At Stalybridge Railway Station with a pint, a pie and a view of the hills,

Platform 4, 2014

I have fond memories of Stalybridge Railway Station.

Back in the mid 1970s it is where we would catch the train to the North East on rolling stock which must have dated from the early 50s.

There was even a sign in one of the lavatories which announced that “in the event of inclement weather water can be obtained from the guard” which I always took to be if the pipes had frozen.

But someone will put me straight on that and no doubt also the exact date when the old buffet on platform 4 was enlarged and transformed into its present very pleasant restaurant which I think was 1998.

It is still a grand place to take a pint and pie and takes you back to all those old fashioned buffets on stations across the country.  All too often now a meal or a drink on a station  is in one of those  anonymous chain outlet which can be seen on any city centre of high street.

But not so the restaurant on Stalybridge Station, it has good food, some interesting customers and above all with only a bit of imagination you could be back with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in the film Brief Encounters.

Now that may just challenge most readers so I shall just say it was made in 1945 and perfectly captures a British Railways Buffet which had changed very little a decade later when I passed through them.

Looking across to the hills, 1983

The station  was opened in 1845   by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway and is just fifteen years younger than that first passenger railway station on Liverpool Road.

So like Huddersfield Station which I wrote about yesterday this is a fine place to see the history of how railway stations were going in the early years of the Railway Age.

What is better you can still get there by train from the city so no worries about excepting that second pint, just, “let the train take the strain.”

Inside 

And just before someone mutters what about the folk club, yes there was one but for reasons I don't remember I never went.

But I bet my friend Brian did and he has added just a bit more to the story.

"The station was opened by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway, which became the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, and then the  Great Central.

It station became jointly run when the L&NW Railway opened the line from Stockport to Yorkshire on 1849."

All of which leaves me with offering Brian a pint in the station buffet.

In the meantime there is lots more to read about our stations at *Manchester Railway Station,  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Manchester%20Railway%20Station

Pictures; Stalybridge Buffet Bar on platform 4, El Pollock - from geograph.org.uk This image was taken from the Geograph project collection. See this photograph's page on the Geograph website for the photographer's contact details. The copyright on this image is owned by El Pollock and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. The station in 1983,  Mr. M. Schofield, courtesy of Tameside Image Archive, http://www.tameside.gov.uk/history/archive.php3 and inside the Buffet, from Stalybridge Buffet Bar, https://www.facebook.com/StalybridgeBuffetBar/photos_stream