Corkickle railway station

Corkickle National Rail
Location
Place Whitehaven
Local authority Copeland
Grid reference NX977174
Operations
Station code CKL
Managed by Northern
Number of platforms 1
DfT category F2
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections
from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2010/11 Decrease 22,986
2011/12 Increase 29,294
2012/13 Increase 30,066
2013/14 Increase 31,312
2014/15 Increase 40,522
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Corkickle from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Corkickle Railway Station serves the Whitehaven suburb of Corkickle in Cumbria, England. The railway station is a request stop on the scenic Cumbrian Coast Line 42 miles (68 km) south west of Carlisle. The station opened in 1855[1] and is at the southern end of the 3,999-foot (1,219 m) tunnel from Whitehaven railway station. At times it was known as 'Whitehaven Corkickle' station.[1][2]

It is operated by Northern who provide all passenger train services.

Facilities

The single platform station has kept its main building, but this is now in private residential use. Shelters and train information boards are sited near the main entrance, which has step-free access from the approach road.[3] There are timetable posters and a telephone to provide train running information.

Service

Monday to Saturdays there is an irregular service (hourly for parts of the day, less frequent at other times) northbound to Carlisle and southbound to Barrow-in-Furness. There are no trains after 20.00 on Mondays-Saturdays and no Sunday service.[4]

The Corkickle Brake

In 1881 the Corkickle Brake, an inclined wagonway 525 yards (480 m) in length and with gradients of between 1 in 5.2 and 1 in 6.6 was built from the Furness Railway main line, a short distance to the south of Corkickle station, to the Earl of Lonsdale's Croft Pit.[5] The 'brake' closed in 1931 due to the worsening financial situation of the colliery's owners, Lonsdale's Whitehaven Colliery Co.[5] In May 1955, the incline was re-opened, this time to serve the factory of Marchon Products - a subsidiary of Albright and Wilson - at Kells. It was used mainly to haul rail tanker wagons containing sulphuric acid from the main line - by now in the ownership of British Railways - to the Marchon factory. The Corkickle Brake closed for good on 31 October 1986 and the task of transporting the acid and other chemicals was taken over by road tankers.[6]

Freight

The area immediately south of the station was for many years a busy freight location, handling haematite ore traffic from Moor Row mine as well as the aforementioned chemical tankers up & down the incline at the nearby Preston Street goods depot (the one time W&FJR passenger terminus) and associated yard.[7] Two signal boxes (Corkickle No. 1 & No. 2)[8][9] supervised the sidings, as well as controlling access to and from the incline and the Moor Row branch (the surviving portion of the former Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway line to Egremont & Sellafield). Although sufficiently busy to require its own resident shunting locomotive well into the 1970s, the gradual loss of traffic from the early 1980s onwards saw facilities run down and following the demise of Preston Street depot, the yard eventually closed (along with both signal boxes, which had been replaced by standard LMR-designed structures in 1958-59)[10] on 15/16 February 1997.[11] Today no trace remains of the sidings or either signal box, only the one surviving running line southwards towards St Bees & Sellafield.

Notes

  1. 1 2 Quick 2009, p. 410.
  2. ↑ British Railways (1957/8)
  3. ↑ Corkickle station facilities National Rail Enquiries; Retrieved 2 December 2016
  4. ↑ GB Rail Timetable (May 2016), Table 100
  5. 1 2 Quayle (2006), p.60
  6. ↑ Quayle (2006), p.61-65
  7. ↑ Class 25s - Around BarrowDerby Sulzers, Retrieved 2013-10-03
  8. ↑ D. Allen and C.J. Woolstenholmes, A Pictorial Survey of London Midland Signalling, OPC, 1996, p. 123. ISBN 0-86093-523-X
  9. ↑ British Railways Layout Plans of the 1950s, Vol.6 West Coast Main Line (Euxton Junction to Mossband) and branches.Signalling Record Society 1993, p.44. ISBN 1-873228-05-8.
  10. ↑ Quayle (2006), p.85.
  11. ↑ Quayle (2006), p.93.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Corkickle railway station.
Preceding station   National Rail   Following station
Northern
Cumbrian Coast Line
Mondays-Saturdays only

Coordinates: 54°32′31″N 3°34′55″W / 54.542°N 3.582°W / 54.542; -3.582

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