Trivia: Most Isolated / Exposed Station

[RichmondCommu]

G'day everyone,

I think the title speaks for itself. I've started the thread here because I'm very much aware that many of the most isolated, if not perhaps the most isolated stations were closed decades a go.

My nomination is Parsley Hay on the long closed Buxton to Ashbourne line. The location is very exposed and in winter can be down right nasty. The signal box survived longer than the station itself and once the platforms had been removed carpet was placed around the lever frame to try and combat the icy blast.

Any suggestions / contributions would be gratefully received!

Kind regards,

Richmond Commuter!

 

[HMS Ark Royal]

I shall open proceedings with Newhaven Marine

Joking aside, I'd say that Berney Arms would have to be a winner here - maybe Redcar British Steel a close second

 

[341o2]

I'd nominate the former Londodderry & Lough Swilly (NI) which had extentions to Burtonport and Cardonagh. At Owencarrow viaduct, on the way to Burtonport a train was blown off the rails, afterwards when high wind speeds were forecast only stock ballasted with concrete slabs was permitted to run over this section

http://www.derryjournal.com/news/end-of-an-era-as-the-lough-swilly-bus-company-closes-its-doors-for-the-last-time-1-6034462

Quote. End of an era as company runs its last buses in 2014.

There was also a great detour, which avoided any major towns on route, with stations in the middle of nowhere, all to save money. It was said in years gone by the Swilly stopped where nobody lived.


There is the one which I first heard of regarding the old Ghan line in Australia regarding the pregnant woman being told she shouldn't have boarded this train in her condition

"When I did, I wasn't"

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Altnabreac?

 

[Scouseinmanc]

Loch Skerrow Halt - Dumfries & Galloway (closed 1963)

 

[D6975]

Got to be Corrour.
Middle of a windswept Scottish moor without road access.

 

[talltim]

Karskaya station, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

 

[LowLevel]

Thorpe Culvert is pretty bleak in a storm. The winds get so high that the nearby Lymm Bank and Brewster Lane AOCL-B crossings tend to fail because they can't get the newly installed barriers up and down.

Same applies to Shippea Hill.

 

[talltim]

Thorpe Culvert is pretty bleak in a storm. The winds get so high that the nearby Lymm Bank and Brewster Lane AOCL-B crossings tend to fail because they can't get the newly installed barriers up and down.

Same applies to Shippea Hill.

Probably lucky that Collision Gate ends just before a level crossing...

 

[Calthrop]

I'd nominate the former Londodderry & Lough Swilly (NI) which had extentions to Burtonport and Cardonagh

Dare I suggest (my bolded, above): a deliberate typo? One does gather that in their declining years, certain parts of the L&LSR were indeed in a fairly doddery state .

At Owencarrow viaduct, on the way to Burtonport a train was blown off the rails, afterwards when high wind speeds were forecast only stock ballasted with concrete slabs was permitted to run over this section

http://www.derryjournal.com/news/end-of-an-era-as-the-lough-swilly-bus-company-closes-its-doors-for-the-last-time-1-6034462

Quote. End of an era as company runs its last buses in 2014.

There was also a great detour, which avoided any major towns on route, with stations in the middle of nowhere, all to save money. It was said in years gone by the Swilly stopped where nobody lived.

Oddly enough, I have just been re-reading the late J.I.C. Boyd’s Saga by Rail: Ireland – author’s reminiscences of gricing in Ireland, chiefly on 3 ft. gauge scenes thereof, over several decades commencing 1930s. Boyd as a very young man had the amazing good fortune to travel over the “Swilly’s” Burtonport extension in its entirety, in summer 1939 – a year on from this experience, the Gweedore – Burtonport section would be gone for good.

In his description of the run he mentions repeatedly the, in the main, great unpopulatedness and wildness of the country traversed. His apparently perceived “ Most Isolated / Exposed champion” was Cashelnagore station, the extension’s highest at 420 ft. “Such was the emptiness of its surroundings that I wondered how it attracted any business. Here and there among the featureless scene would be a small white cottage or cabin.”

Boyd intimates that his outward journey over the Extension was an ordeal as well as a delight. The coaches on the Letterkenny – Burtonport mixed train were in a run-down, ill-maintained state which made travel in them uncomfortable. The train left Letterkenny something after its 1815 booked departure time, and lost time en route: the later stages of the journey (arriving Burtonport more than an hour past the booked 2100 arrival time) were – even in midsummer – pitch-dark and cold. The author’s return run on the following morning’s 0830 departure, all the way to Londonderry via Tooban Junction, was rather more pleasant.

 

[Kite159]

Swale, you wouldn't want to be there during a storm as there is no shelter.

 

[341o2]

the typo wasn't deliberate. My computer slowed to a crawl, after trying to edit a name to read "Londonderry", I gave up and shut down the computer.

The Irish NG surely will yield several other examples as these lines were financed in order to improve communications, now all gone.

