Stations you've used that are now closed

[4SRKT]

Inspired by the Sheffield Victoria thread, let's widen it out to include any station that you've caught a train to or from, but that has now closed.

For me the best is the original Bradford Forster Square. Incredibly run down, but wonderfully atmospheric. The Midland Hotel on Cheapside still has a beautiful tiled corridor that used to lead directly onto one of the platforms. Now just opens out into a car park

Belfast York Road: Surely the most squalid station in the world, and not missed by any right thinking person: yes, even more squalid than Wakefield Kirkgate!

New Holland Pier: just got here in the last couple of weeks of the ferry. Feel very privileged to have done so.

Dover Western Docks and Folkestone Harbour.

Strangely never managed to do either Broad Street or Holborn Viaduct.

That's all I can think of.

 

[142094]

Did all the ones on the Oldham Loop on its last day, plus just managed to get a ticket from each station. Hopefully will get British Steel Redcar before that goes when the Metro scheme kicks off. (not good news about the plant being mothballed either). A bit off topic, but for TOCs was on the last ever GNER and also the last ever NXEC. Won't be too long til I'll be on the last ever EC service either.

 

[Failed Unit]

Lincoln St Marks

 

[33056]

Broad Street, North Woolwich, Dover Western Docks, Folkestone Harbour (only on a charter train), Croxley Green, Ongar (if that counts) and probably quite a few more (especially abroad) - however my brain has packed up right now!

 

[4SRKT]

North Woolwich! Good call. I've done that one as well. Also used the low level platforms at West Ham on that line.

Ongar counts AFAICS. I would say that though, because it's just reminded me that I got Aldwych before it closed!

Do the current trains to Heysham run into the same platforms as they did before it closed in about 1975? If not then I've got Heysham as well (as a very small child). Also (very, very obscurely), there used to be a halt between Carrickfergus and Downshire in Northern Ireland called 'Barn', which I also used as a small child.

 

[EM2]

Holborn Viaduct
Kings Cross Thameslink
I'm pretty sure I did Dover Western Docks on a boat train in '93.

 

[Mike Redding]

If it counts, the Jubilee Line platforms at Charing Cross when in about 97/98

 

[Waddon]

Addiscombe, Waddon Marsh (and all the other stops on what is now Tramlink)
Kings Cross Thameslink
Moorgate + Barbican Thameslink line stations
The original Island Gardens DLR station
Holborn Viaduct, Coombe Road, Bingham Road (yes, I am that old)

 

[Aictos]

Not sure if it counts but the former Midland platforms at Moorgate, arrived on the last terminator and just missed the last train outbound.

Also Kings Cross Thameslink which I had to use when I first started with FCC and was using it to get to Blackfriars rather then use LUL services.

 

[jamesontheroad]

Belfast York Road: Surely the most squalid station in the world, and not missed by any right thinking person: yes, even more squalid than Wakefield Kirkgate!

Wow. Love the old non-slanting NIR logo and seventies modernist (i.e. car-bomb-proof) architecture...

http://www.geograph.ie/photo/498060

http://www.geograph.ie/photo/995115

 

[Oracle]

Hounslow West! So many memories of when it was a 3-track terminus.

 

[4SRKT]

Wow. Love the old non-slanting NIR logo and seventies modernist (i.e. car-bomb-proof) architecture...

http://www.geograph.ie/photo/498060

http://www.geograph.ie/photo/995115

I have a plastic plaque of this logo (gold on crimson lake) that once adorned a door in the NIR offices. Thanks for those photos BTW, that fair takes me back. What an awful place Belfast was in the 1980s. Do you remember how you weren't allowed on the platforms at manned NIR stations until the train arrived, presumably in case you tried to blow the place up? At York Road, this meant hanging around in that dimly lit waiting area on black plastic seats outside that dreadful newsagents shop. The only good to have come out of bored waits here (having caught a too-early Rail Link bus) is that it was where I discovered my love of Tayto crisps!

I've got loads of photos from that era. I really must get them scanned and uploaded.

 

[Jordy]

Kings Cross Thameslink and all the Oldham Loop ones, possibly more!

 

[theblackwatch]

Kings Cross Thameslink and all the Oldham Loop ones, possibly more!

Ditto for me, also Dover Western Docks, Folkestone Harbour (but only on a railtour), the previously mentioned Bradford Fozzy Bear (old station) and Aldwych. I'm sure there could be others, but I need a list of stations which have shut to go through.

