Rotherham Westgate railway station

Rotherham Westgate railway station was the eastern terminus of the five-mile long Sheffield and Rotherham Railway, the first passenger-carrying railway in the Sheffield area. Lying in central Rotherham on the Eastern bank of the River Don, it was a single platform terminus station that opened on 31 October 1838 and closed on 4 October 1952.

History

The original station building was a substantial stone affair on Westgate itself, from where passengers had to cross the tracks on a level pedestrian crossing to access the platform. At the end of the 19th century this situation was remedied by giving the station access to Main Street and building a temporary wooden station building there with direct access to the platform. This became became known by the townsfolk as the "Rabbit Hutch" and was subject of some local complaint as not being fit for a town as important as Rotherham. The old station building became variously the GPO, a Labour Exchange and finally passed back into railway hands as a line control office. [Pixton, B (2001). "North Midland: Portrait of a Famous Route: Part Two: Chesterfield-Sheffield-Rotherham". Cheltenham: Runpast. ISBN 1-870-75451-4]

The River was crossed by the means of a 300ft wooden bridge over which the station platform extended and then the line passed over the former Great Central Railway's line through Rotherham Central, and ran immediately south of Rotherham United's Millmoor ground (leading to its southern stand being named 'Railway End').

Following the opening of the North Midland Railway between Leeds and Derby a new through station about half-a-mile from the town centre known as "Masbrough and Rotherham" was opened, which later became Rotherham Masborough railway station. A junction was laid connecting this north-south line to the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway at Holmes, giving the North Midland access to the Wicker terminal of the S&R in Sheffield. The Sheffield and Rotherham eventually became part of the Midland Railway following amalgamations in 1844. The fact that the Midland also operated the much larger Masborough station in the town could have relegated Westgate to being a backwater, however Westgate was much more central to the town, and the standard service pattern on the Midland line was for some Sheffield-Nottingham, Sheffield-Derby and Sheffield-Manchester local trains to start at Rotherham Westgate and run through Sheffield Midland calling at all stations on the way: this kept Westgate as a busy and important station right up to its closure.

Closure

By the middle of the twentieth century, trains to Westgate still passed over the 1830s vintage wooden bridge to call at the supposedly temporary wooden station buildings. It was the need to replace the by now decrepit bridge that prompted BR to close the station on 4 October 1952 ["ibid."] . At the end of its life, passengers were not allowed on to the portion of platform on the bridge and trains were not allowed to stand on the bridge. Freight continued for a few years until the bridge was in no fit state to carry any trains and was demolished. The station lay derelict for nearly two decades, with the wooden buildings being used to store dismantled market stalls (the site of the town's market was opposite the station at the time), until 1970 when the site was cleared and new Post Office sorting centre built that remains to this day. In the late 1960s the remaining part of the railway alignment was severed by a new road, but West of this the branch still remains serving Booth's scrapyard.

References

External links

* [http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/5DFCE422-BC30-4B28-BF7C-58F4E06040C3/0/Aerialview.jpgAerial photo from the mid-1950s] shows the derelict Westgate station bottom left, after its closure to passengers but before its closure to freight.