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Trivia: Large towns in UK with no railway station

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Ken H

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Notable are the number of immaculately-planned (!) "New Towns" of the 1960s that were nowhere near any railway.

Washington
Skelmersdale
Newton Aycliffe
Easington

A lot more were planned without, but just chanced to be on (or near) a line, and a station was subsequently built, often after considerable official opposition (there was a big fight about Basildon, where the line passed near the centre).
Amazingly, Milton Keynes central didnt open till 14 May 1982. Till then it was Bletchley and Wolverton stations only (and the Marston Vale line stations)
 
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DavidGrain

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Amazingly, Milton Keynes central didnt open till 14 May 1982. Till then it was Bletchley and Wolverton stations only (and the Marston Vale line stations)
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Yes I am amazed by that as I thought it was in the second half of the 1970s when I was travelling regularly on that line. I used to joke that the train only stopped there on wet Tuesdays in winter as it always seemed to be raining and in the dark when we stopped there.
 

XC90

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Renfrew. Trackbed still exists from Paisley (mostly) but not to the north end of the town and could be used as a link to Glasgow Airport too.
 

Ayman Ilham

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There are five cities in the UK without railway stations (approx population in brackets):
Ripon (16700), North Yorkshire
Armagh (14800), Northern Ireland
Wells (12000), Somerset
St Asaph (3500), Denbighshire
St Davids (1800), Pembrokeshire
Although despite their city status, they are effectively little more than small towns (or even villages in the case of the latter two) with cathedrals. FUN FACT: St Davids, owing to its size combined with its remoteness, is the only British city that has never had a railway station in the first place, even pre-Beeching!
 

Crisps

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Notable are the number of immaculately-planned (!) "New Towns" of the 1960s that were nowhere near any railway.

Washington
Skelmersdale
Newton Aycliffe
Easington

A lot more were planned without, but just chanced to be on (or near) a line, and a station was subsequently built, often after considerable official opposition (there was a big fight about Basildon, where the line passed near the centre).
Easington is a mining village, not a new town. Perhaps you mean Peterlee?
Newton Aycliffe’s station - on the original route of the 1825 Stockton-Darlington railway - is around a mile from the town centre. Yes, the station only dates from 1978, but hardly “nowhere near” a railway. Of course, had the town been built on the other side of the A1 (now A167), it could have had a station directly on the ECML...
 

Traveller54

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There are five cities in the UK without railway stations (approx population in brackets):
Ripon (16700), North Yorkshire
Armagh (14800), Northern Ireland
Wells (12000), Somerset
St Asaph (3500), Denbighshire
St Davids (1800), Pembrokeshire
Although despite their city status, they are effectively little more than small towns (or even villages in the case of the latter two) with cathedrals. FUN FACT: St Davids, owing to its size combined with its remoteness, is the only British city that has never had a railway station in the first place, even pre-Beeching!

Brechin, pop. 7000, could be considered for this list too as it was officially a city in pre reformation times though not recognised as such today. However, several local organisations use the word city in their titles including the local football team, Brechin City. It only has a heritage rail station with seasonal opening and not connected to the network.
 

Western Sunset

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Then there are places that have grown after the establishment of the railway system. Ferndown, the second largest inland town in Dorset (pop 26,559 in 2011) never had a station. West Moors (for Ferndown) was the nearest it got.
 

thenorthern

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New Towns tend to have poor rail transport, Washington, Peterlee, Skelmersdale and Craigavon has no railway station despite being relatively large.

Also many of the New Towns with railway stations the rail services are not brilliant for their size as Telford, Newton Aycliffe and Livingston come to mind. New Towns were built for the car.
 

transmanche

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New Towns tend to have poor rail transport, Washington, Peterlee, Skelmersdale and Craigavon has no railway station despite being relatively large.
Washington did have a station. But it closed in September 1963, less than a year before Washington was designated a New Town.
 

NorthOxonian

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New Towns tend to have poor rail transport, Washington, Peterlee, Skelmersdale and Craigavon has no railway station despite being relatively large.
Peterlee will be served by a new station at Horden (whether that technically counts as Peterlee I'm not sure), which will open fairly soon - work is well underway and the planned opening is March.
 

DavidGrain

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New Towns tend to have poor rail transport, Washington, Peterlee, Skelmersdale and Craigavon has no railway station despite being relatively large.

Also many of the New Towns with railway stations the rail services are not brilliant for their size as Telford, Newton Aycliffe and Livingston come to mind. New Towns were built for the car.

