Beighton Junction

Beighton Junction is a set of railway junctions near Beighton on the border between Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, England.

The term Beighton Junction has been used in a narrow sense to encompass either one, two or three junctions, according to author's purposes, or even as a shorthand for Beighton Junction Signalbox.

The narrowest possible scope concerns the original Beighton Junction, which, essentially, stands today, i.e.:

On 1 December 1891 the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire railway (MS&LR) started running trains drawn by contractor's locomotives south from a new, additional, "Beighton Junction", approximately 500 yards north west of the first Beighton Junction on the MS&LR, labelled in later Midland system maps as:

In 1900 the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway (LD&ECR) made another, additional, junction 66 yards (60 m) yards south of the first. This pair of junctions were thereafter often referred to collectively as "Beighton Junction" as was the adjacent signal box. Their components were recorded as:

 and,

This complex evolution is addressed by the accompanying Route Diagram "Beighton Junction detail."

This article treats these junctions as the lynch pin of a complex interweaving triangular network of lines, stretching over two miles from Killamarsh in the south to Beighton station in the north west and to Waleswood in the north east. That triangle as a whole is addressed by the accompanying Route Diagram "Beighton Junction".

Beighton Junction went through four distinct phases:

The MSLR's "Beighton Branch" and the original Beighton Junction opened to passenger traffic on 12 February 1849. The branch and junction joined the MSLR's east-west main line to the Midland Railway's erstwhile North Midland Railway line from Chesterfield to Rotherham Masborough which still runs south-north along the valley of the River Rother. The MS&LR's Beighton station opened at the same time.

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