Guide Bridge railway station

Guide Bridge
265px Guide Bridge railway station, with a TransPennine Express Class 185 Desiro unit passing through.
Location
Place	Guide Bridge
Local authority	Tameside
Grid reference	SJ925975
Operations
Station code	GUI
Managed by	Northern Rail
Number of platforms	2
DfT category	E
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2004/05	130,173
2005/06	154,264
2006/07	147,375
2007/08	157,258
2008/09	208,760
2009/10	209,404
2010/11	247,980
2011/12	275,246
2012/13	254,200
2013/14	275,970
2014/15	280,584
History
Key dates	Opened 1841 (1841)
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Guide Bridge from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Tameside Lines

Legend To Oldham To Saddleworth Park Bridge Micklehurst Loop Mossley Micklehurst Oldham Road Staley and Millbrook To Manchester Droylsden Stalybridge Ashton Charlestown Ashton West Ashton-under-Lyne Ashton Moss Ashton Moss Audenshaw Ashton Park Parade Dukinfield Central Dukinfield and Ashton Droylsden Cemetery Road To Manchester Guide Bridge Hooley Hill Fairfield To Hyde Road Hyde North To Manchester x20px Flowery Field Denton Hyde Central Newton for Hyde To Marple Godley To Stockport Hattersley Broadbottom To Glossop/Hadfield

Guide Bridge railway station serves Guide Bridge, a part of Audenshaw, Tameside in Greater Manchester, England and is operated by Northern Rail. The station is 4¾ miles east of Manchester Piccadilly on the Glossop Line.

History

Guide Bridge junction in its 1912 context

File:Guide Bridge East Junction geograph-2170460-by-Ben-Brooksbank.jpg

Eastbound freight approaching Dewsnap Sidings at Guide Bridge East Junction in 1951

File:Guide Bridge 1967001 1.jpg

Guide Bridge station in 1967

Originally known as "Ashton and Hooley Hill", it was renamed "Ashton" in February 1842 and became "Guide Bridge" in July 1845. It was built by the Sheffield, Ashton-Under-Lyne and Manchester Railway on its new line from Ardwick Junction, near to the Manchester and Birmingham Railway's terminus at Store Street, (now Piccadilly) to Sheffield, opening on 11 November 1841 as far as Godley Toll Bar and finally reaching Sheffield on 14 July 1845.

The station originally had a 4 platform configuration with a large office on the southern side. However, the southern (former fast line) platforms were decommissioned and the tracks lifted in 1984/5 as part of layout alterations associated with the changeover from 1500V DC to 25KV AC working on the Hadfield line, with demolition of the buildings following a few years later. Today the area has been covered and used as access for the southern platform, but some evidence remains of the previous 2 tracks. The junction at the country end of the station has also been remodelled in 2011 to allow Stalybridge line trains to cross the junction at 30 mph (max) rather than 15 mph as previously.

Tickets can be obtained at the ticket office on the north side.

With the electrification of the Manchester–Sheffield (via Woodhead) line in the early 1950s, Guide Bridge, already a major centre of railway operations, increased in importance. Express trains called here, as well as EMU trains between Manchester London Road and the north Derbyshire towns of Glossop and Hadfield. There were also Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) services from Manchester London Road (Piccadilly) to Macclesfield, Stockport Edgeley to Stalybridge and to Oldham (via the Oldham, Ashton & Guide Bridge Railway, which closed to passengers in 1959). The station was also where Express Trains to and from Manchester Central on the London Marylebone route, changed locomotive. Drawn by a Bo-Bo or Co-Co Electric Locomotive from Sheffield, a Steam or in later years Diesel Locomotive would take the train the final few miles to Manchester Central and vice versa. The Woodhead Line was busy with freight traffic, especially with coal traffic from South Yorkshire to Lancashire power stations. The station also accepted freight under British Railways "Passenger" freight service and had a licensed Buffet.

