Guide Bridge railway station

Guide Bridge Add→{{rail-interchange}}
General information
Location	Tameside
Managed by	Northern
Platforms	2
Other information
Station code	GUI
History
Opened	1841

Railway lines in Tameside
Oldham Lines to Oldham Oldham Lines to Saddleworth Mossley Micklehurst Loop Park Bridge Micklehurst Oldham Road Staley and Millbrook Manchester Lines North to Manchester Victoria Stalybridge Droylsden Ashton-under-Lyne Ashton West Ashton-under-Lyne Ashton Moss Ashton Park Parade Audenshaw (1st station) Ashton Moss Audenshaw Dukinfield and Ashton Droylsden Dukinfield Central Cemetery Road Metrolink to Manchester Piccadilly Guide Bridge Audenshaw (2nd station) Fairfield Manchester Lines South to Hyde Road Flowery Field Manchester Lines North to Manchester Piccadilly Hyde North Denton Hyde Central Stockport Lines to Stockport Newton for Hyde to Marple Godley Hattersley Broadbottom Glossop lines to Glossop & Hadfield

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

History

Guide Bridge junction in its 1912 context

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

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. The area has been covered and used as access for the southern platform, but some evidence remains of the previous two tracks. The junction at the country end of the station was also 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 south 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 (via Rose Hill Marple - closed in January 1970), 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 TransPennine Express took over the 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. A new single-storey ticket office has though been provided as part of a £1.7million revamp of the station, along with improved lighting, an extended car park with 140 spaces, CCTV cameras and cycle storage lockers. The new facilities were commissioned in December 2014, with an official opening attended by the Minister of State for Transport Baroness Kramer.

In January 2009, the previously free car parking was abolished, with a daily charge of £3 being introduced. As a result, the once busy car park largely fell quiet. A subsequent review was taken, following complaints from neighbouring residents, with backing of local councillors over the re-distribution of cars once parked on the ample station facility to the surrounding residential streets with charging dismissed soon afterwards.

Future

This station was proposed as being a possible stop of the railway company Grand Central Railway service running between London Euston and 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 and 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 and 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 timetables 22 and 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 9:37, 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 Express services 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 Hope Valley Line Mondays-Saturdays only		Fairfield
Flowery Field		Northern Manchester-Glossop Line		Ashburys
				Gorton
Denton		Northern Stockport-Stalybridge Line Fridays only		Stalybridge