A fantastic afternoons session spent at Ardwick station located adjacent to the West Coast Mainline just outside of Manchester Piccadilly where we see countless services from Northern, Cross Country, Avanti West Coast, Transpennine Express, East Midlands Railway, Transport For Wales and freight from GBRF.
This was my first time coming here after having it recommended it to me over the last couple of years and I can safely say I really enjoyed my time here and this is a station that I will be coming back to, my only gripe would be to have the foliage cut down to allow for better views when standing on the platform.
Joining me today was my good friend Sam who once again will be giving us his unique input into some parts of this film.
When standing up on the footbridge you get a great view of the city of Manchester aswell as an old railway viaduct that appears to run towards Manchester City football stadium, what I love about this is that you can see that the local businesses have made use of the archways and it really does add to the overall feel of the area, the run down nature of everything around this station gives it a real charm.
There isn't to much to tell about this station really, it was opened in 1842 by the Sheffield, Ashton-Under-Lyne and Machester Railway before becoming the property of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1847 when the company was acquired. The company eventually became the Grand Central Railway in 1897.
Because of its close proximity to the main station of Manchester and the fact that when the station was built it was located in one of the industrial areas of the city it meant that passenger numbers were always low and the station has never really made much in the way of money, it's one of the few stations in the UK that remains completely unstaffed. During the years of 2004-2005 the station only saw 285 passengers using it for transportation and as such the station was actually going to be closed permanently. However the reason why the station was kept and remains open is because local residents and passenger groups put in requests to Network Rail to keep the station going as they recon that the station can contribute to the local area by bringing in more business and improving the local area. The years of 2005-2006 saw 358 fare paying passengers.
My next station is actually going to be Colchester on the Great Eastern Mainline and not Romford, sadly Romford gets abandoned because of adverse weather conditions.
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