Actually I think Telford has a reasonable service served by both WMR and TfW. The stations of Oakengates and Wellington served the town and then Telford Central was built within walking distance of the new town centre. Telford is effectively a dormitory town for Wolverhampton and Birmingham so has a large number of commuters. But like every place there are people demanding more.
 

Fawkes Cat

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Actually I think Telford has a reasonable service served by both WMR and TfW
A very quick comparison, using RTT and Wikipedia: Telford (population 142k or so) has a half-hourly train to New Street, plus an hourly TfW train, also to Brum and beyond. Redditch (110k or so) has a train every 20 minutes or so to Brum and beyond. These are the services I see right now, on what I assume to be an entirely typical weekday morning.

So Telford could perhaps hope for rather more of a service. But it's not wildly underserved compared to another town in the wider West Midlands.
 

87007

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Warrington, Runcorn and Cumbernauld did okay as New Towns with railway stations.
 

Altnabreac

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New Towns tend to have poor rail transport, Washington, Peterlee, Skelmersdale and Craigavon has no railway station despite being relatively large.

Also many of the New Towns with railway stations the rail services are not brilliant for their size as Telford, Newton Aycliffe and Livingston come to mind. New Towns were built for the car.

Livingston didn't have a station for the first 20 years of its existence as a New Town but these days has 2 (or 3 if you include Uphall) stations with 6tph between them to Edinburgh and Glasgow so the service levels are not poor.

The location of the stations is less than ideal however as they don't serve the town centre directly.
 

Western Lord

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New Towns tend to have poor rail transport, Washington, Peterlee, Skelmersdale and Craigavon has no railway station despite being relatively large.

Also many of the New Towns with railway stations the rail services are not brilliant for their size as Telford, Newton Aycliffe and Livingston come to mind. New Towns were built for the car.
As I have pointed out before in other threads. the original new towns were intended to be self contained. They were not intended for commuters, you were supposed to live, work and play within the town. Some had a railway station nearby, but not in the centre, like Harlow and Hemel Hempstead. Stevenage had the original "old" Stevenage station (inconvenient for the new town), while Basildon had no station at all until the seventies.
 

matchmaker

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Glenrothes? Population of nearly 40,000 but the nearest stations are Thornton and Markinch which are both on the outskirts of the town.
 

matacaster

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Ha. I travelled on that branch when still open in BR days. There's nothing there!

It used to have a mine and if I remember correctly an early morning and teatime service. I do accept its really a rather small village, but I was tired!
 

thenorthern

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As I have pointed out before in other threads. the original new towns were intended to be self contained. They were not intended for commuters, you were supposed to live, work and play within the town. Some had a railway station nearby, but not in the centre, like Harlow and Hemel Hempstead. Stevenage had the original "old" Stevenage station (inconvenient for the new town), while Basildon had no station at all until the seventies.

They were also built for the 1960s and 1970s which meant cars, cable television and shopping centers.

If a new town was planned on the same scale as Milton Keynes today I would imagine it would be built with a tram system in mind as well as fiber broadband and electric car charging.
 

Carlisle

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If a new town was planned on the same scale as Milton Keynes today I would imagine it would be built with a tram system i.
it was designed with an integral rapid transit system that never got built & simply ended up as cycleways etc
 

yorksrob

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They were also built for the 1960s and 1970s which meant cars, cable television and shopping centers.

If a new town was planned on the same scale as Milton Keynes today I would imagine it would be built with a tram system in mind as well as fiber broadband and electric car charging.

Cable television in the 60's and 70's ?

I had it down as more of an 80's type thing.
 

Djgr

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Cable television in the 60's and 70's ?

I had it down as more of an 80's type thing.

Indeed. They may have had something experimental but it was just the three channels in those days. Also in the UK we have shopping CENTRES and FIBRE.
 

transmanche

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Cable television in the 60's and 70's ?

I had it down as more of an 80's type thing.
Rediffusion and British Relay Television were two of the big names. The latter had over a million subscribers in the late 1960s.

I think they were quite common in new towns and places that (because of geography) were not well served by broadcast transmitters. In Milton Keynes, for example, TV aerials were banned and all houses were cable-ready. Due to the number of people moving out from London, they also received the London ITV service as well as the local one.

You can still see evidence of the old systems in the areas served.

rediffusion.jpeg
Image shows a photo of a concrete 'manhole' cover in situ, with 'Rediffusion' written on it.
 

thenorthern

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Cable television in the 60's and 70's ?

I had it down as more of an 80's type thing.

Milton Keynes was one of the first towns if not the first to have one. You have to remember when it was designated in 1967 it was designed to have all the things you would want in a town at the time.
 
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