Stafford is a major interchange station on the West Coast Main Line in Staffordshire, located at the junction of the Trent Valley and Rugby-Birmingham-Stafford branches of the WCML. It is situated between Rugeley Trent Valley or Penkridge and Crewe.
DRS 88 010 takes a freight through Stafford
Information
Type:
National Rail (West Coast Main Line)
Station code:
STA
Opened:
1837
Platforms:
5
The original Stafford station was opened by the Grand Junction Railway
in 1837 but lasted less than ten years before being rebuilt in 1844. There was a further rebuild in 1862 and exactly one hundred years later the current station was built with in the current Brutalist architecture style. This rebuild removed the overall roof with shelter from the elements now rather limited to a few canopies which do not extent along the whole platform. There are five platforms though they are numbered up to six, platform two no longer exists. It was a bay platform next to the station building (which used to be used by GNR trains for Uttoxeter [1]) and is now used as a siding.
A Royal Mail platform still exists next to platform six which used to be used by the adjacent sorting office though this is no longer in use. Stafford also used to have a large locomotive depot but this closed in 1965 [2].
Stafford is a busy station with regular Avanti West Coast (who manage the station), London North Western and Cross Country services as well as freight passing through.
GBRf 66 799 heads through with a freight
Colas 56 090 runs around a freight train on the post office lined
A RHTT heads through
Double headed 90s lead yet another freight through Stafford
LNWR 350 112 prepares to depart North, the main station building can be seen in the background
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Derby to Stoke-on-Trent (Middleton Press, 2016) Fig. 94 [2] Ibid. Fig. 96
