the passengers was a member of ‘The Friends of Denton Station” who told me all about it along with the conductor who nearly featured in Paul Merton’s programme – but it was his brother who was the guard on the train that day.

The little old train rattled along the track – brushing past overhanging brambles, trees and shrubs, purple with buddleia – it was like going back in time.  I got off at Stalybridge and ran to the other platform where the TransPennine Express was waiting – which brought me rapidly up to date – until I got to Huddersfield and climbed aboard another little old train that took me to Wakefield Westgate.

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So the train journey that I thought was going to be really boring was really interesting.  The scenery from the TransPennine Express was absolutely stunning, rolling hills interspersed with Yorkshire stone villages, old mills and brick chimneys, the railways often follow river valleys and travel alongside canals busy with barges wending their way through locks – so there’s lots to see.

We went under Yorkshire stone bridges, soot blackened from long forgotten steam trains; through cuttings with blasted rock faces, past towering walls, painstakingly built brick by brick, now pink and white with valerian and daisies.  History unfolded before my eyes – labourers laying the rails, stokers shovelling coal on steam engines, bricklayers, stonemasons, signalmen – their presence is still felt in the very fabric of the railways and their ghosts still haunt the train tracks – and the train to Denton station which is often called ‘The Ghost Train’ as it is the least used track in Britain.

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