Bromley Cross railway station

Bromley Cross
Bromley Cross railway station in 1978.
Location
Place	Bolton
Local authority	Bolton
Grid reference	SD729131
Operations
Station code	BMC
Managed by	Northern
Number of platforms	2
DfT category	E
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2011/12	0.399 million
2012/13	0.381 million
2013/14	0.386 million
2014/15	0.371 million
2015/16	0.292 million
History
Key dates	Opened 1848 (1848)
National Rail – UK railway stations
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Bromley Cross from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.

Bromley Cross railway station, situated in Bromley Cross, a suburb to the north of Bolton, England, is served by the Northern 'Ribble Valley' line 2 ³⁄₄ miles (4.4 km) north of Bolton. It is situated on Chapeltown Road. The station is just south of the point where the double line merges into one.

Bromley Cross was established in June 1848, on a branch line authorised by an Act of 30 June 1845, initially by the Blackburn, Darwen and Bolton Railway and was originally provided with a temporary, timber station building. This founding railway co merged to become The Bolton, Blackburn, Clitheroe and West Yorkshire Railway in 1847, which later became part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) in 1858. Permanent station buildings were provided along the line in 1859, constructed with locally quarried sandstone, by Joseph Greenup and Co of Manchester. The original minutes of the railway company held at National Archives, Kew, reveal that the engineers drew up the plans for the 1859 building and its estimated cost was £350, which also included building a 'detached cottage' which survives next to the signal box. The dimensions of the original station building are approx. 39ft in length by 15ft wide. There was a raising of the platform heights 'fully a foot the whole length' in 1886, the local newspaper reporting 'a goodly number of men being engaged on the work.'

The working goods yard at the station was a crucial part of a country station's existence and two surviving memos sent in 1874 to Bromley Cross refer to the delivery of cheese and tins of lard etc. to the local Co-op stores and also that goods despatched could have problems; 'all in this truck very wet when received here.'Plans were drawn up around 1891 for an extension to the warehouse, with new goods offices and other track and signalling works. Apart from the main station building, with waiting room built in, there was a 'waiting shed' recorded on both platforms in L&YR days. After the take over by the LMSR in 1923, plans were drawn up for improved General Waiting Rooms (GWRs) on both platforms, complete with internal stove heating. The free-standing timber GWR positioned along the platform from the main station building has its full specifications revealed in surviving design plans held on County Archives and its dimensions are given as approx 27ft in length by 10ft deep, which means it had approx 70 per cent of the length of the original building. It may have been at the time of adding this sizeable additional timber waiting room that the decision was taken to block off the central doorway on the main 1859 building. This originally led into a large waiting area and booking hall, complete with benches around the sides of the room and use of the second smaller internal wall clock face to aid timekeeping. After the change, this original waiting hall became the staff ticket office seen today, which swapped over from the end part of the building where the public now buy tickets. There is a boarded over rear corner fireplace just under the modern train time display screen, hence the chimney seen on the outside rear corner of the building. The GWR on the Manchester platform can be seen in late 1960s photos but must have been removed by around 1970 and by the 1980s a new waiting room extension in stone was added on to the end of the 1859 station building, in place of the gentlemen's lean-to toilets. A small waiting room provided in the station's central section was then closed and reserved for staff use (storage). There was also a detailed LMSR design plan for the proposed reconstruction of the LYR waiting shed into a GWR on the Blackburn platform, measuring approx 25ft by 7ft 6in, complete with a 'Princess May No. 1 Stove' and also several 'Littleton Lamps'. This GWR, if built, had become a small closed brick waiting shed as seen on a mid-1960s photo and by the 1970s this appeared to be replaced with the very basic open fronted brick shed that exists today, a reduction in facilities to what had been provided in LYR and LMSR days. There was a road level crossing at the station which closed in 1966/7, with the pedestrian crossing remaining. In the early 1970s, the former goods yard with its shed, to the north of the station, whose sidings were recovered in September 1967, was redeveloped as a housing estate.