Denton Railway Station has the honour of being the least used in Britain which just forty six people using it in 2018/19 according to figures out today from the Office of Road and Rail Transport.

It shares the honour with Stanlow & Thornton in Cheshire while Reddish South which stands on the same line as nearby neighbour, the Stockport to Stalybridge line which has two trains a week.

Stanlow & Thornton station meanwhile,stands on the Ellesmere Port to Warrington line, and wwas built to serve the nearby refinery. Three trains a day call at the station in either direction.

At the other end of the scale, nine of the ten most used stations are in London with Waterloo topping the bill with 74.7 million people.Manchester Piccadilly was ranked thirteenth with 30.3 million just behind Glasgow and Leeds with Birmingham New Street the most used outside of London with 48 million.

Denton can look back to its grand old days.It was opened in October 1882 as a response to Denton’s booming population and their demand to explore Britain by train as well as the need to transport large quantities of manufactured goods around the country. Many thousands of passengers used Denton to travel to Blackpool, Scarborough and a 16 times daily service to London Euston

The development of Denton Roundabout and the M60 in the years after 1970 shifted focus away from the Station, making the platform difficult to access, obscured from view and the resulting drop in passenger numbers was used to justify government and private operators’ decisions drastically cut services.

In the early 1990s, Sainsbury’s Denton tarmaced over the old goods yard and two of the four lines were torn up leaving the station with the current ‘ghost train’ to Stalybridge.

It stays open as does the line as the train service that stops at Reddish South, Denton and Guide Bridge Stations is known as a Parliamentary Train operating a Parliamentary Service. In reality it is a  token service to the given stations and line for the purpose of maintaining that the stations and line in question are open.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here