Ardwick railway station

Ardwick railway station serves the industrial area of Ardwick, in east Manchester, England; it is located about one mile (1.5 km) south-east of Manchester Piccadilly, on both the Glossop line and Hope Valley line. Plans to close the station permanently were shelved in 2006, due to increasing activity in the area. From the December 2023 timetable, the station has just one train calling per day on Mondays-Saturdays.

History
Ardwick station was opened by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway in 1842 and became part of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway following mergers in 1847; that company changed its name to the Great Central Railway in 1897. The station became a junction between the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and the London and North Eastern Railway under the Grouping of 1923, and passed to the London Midland Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948.

When sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s, the station was served by Regional Railways under arrangement with the Greater Manchester PTE until the privatisation of British Rail.

Ardwick railway depot, opened 2006 for TransPennine Express's Class 185 DMU fleet, is a short distance to the east.

From 1878 to 1902, there was also an Ardwick stop shown on Crewe–Manchester line timetables for collection of Manchester tickets on down trains.

Non-closure
In its draft Route Utilisation Strategy (RUS) for the North West, Network Rail proposed the closure of Ardwick, but the closure proposals were dropped from the final report published on 1 May 2007. Proposals to close Ardwick and two other stations in Greater Manchester were shelved after residents and passenger groups persuaded Network Rail that long-term development could improve the business case for keeping the stations open.

Facilities
Ardwick is unstaffed and has a single island platform on the electrified Glossop line and the Hope Valley line.

Pedestrians can enter the platform from a footbridge, but there is no wheelchair access. It is immediately adjacent to the main Manchester branch of the West Coast Main Line and the two routes join just north of the station.

The station has a ticket machine and a seating area.

Services
Northern Trains operates the only daily service that stops at Ardwick; this is the 07:15 from Hadfield to Manchester Piccadilly on Mondays-Saturdays. There is no service on Sundays.

The lines passing through the station are used intensively by non-stop trains and this, coupled with its location in a largely non-residential area, accounts for its infrequent service.