 

[HSTfan!!!]

doesn't really count but I remember using barry island station, when the station buildings were still open there, I was very young!

 

[furryfeet]

Miles Platting

also Summerseat when I was very little, although it has now reopened under the ELR !

 

[Oracle]

I have been though on Boat Trains (shows age) Dover Marine, Folkestone Harbour, Newhaven Harbour Marine..

 

[4SRKT]

I have been though on Boat Trains (shows age) Dover Marine, Folkestone Harbour, Newhaven Harbour Marine..

Through? Did you get wet when you came out the other end?

 

[Oracle]

Given my propensity to fall in rivers etc. when I was a kid, that was a very apt question!

I should add to the list North Weald, Bleak, sorry Blake, Hall, and Ongar plus Broad Street, Holborn Viaduct, Island Gardens...

 

[Capybara]

'Used' as in 'got on or off a train at' and not including stations which became parts of other networks (trams, preserved etc) and not including bits of stations which still exist (such as Moorgate) - Aldwych, Island Gardens, Leeds Central, King’s Cross Thameslink, North Woolwich, Silvertown, Bradford Exchange.

 

[Waddon]

not including bits of stations which still exist (such as Moorgate) - Aldwych, Island Gardens, Leeds Central, King’s Cross Thameslink, North Woolwich, Silvertown, Bradford Exchange.

I would debate whether North Woolwich still exists. No trains stop there any more, the line is severed, there are no plans to reuse it for any railway purpose and the nearest alternate rail service is a good walk away. Yes, some bits of infrastructure remain, but is this enough to say it still exists? On this basis, you could say that, for example, Bath Green Park is still an existing railway station.

Also, the old Island Gardens station, despite having the same name, was an elevated station in a different location from the new underground one, on a completely different route alignment, so i'd say its fair to say this station no longer exists.

 

[Capybara]

Sorry, I perhaps explained myself badly. I was excluding stations like Moorgate from my list because even though the Thameslink platforms are no longer used, the rest of the station is. My list is purely stations which I have used but which are no longer used as stations whether they still exist or not.

 

[4SRKT]

I would say that Bradford Exchange doesn't still exist. No part of the original station is incorporated into the current arrangements. Bradford Forster Square likewise.

Was any city so graced with magnificent stations as Bradford, and yet now has some of the crappiest railway infrastructure imaginable for a place of its size? It's a kind of metaphor for the whole city IYAM.

 

[Jag123]

Being quite young, the only closed stations I've travelled to/from are Garston and Allerton in Liverpool, now merged as Liverpool South Parkway.

 

[4SRKT]

The way to get good at this game is to predict what's going to close, and then go there. I missed my chance with Clayton West in 1983, despite being fully aware that it wasn't going to last much longer

 

[theblackwatch]

The way to get good at this game is to predict what's going to close, and then go there. I missed my chance with Clayton West in 1983, despite being fully aware that it wasn't going to last much longer

I too missed out on Clayton West - I wasn't into doing lines back then. I've done a few lines/stations abroad which have now closed.

The predicting thing can also be applied to locos. I do kettles (someting else I've got into more recently), and try and ensure I go for ones I've not had before their boiler certificate expires. Again, I wish I'd got into them earlier, as Mallard, Evening Star and Butler Henderson (among others) are all required.

 

[yorksrob]

I would say that Bradford Exchange doesn't still exist. No part of the original station is incorporated into the current arrangements. Bradford Forster Square likewise.

Was any city so graced with magnificent stations as Bradford, and yet now has some of the crappiest railway infrastructure imaginable for a place of its size? It's a kind of metaphor for the whole city IYAM.

Absolutely true! I'd have loved to have been able to step off a 158 under the magnificent trainshed at Exchange. I suppose at least Exchange and Forster Square haven't been entoombed underground like some others

 

[4SRKT]

There's a really nice surprise lurking for the eagle eyed on one of the massive retaining walls at the old Bradford Exchange station. Just above one of the entrances (now leading to the courthouse) there's the remains of one of the old North Eastern Region orange signs reading 'Exchange Station'. The fact that these tatty remains are still there after 36 years is quite remarkable, although it does say quite a lot about the progress of regeneration in the city!

http://www.lostrailwayswestyorkshir...lroyd/Bradford/Bradford exchange 27-12-06.jpg

 

[curly42]

Far too many to list (Somersaet & Dorset for example) but one that I fondly remember was Thornton Junction -

http://david-j-smith.fotopic.net/p62109301.html

 

[starrymarkb]

North Woolwich and Ongar for me