Holbeck railway station

Holbeck
Leeds-London passenger train passing Holbeck High Level in 1951
General information
Location	Holbeck, City of Leeds England
Coordinates	53.7932°N 1.5635°W / 53.7932; -1.5635
Grid reference	SE288330
Other information
Status	Disused
History
Original company	Leeds, Bradford and Halifax Junction Railway
Pre-grouping	Great Northern Railway
Post-grouping	London and North Eastern Railway
Key dates
2 July 1855[1]	High level platforms opened
1862[2]	Low level platforms opened
7 July 1958[3]	closed

Railway Clearing House diagram of lines in Leeds in 1913. Holbeck station is shown in the middle left.

Holbeck railway station was a railway station that served the district of Holbeck, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

Overview

Holbeck Station was opened by the Leeds, Bradford and Halifax Junction Railway almost a year after the other stations were opened on the line.^[4] It was unusual in that it had platforms on two different levels, with Holbeck High Level (HL) being a joint Great Northern Railway and Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway venture and Holbeck Low Level (LL) which was a joint Midland and North Eastern Railway venture.^[5] The designations of High Level and Low Level were added by British Rail in 1951.^[2]

Holbeck was a cramped station and suffered from trains awaiting paths into the various Leeds termini after being held at junctions on the approaches to and from Leeds. Passengers on the Midland/NER lines would simply stay on the train and change to another at Wellington station. This accelerated the demise of Holbeck station well before the Beeching closures affected the other stations on the lines that it served.^[6]

The station was closed to the public in 1958. The route on which trains ran through Holbeck High Level station to Leeds Central station closed in 1967, with the tracks subsequently being lifted and the bridge carrying the high level track over the low level removed.^[4]

Trains running along the Airedale, Wharfedale and Harrogate lines still pass the site of Holbeck Low Level station on their way in and out of Leeds station, although there is no clear indication of the former station that existed there.^[5]

Accidents and incidents

• On 27 July 1875, the boiler of a locomotive exploded.^[7]

Preceding station		Disused railways		Following station
Armley Moor or Beeston		Great Northern Railway		Leeds Central
Armley Canal Road		Midland Railway		Leeds Wellington or Leeds New

See also

• Holbeck Viaduct Project
• List of closed railway lines in Great Britain
• List of closed railway stations in Britain

References

1. "List of West Yorkshire passenger stations". lostrailwaysofwestyorkshire.co.uk. Archived from the original on 5 July 2017. Retrieved 21 August 2024.
2. Cobb, M. H. (2003). The railways of Great Britain : a historical atlas at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile vol. 2 (Rev. repr. 2005. ed.). Shepperton: Ian Allan Publishing. p. 396. ISBN 0-7110-3003-0.
3. Haigh, A J (2012). Railways in West Yorkshire. Xpress Publishing. p. 75. ISBN 978-1-901056-44-0.
4. Bairstow, Martin (1999). Great Northern railway in the West Riding. [S.l.]: Bairstow. p. 92. ISBN 1-871944-19-8.
5. Batty 1989, p. 101.
6. Batty 1989, p. 102.
7. Hoole, Ken (1983). Trains in Trouble: Vol. 4. Redruth: Atlantic Books. p. 310. ISBN 0 906899 07 9.

Bibliography

• Batty, Stephen (1989). Rail centres; Leeds/Bradford. Shepperton, Surrey, UK: Ian Allan. ISBN 0-7110-1821-9.