Kidsgrove railway station

Kidsgrove railway station serves the town of Kidsgrove in Staffordshire, England. The station is 7.5 miles north of Stoke-on-Trent. The station is served by trains on the Crewe–Derby line which is also a community rail line known as the North Staffordshire line. The station is owned by Network Rail and managed by East Midlands Railway.

History
The present station was opened 9 October 1848 by the North Staffordshire Railway as Harecastle and was during the early years of the North Staffordshire era variously called Harecastle Junction, Kidsgrove Junction. Kidsgrove Junction, Harecastle before settling upon Harecastle in 1875. Between 1885 and 1886 and 1923 and 1924 it was called Harecastle for Kidsgrove. In 1944 it was renamed Kidsgrove.

In British Rail days it was known as Kidsgrove Central when the town had three stations, the other two were Kidsgrove Liverpool Road and Market Street Halt on the old North Staffordshire Railway's Potteries Loop Line (all three stations were opened by the North Staffordshire Railway). It is situated on the Manchester branch of the West Coast Main Line at the junction where the line from Stoke-on-Trent divides for Crewe and Manchester Piccadilly.

It is just north of the Harecastle Tunnels on the Trent and Mersey Canal and the Harecastle railway tunnel and 1965 railway diversion.

Services
Services at Kidsgrove are operated by East Midlands Railway using DMUs, London Northwestern Railway using  EMUs and Northern Trains using  and 331 EMUs.

The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is:
 * 2 tph to Crewe
 * 1 tph to Stafford
 * 1 tph to Newark Castle via Derby and Nottingham
 * 1 tph to Stoke-on-Trent only
 * 1 tph to Manchester Piccadilly via Macclesfield

On Sundays, the station is served by an hourly service between Crewe and Stafford and 6 trains per day between Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent. The first Manchester-bound train on a Sunday extends to Manchester Oxford Road. Hourly Sunday services operate between Crewe and Derby after 14:00 only.