Blackrod railway station

Infobox UK station
name = Blackrod
code = BLK

---

manager = Northern Rail
locale = Blackrod
borough = Bolton
start =
platforms = 2
usage0405 = 0.185
usage0506 = 0.208
usage0607 = 0.219

Blackrod railway station serves the village of Blackrod, 10 km (6.5 miles) north west of Bolton railway station, 2 km (1.5 miles) from the town centre of Horwich - closer indeed than Horwich Parkway station.

It lies on the Manchester-Preston Line, though only local services run by Northern Rail call here.

History

Blackrod was once the junction for a short branch to serve the original Horwich station (closed to passengers in 1965) and Horwich Locomotive works (sold in 1988, after which the line was closed & lifted). Until the 1980s, Blackrod had a poor frequency of service (see BR Timetable 1973 table 96), but for many years it has been a popular commuter station. Despite this the station remains totally unstaffed even though it has a patronage much higher than many staffed stations in Britain and more than two and a half times the level of use than the next station on the line (Adlington), which is at least staffed for part of the day. Furthermore despite its high usage, Blackrod has only an hourly service (compared with Lostock and Horwich Parkway's half-hourly service).

The station also has a signal box, the only one on the entire Manchester to Preston route. This has outlasted the others as it acts as the 'fringe' to both the Manchester Piccadilly signalling centre and Preston PSB. The train description system used in the Preston installation is incompatible with that installed at Piccadilly [cite web
url=http://www.blackrod.org.uk/signalbox.htm
title=Blackrod Station - Blackrod Junction Signalbox
publisher=www.blackrod.org.uk
accessdate=2008-10-04] so the signaller at Blackrod has to transfer train data manually from one system to the other as each one passes through his/her control area. A similar situation exists at Bromley Cross on the Bolton to Blackburn line, where the two control areas also overlap [cite web
url=http://www.signalbox.org/gallery/lm/bromleycross.htm
title=Bromley Cross signal box
publisher=www.signalbox.org
accessdate=2008-10-04] .

ervices

There is currently an hourly daytime service (including Sundays) to Manchester Piccadilly and Buxton southbound and to Preston and Blackpool northbound, with some additional Monday to Friday peak calls. However the December 2008 timetable changes will see the southbound service diverted to Manchester Victoria [cite web
url=http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/nrthrnrail-20sa-sch5-ed02.pdf
title=Passenger Train Slots
publisher=www.rail-reg.gov.uk
accessdate=2008-10-04] , although some weekday peak services will continue to run to/from Piccadilly as now.

References

External links

* [http://www.blackrod.org.uk Blackrod Station - Past & Present]

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