There was a large marshalling yard about a mile east of Guide Bridge at Dewsnap. There was also a stabling point immediately to the east of Guide Bridge station where engines could be fuelled. Guide Bridge was also where the local Retail Coal Merchants transferred Coal from British Rail Coal wagons, carefully weighed into One Hundredweight sacks for delivery to homes around Ashton, Audenshaw and Denton.Express passenger trains via the Woodhead line ceased operation on 5 January 1970, but Dewsnap sidings and Guide Bridge stabling point were busy until the final closure of the Woodhead Line (east of Hadfield) on 20 July 1981. The Class 76 electric locomotives were a frequent sight here, along with Class 25, Class 40 and numerous others classes of diesels.

The former TransPennine Express operator, Arriva Trains Northern, had plans to establish Guide Bridge as a major interchange station, coupled with hopes that the Woodhead line might re-open. Such aspirations seem to have fallen by the wayside, however, since First/Keolis took over the TransPennine Express franchise.

On 22 October 2006 a fire gutted the waiting room, footbridge and ticket office. The fire has subsequently been attributed to arson and caused around £1m of damage to the station, necessitating the demolition of the footbridge. This has not been rebuilt, necessitating a lengthy walk out of the station and along the adjacent main road to change platforms.

In January 2009 the previously free car parking was abolished, with a daily charge of £3 being made. As a result, the once packed car park is now largely empty during the day.

Future

This station was proposed as being a possible stop of the railway company Grand Central Railway service running between London Euston & Bradford Interchange. However, due to the need to substantially rewrite the 2008 WCML timetable, in order to accommodate the additional services, the application was withdrawn in August 2008.

The levels of service on the Trans-Pennine route are likely to decrease in the next few years for the new Northern Hub proposals, with most long distance services diverted to run via their pre-1989 route via Ashton-under-Lyne & Manchester Victoria and the planned Ordsall Chord to reach Manchester Piccadilly (or onwards to Liverpool Lime Street via Chat Moss) . Some trains will though continue to run through Guide Bridge - these will serve the most local stations between Stalybridge & Manchester Piccadilly (calling at Guide Bridge, Gorton and/or Ashburys).

Services

The current service at Guide Bridge consists of a half-hourly Manchester Piccadilly - Hadfield EMU service (increasing to every 20 minutes during weekday peak periods) and a half-hourly (DMU) service between Piccadilly and Rose Hill Marple (see Northern Rail timetables 22 & 24 for details). There is a limited service after 19:00 each evening to Rose Hill, whilst the Glossop service drops to hourly after 21:00. Early morning, rush hour and late evening services start or terminate at Glossop.

On Sundays there is a half-hourly service to Hadfield but no service on the Rose Hill line.

The Stockport-Stalybridge Line DMU service, which had been an hourly operation, was almost entirely withdrawn when TransPennine services between Manchester and Leeds were re-routed from Manchester Victoria to serve Manchester Piccadilly in 1989. There was for a time a 16:08 Friday only "service" from Stalybridge to Guide Bridge whilst weekend engineering work was taking place in the Stockport area (in 2004), but currently the once-weekly "parliamentary" service on the route operates in the other direction (leaving Stockport at 9:22 and calling at 9:36, on Fridays only). This train is also unusual in that it arrives at Guide Bridge on the Manchester-bound platform before changing tracks after departure.

TransPennine trains are routed through Guide Bridge but do not stop there.

See also

• Audenshaw Junction rail crash

References

• Radford, B., (1988) Midland Though The Peak Unicorn Books

External links

• Train times and station information for Guide Bridge railway station from National Rail
• British Railways in 1960: Dunford Bridge to Manchester

Preceding station		National Rail		Following station
Hyde North		Northern Rail Hope Valley Line Mondays-Saturdays only		Fairfield
Flowery Field		Northern Rail Manchester-Glossop Line		Ashburys
				Gorton
Denton		Northern Rail Stockport-Stalybridge Line Fridays only		Stalybridge