Malton railway station
serves the towns of Malton
and Norton-on-Derwent
in North Yorkshire,
England
. It is currently operated by
First TransPennine Express who
provide all passenger train services.
Services
The typical Monday-Saturday off-peak service is:
On Sundays this is reduced to:
- 1
train per 2 hours (tp2h) to Liverpool, calling at York, Garforth
, Leeds and then as above
- 1 tp2h to Scarborough as above
A half-hourly service, with timetable and fares integration with
Yorkshire Coastliner buses, has been suggested as a means of
providing relief to the parallel A64 trunk road that would be
considerably cheaper than the option of dual carriageway (
Campaign for Better Transport and
Gazette & Herald letters)
History
At
present, the station is only served by trains between Scarborough
and York (and beyond), however prior to the Beeching Axe Malton station was also served by
the Pickering Branch of the York and North Midland
Railway with trains heading north (diverging at Rillington
junction
) to Pickering
and then onwards to Grosmont
and Whitby
. This
line closed entirely north of Pickering in 1965, with a
freight-only service to Pickering surviving until 1966.
Though
trains still run from Pickering to Grosmont as part of the
preserved North York Moors
Railway, the tracks between Rillington
, where the line branched, and Pickering have since
been lifted.
Up until
1958 the Malton &
Driffield Railway, with trains heading south to Driffield
, survived for freight and the occasional
(summer-only) through excursion to the coast, after 1958 these
excursion trains had to reverse at Scarborough Road junction on the
easterly edge of Malton, back down towards Malton station before
reversing again and heading off to Scarborough
. Prior to 1950 there had been a passenger
service nicknamed the 'Driffield Dodger' between Malton and
Driffield.
As an interchange between three lines, Malton station would
therefore have been considerably busier than it is now.
Though
Malton station now only has one platform in use, at its peak there
were two through platforms, plus an additional bay platform serving
(mainly) Whitby local
trains. The
George
Townsend Andrews overall roof was removed in 1989 and replaced
by the canopy recovered from the Whitby platform.
One of Malton stations claim to fame was the novel solution adopted
to allow passengers to access the second (island) platform, instead
of a footbridge or barrow crossing the
NER installed a removable section
of platform, in the form of a wheeled trolley running on rails set
at right-angles to the (single) running line. When a train required
to use the platform the trolley was wheeled back under the up
(York) platform; the trolley was interlocked with the signals
giving access to the platform.
Until
Northern Rail took over in 2004,
Arriva Trains Northern did
have services that stopped at Malton, the current York
to Blackpool
service used to continue to Scarborough alongside TransPenninexpress services. This
service was usually worked by a Metro liveried
Class 158 DMU, occasionally a
Class 155 DMU.
There was also a
local service from York to Scarborough usually worked by a Pacer DMU or a Class
156.
Future
There have been talks of reopening the old line between Rillington
Junction and Pickering for some years - most notably in 2003 - but
no attempt has come to fruition.
There is a
petition on 10 Downing Street to reopen the line and
upgrade the North Yorkshire Moors railway to cope with higher
speeds (40 to 50mph as opposed to 25mph), to improve transport in
the region, and to provide relief for the A64 more cheaply than
dualling it in its entirety. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway
eventually have plans to extend the line beyond Pickering to
Malton, dependent on the level crossing at Pickering being
re-instated .
References
External links
, calling at York
, Leeds
, Huddersfield
, Stalybridge
, Manchester Piccadilly
, Manchester Oxford Road
, Birchwood
and Warrington Central
, calling at Seamer
Wikis
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