Another nomination is the former SR system the "withered arm" west of Exeter. Port Isaac rd and St Kew Highway were crossing places rather than serving a specific community. Halwill was just a few farmhouses as weere stations like Hole and Hatherliegh on the grandly named North Devon and cornwall junction Light Railway between Torrington and Halwill

 

[RichmondCommu]

From what I've read Barras station on the Stainmore line was a bleak old place when the weather started to close in.

 

[Scouseinmanc]

Was trying to find one in Wales - Dovey Junction is pretty remote, no road access.

Same for the closed Three Cocks & Talylyn Junction stations. Merely changing points on the GWR network

 

[tsr]

None of you have ever been to London Bridge at 0530 on a windy Bank Holiday morning in the middle of winter, have you? Bleak, deathly quiet and freezing cold would be an adequate description.

 

[steamybrian]

Was trying to find one in Wales - Dovey Junction is pretty remote, no road access.

Same for the closed Three Cocks & Talylyn Junction stations. Merely changing points on the GWR network

Dduallt on the Ffestiniog Railway..

 

[WessexEclectic]

Karskaya station, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Surely there must be a railway version of the Pole of Inaccessibility?...

 

[Calthrop]

The Irish NG surely will yield several other examples as these lines were financed in order to improve communications, now all gone.

Picture is got, that the Tralee & Dingle ran through some spectacularly empty scenes. A recent visit (my first of any length, to our "neighbour island") to the northern parts of Ireland, suggests to me that Ireland anywhere, basically does not "do" villages in the way that anyway England and Wales, do: Ireland has towns of various sizes; but outside those, it's mostly farmsteads spread rather widely apart, identified by "townlands" -- with folk not clustering together in what we see as villages. Superficial impression, maybe wrong -- and maybe, before the 1840s famine and its consequent depopulation of Ireland, things were different.

I'd have the feeling (again, maybe wrongly) that the above-described situation was likely never a good one as regards making money from rail branch-line passenger services.

Halwill was just a few farmhouses as weere stations like Hole and Hatherliegh on the grandly named North Devon and cornwall junction Light Railway between Torrington and Halwill

I do like the Torrington -- Halwill Jun. line's intermediate stop, names -- who could resist a station called "Hole"? Plus, same line's Watergate Halt, further north -- if only passenger services on the branch could have lasted till 1973, hilarity would have ensued.

 

[Harbornite]

I would have said Dovey junction, but it has already been mentioned.

 

[Ianno87]

Not isolated as such, but the Up platform at Burntisland looks like it is very much exposed to the winds on the Firth of Forth. Never been there on a stormy day, mind...

 

[Shimbleshanks]

Bidston?

 

[TheEdge]

Ipswich. Miles and miles from any semblance of civilisation!

 

[Islineclear3_1]

Doleham? (On the Marshlink)

Oh yes, I second London Bridge in the freezing winter....

 

[DerekC]

From what I've read Barras station on the Stainmore line was a bleak old place when the weather started to close in.

Barras has my vote, too. But the bleakness in winter must have been compensated by the spectacular view down the Eden Valley,

 

[Taunton]

As this is the history page, Birkenhead Park, which until 1938 was a compulsory change between the electric Mersey Railway and the connecting steam services onwards to New Brighton/West Kirby, was known locally as "Pneumonia Junction". I can't quite see it though, for being down in a cutting with curved approaches it must have been more sheltered than most.

Particular types of exposed stations are those elevated at high level, and also single island platforms with tracks round the outside and no buildings to act as a windbreak (hence Bidston, above). In London, the upper DLR platform at Canning Town combines both these attributes, and for a system much on viaducts is definitely the worst.

 

[Ianno87]

As this is the history page, Birkenhead Park, which until 1938 was a compulsory change between the electric Mersey Railway and the connecting steam services onwards to New Brighton/West Kirby, was known locally as "Pneumonia Junction". I can't quite see it though, for being down in a cutting with curved approaches it must have been more sheltered than most.

Particular types of exposed stations are those elevated at high level, and also single island platforms with tracks round the outside and no buildings to act as a windbreak (hence Bidston, above). In London, the upper DLR platform at Canning Town combines both these attributes, and for a system much on viaducts is definitely the worst.

Cornbrook (Manchester Metrolink) has very similar attributes, and is legendary for its windiness. It is also the main interchange between most of the network's southern branches.

 

[Shimbleshanks]

Shotton High Level? (Or anywhere in Shotton for that matter...)
CL

 

[Comstock]

What about the station they visited in Trainspotting? Ranoch Moor was it?

 

[Lankyline]

Obviously not isolated, but the way the weather is going, it can't be long before Dawlish is considered as exposed.

 

[47271]

Exposed in a different sort of way, but I'm convinced that there's no colder place to wait for a train than Glasgow Queen Steet Low Level. Somehow a freezing easterly wind can really shift along the tunnel from High Street...