Corkickle is a railway station on the Cumbrian Coast Line, which runs between Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness. The station, situated 40+1⁄2 miles (65 km) south-west of Carlisle, serves the suburb of Corkickle in Whitehaven, Cumbria. It is owned by Network Rail and managed by Northern Trains.

Corkickle
General information
Location	Corkickle, Copeland England
Coordinates	54°32′29″N 3°34′55″W
Grid reference	NX977174
Owned by	Network Rail
Managed by	Northern Trains
Platforms	1
Tracks	1
Other information
Station code	CKL
Classification	DfT category F2
History
Original company	Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway
Pre-grouping	Furness Railway
Post-grouping	London, Midland and Scottish Railway British Rail (London Midland Region)
Key dates
19 July 1849	Opened as Whitehaven Newtown
3 December 1855	Resited and renamed Whitehaven Corkickle
1957	Renamed Corkickle
Passengers
2016/17	45,852
2017/18	50,422
2018/19	53,668
2019/20	68,974
2020/21	18,114
Location
Corkickle Location in Copeland, Cumbria Show map of the Borough of Copeland Corkickle Location in Cumbria, England Show map of Cumbria
Notes
Passenger statistics from the Office of Rail and Road

The station opened on 3 December 1855,[1] and is at the southern end of the 1,219 m (3,999 ft) tunnel from Whitehaven. Between 1855 and 1957, the station was known as Whitehaven Corkickle.[1][2]

Facilities

The single platform station has kept its main building, but this is now in private residential use. Shelters, a public telephone, ticket vending machine and a digital information board are sited near the main entrance, which has step-free access from the approach road.[3] Train running information can also be obtained from timetable posters on the platform.

Services

Northern Trains Route 6
v t e
Cumbrian Coast, Furness and Windermere Lines
Carlisle Dalston Wigton Aspatria Maryport Flimby Workington Harrington Parton Whitehaven Corkickle St Bees Nethertown Braystones Sellafield Seascale Drigg Ravenglass for Eskdale Bootle Silecroft Millom Green Road Foxfield Kirkby-in-Furness Askam Barrow-in-Furness Roose Dalton Ulverston Cark & Cartmel Kents Bank Grange-over-Sands Arnside Silverdale Carnforth Windermere Staveley Burneside Kendal Oxenholme Lake District Lancaster Preston Wigan North Western Manchester Oxford Road Manchester Piccadilly Mauldeth Road Burnage East Didsbury Gatley Heald Green Manchester Airport
Bootle, Braystones, Drigg, Flimby, Green Road, Kirkby-in-Furness, Nethertown, Parton and Silecroft are request stops.

Monday to Saturdays there is hourly service northbound to Carlisle and southbound to Barrow-in-Furness. There are no trains after 21:00 on Mondays-Saturdays,[4] but since the May 2018 timetable change a Sunday service now operates (for the first time since 1976) from mid-morning until early evening.

Freight

The area immediately south of the station was for many years a busy freight location, handling haematite ore traffic from Moor Row mine as well as the aforementioned chemical tankers up & down the incline at the nearby Preston Street goods depot (the one time W&FJR passenger terminus) and associated yard.[5] Two signal boxes (Corkickle No. 1 & No. 2)[6][7] supervised the sidings, as well as controlling access to and from the incline and the Moor Row branch (the surviving portion of the former Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway line to Egremont & Sellafield). Although sufficiently busy to require its own resident shunting locomotive well into the 1970s, the gradual loss of traffic from the early 1980s onwards saw facilities run down and following the demise of Preston Street depot, the yard eventually closed (along with both signal boxes, which had been replaced by standard LMR-designed structures in 1958–59)[8] on 15/16 February 1997.[9] Today no trace remains of the sidings or either signal box, only the one surviving running line southwards towards St Bees & Sellafield.

The Corkickle Brake

In 1881 the Corkickle Brake, a roped incline 525 yards (480 m) in length and with gradients of between 1 in 5.2 and 1 in 6.6 was built from the Furness Railway main line, a short distance to the south of Corkickle station, to the Earl of Lonsdale's Croft Pit.[10]

The 'brake' closed in 1931 due to the worsening financial situation of the colliery's owners, Lonsdale's Whitehaven Colliery Co.[10] In May 1955, the incline was re-opened, this time to serve the factory of Marchon Products - a subsidiary of Albright and Wilson - at Kells. It was used mainly to haul rail tanker wagons containing sulphuric acid from the main line - by now in the ownership of British Railways - to the Marchon factory. The Corkickle Brake closed for good on 31 October 1986 when it was the last commercial roped incline in Britain.[11] The task of transporting acid and other chemicals was taken over by road tankers.[12]

References

Sources

External links

• Media related to Corkickle railway station at Wikimedia Commons
• Train times and station information for Corkickle railway station from National Rail

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Whitehaven		Northern Trains Cumbrian Coast Line		St Bees
	Historical railways
Whitehaven		Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway		St Bees