Trains to Whitehaven - Station Details and further Information on Whitehaven Train Services
Whitehaven Railway Station is a train station serving the town of Whitehaven in Cumbria, England. It is a stop on the scenic Cumbrian Coast Line 39 miles south west of Carlisle.
It is operated by Northern Rail who provide all passenger train services. A new transport interchange is planned as part of a new development with Tesco. A brand new bus station and platforms are included in the plans. Whitehaven is now one of Northern Rail's top rural stations showing year-on-year passenger and revenue growth.
The station (which was opened by the Whitehaven Junction Railway in 1847) formerly had four operational platforms, but today only two remain in use (the former platforms three and four having lost their tracks in the mid eighties). The double line from Parton becomes single opposite the station signal box (which still bears the original station name Whitehaven Bransty) and then splits into two - one runs into platform one (a bay used by most terminating services from Carlisle) and other runs into platform two, which is the through line to Sellafield and beyond. Trains heading south must collect a token for the single line section to St Bees from a machine on the platform (with permission from the signaller) before they can proceed. Conversely trains from Barrow must surrender the token upon arrival, the driver returning it to the machine before departing for Workington. Only then can the signaller allow another train to enter the single line section.
The line then passes through the 1219m long Bransty Tunnel to pass beneath the town on its way south. The route onwards from here was opened in 1850 by the Whitehaven & Furness Junction Railway, which later became part of the Furness Railway.
Following the recent timetable change, there have been modest improvements to the weekday service from the station. There is an hourly service northwards to Carlisle for much of the day (with one or two longer gaps in the late afternoon) and also southwards to Barrow-in-Furness from mid-morning until early evening (ten trains per day in total). Four of the latter continue via the Furness Line to Lancaster. One train from the Carlisle direction runs through from Newcastle, but there is currently no corresponding service in the opposite direction.
On Sundays, three trains a day run to and from Carlisle but there is no service to Barrow.
A Sunday service over the whole length of the Coastal route is set to operate on a one-off basis on Sunday 27th September 2009 (first time a revenue earning passenger service has operated south of Whitehaven since May 1976) to celebrate the ACoRP Community Rail Festival which is being held in Carlisle over that weekend. If the Sunday service is a success, Northern hope to gain funding to operate a Barrow-Carlisle Sunday service during the Summer months from 2010. |
