Marsden railway station serves the village of Marsden near

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confl ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a Metropolitan counties of England, metropolitan and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and east, South Yorkshire and De ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The station is on the Huddersfield Line, operated by Northern and is about west of Huddersfield station. It was opened in 1849 by the

London & North Western Railway The London and North Western Railway (LNWR, L&NWR) was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. In the late 19th century, the LNWR was the largest joint stock company in the world. Dubbed the "Premier Line", the LNWR's main line connec ...

and is the last station before the

boundary with

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Derbyshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Cheshire to the south, and Merseyside to the west. Its largest settlement is the city of Manchester. ...

. The station is operated by

Northern Trains Northern Trains, Trade name, trading as Northern, is a British train operating company that operates Commuter rail, commuter and Inter-city rail, medium-distance intercity services in the North of England. It is owned by DfT Operator for the Dep ...

, but only

Transpennine Express TransPennine Trains Limited, trading as TransPennine Express (TPE), is a British train operating company that has operated passenger services in the TransPennine Express franchise area since May 2023. It runs regional and inter-city rail ser ...

trains call here.

Description

The station has three platforms which have each their own entrance and exit. Platforms 1 and 2 (which were once an

island platform An island platform (also center platform (American English) or centre platform (British English)) is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway inte ...

) are accessed by separate flights of stairs from the road over bridge which crosses the line to the west of the station. Platform 3 is accessed from the same road by a bridge across the nearby canal. Only platform 3 (which was built on the former Up Goods Loop in the mid-1980s by

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

) has step-free access to the street. Other than simple shelters on the platforms, there are no station buildings and the station is unstaffed. Train running information can be obtained via digital information screens, timetable posters and telephone. The station did have two additional platforms up until the mid-1960s (the current platform 2 having an outer face, with the fourth side platform standing where platform 3 is now) when the line was quadruple all the way from Huddersfield to Diggle Junction, but these were decommissioned when the main line was reduced to two tracks in 1966. The station avoided closure in the wake of the 1968 cutbacks that claimed many others on this section of route, but for some years acted as the terminus for local stopping trains from the Leeds direction (hence the provision of signalling that allows trains to start back east from platforms 2 & 3) and had no regular service towards Stalybridge and Manchester. The station is situated about to the east of the entrance to the Standedge rail and canal tunnels. The tunnel entrance, with its exhibition and boat trips, can easily be reached by walking along the

towpath A towpath is a road or trail on the bank of a river, canal, or other inland waterway. The purpose of a towpath is to allow a land vehicle, Working animal, beasts of burden, or a team of human pullers to tow a boat, often a barge. This mod ...

of the

Huddersfield Narrow Canal The Huddersfield Narrow Canal is an Navigability, inland waterway in northern England. It runs just under from Lock 1E at the rear of the University of Huddersfield campus, near Aspley, West Yorkshire, Aspley Basin in Huddersfield, to the ju ...

, which runs adjacent to the station. The station's former goods yard is now the headquarters of the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

Marsden Moor Estate The Marsden Moor Estate is a large expanse of moorland in the South Pennines, between the conurbations of West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester in the north of England. It is named after the adjacent town of Marsden, and is owned and administ ...

, and the goods shed contains a public exhibition, ''Welcome to Marsden'', which gives an overview of the area and its transport history. There was formerly another area of sidings situated to the south of the railway and canal, to the west of the station, which was originally built to accommodate the heavy traffic generated during the building of the

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

s in the nearby Wessenden Valley. The steeply graded Huddersfield Corporation Waterworks Railway connected these sidings to the reservoir works. The area is now a heavily wooded country park, but an

abutment An abutment is the substructure at the ends of a bridge span or dam supporting its superstructure. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end that provide vertical and lateral support for the span, as well as acting as retaining walls ...

of the long demolished bridge by which the waterworks railway crossed the River Colne can still be found amongst the vegetation.

Services

From Monday to Sunday, Marsden is served by an hourly stopping

TransPennine Express TransPennine Trains Limited, trading as TransPennine Express (TPE), is a British train operating company that has operated passenger services in the TransPennine Express franchise area since May 2023. It runs regional and inter-city rail ser ...

service between

Manchester Piccadilly Manchester Piccadilly is the main railway station of the city of Manchester, in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, England. Opened originally as Store Street in 1842, it was renamed Manchester London Road in 1847 and became Manchest ...

and . Since the winter 2023 timetable was introduced, a limited number of these are extended through to and via Castleford on weekdays and Saturdays. All other TransPennine Express services pass through at high speed and do not stop. While

operate the station, Northern services do not operate west of Huddersfield and thus do not serve it.

21st Century upgrade

As part of the

Transpennine Route Upgrade The Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) is a major investment being made in the railway between York and Manchester ''via'' Leeds and Huddersfield in the north of England. It is the northern route over the Pennines, most of which is also known a ...

, the station is being modified and the line through it electrified. The section between Stalybridge to Huddersfield is being split up as follows: * W2b – Stalybridge to Marsden * W2c – Marsden to Huddersfield

References

External links

*
A walk between Marsden Station and Standedge Tunnel
from TripsByTrain.com {{Railway stations served by TransPennine Express Railway stations in Kirklees DfT Category F1 stations Former London and North Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1849 Railway stations served by TransPennine Express 1849 establishments in England

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

Railway stations in Great Britain not served by their managing company