Railway station

From Site

Cheadle Hulme railway station was built in 1845. It is located on Station Road, and it contains four platforms serving two lines, one serving Crewe to Manchester, and the other Stoke to Manchester. The platforms are all accessed via stairs (not the most accessible station!) – access to platforms 1 and 4 are to the left and right of the station respectively (next to Pimlott's butchers and The Cheadle Hulme), and access to platforms 2 and 3 is through the ticket office. This is due to be changed soon; see below. The station and the bridges are a regular item on the agenda for local partnership meetings and there are plans for the appearance of the bridges to be improved (though this has been ongoing for some years). During the financial year 2007/08 passengers used the station 424,000 times, an increase of 47,000 from the previous year. Services are provided by Northern Rail, though other trains pass through. There are three trains per hour to Stockport, Heaton Chapel, Levenshulme and Manchester Piccadilly, though this increases during peak periods and decreases on Sundays. In the other direction, trains run hourly on the Stafford line and serve Bramhall, Poynton, Adlington, Prestbury, Macclesfield, Congleton, Kidsgrove, Longport and Stoke-on-Trent stations. On the Crewe line, one train per hour serves Handforth, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge stations, and one train per hour serves the same stations and continues to Chelford, Goostrey, Holmes Chapel, Sandbach and Crewe. As with services to Manchester, the services varies depending on the time of day, and the day of the week.

Cheadle Hulme's original station was built in 1842 along the newly built line to Crewe, and the station house is now the white house behind the cottages on Hulme Hall Road near the bridge. It is easiest to see from Heathbank Road. In those days, the ticket office was a structure where tickets were sold from and signals were operated from on dark nights. Three years later, on 9 June 1845 to be precise, the new station was opened on Station Road where it is today. Both of these early stations were known as Cheadle, and our current one was only renamed with the opening of the (now-closed) Cheadle LNW railway station in 1866.

The station of 1845 was very different to today. The main difference, as can be seen in the photo on the left (taken in the 1900s), was the entrance and the site of the office and buildings. The original station, until the 1960s, was accessed by a set of stairs where the office and waiting rooms were located on the platform. There were no stairs accessing platform 1 or 4 - these were accessed using a footbridge which was taken down during the station's electrification. Which brings on the final point - the station of course had no electricity, being the middle of the 19th century. Otherwise, the position of the tracks and platforms are still essentially the same, though they have been replaced and remodelled over the years.

The station remained pretty much the same until the early 1960s, when traffic in the area began to cause the road under the bridge to become a bottleneck - it was far too narrow. To get a idea of what it was like, think of the bridge on Hulme Hall Road, and how narrow that is. There was no pavement on one side as well just like on Hulme Hall Road, something unimaginable considering how busy Station Road is today.

So in 1963 plans were made to widen the bridges, and at the same time it was decided to upgrade the station significantly. The line to Crewe had been electrified in 1960, and so the bridge to Stoke was upgraded first - it was widened to more than twice its original width, and made tall enough to allow double-decker buses to pass under it, something that had not been possible before.

It was during this renovation that tragedy occurred. Due to the work on the bridge, trains were forbidden to pass over it at their usual speed, and instead were given a 10mph limit. On 28 May 1964, a special train carrying a school group passed over the bridge at excessive speed, and was derailed causing the deaths of three people, and injuring 27 others. The driver of the train had been unaware of any restriction, and signs giving drivers warning of the restriction were apparently not clear enough. The derailment caused quite a bit of damage to the bridge and station.

Renovations to the second bridge began on 8 June 1965 in a similar fashion to the other bridge. The station began to be remodelled to look pretty much how it does today. The office was moved to where it is now, and the station buildings were demolished and replaced with new waiting shelters. The platforms were also rebuilt and the station was fitted with electric lights. The footbridge was removed and the current steps to the platforms were added. The line to Stoke was electrified in 1967, and that same year Station Road was rerouted too: the part behind the modern day Blockbuster was the original Station Road, and the part in front was farmland. The new road was wider allowing for the growing amount of traffic in the area.

In 1998 the station was given a £1.2 million makeover, and the junction was remodelled in 2000. The signal box was replaced by a central system based at Stockport station in the same year.

Future?

Plans are underway for a major upgrade to the station. It is proposed lifts to all platforms are installed, as well as a new footbridge to connect all the platforms. The office, which is not exactly wheelchair or buggy-friendly, is proposed to be moved next to platform 4.

External links

• Live departures, from National Rail
• The Cheadle Hulme partnership