The world's oldest station for steam trains spent decades as a pub
Heighington station in north-east England opened in 1827 on George Stephenson's Stockton and Darlington line, served by Locomotion No. 1. After trains stopped using it in the 1970s the listed building was restored as an inn in 1984, closed in 2017, and by 2024 was due for renovation ahead of the line's 200th anniversary.
A station is where trains halt to load or unload passengers or freight, with at least one platform and track and usually a building for tickets, waiting and baggage. Minor stopping points may be no more than a sign and go by names like halt or flag stop. Americans say train station and sometimes depot; in Commonwealth countries railway station is traditional, and station alone is assumed to mean one. In Canada and Britain, unlike the United States, depot can also mean a maintenance yard.
The first recorded station opened in 1807 at The Mount in Swansea, Wales, for horse-drawn passenger trains on the Oystermouth line. Baltimore's two-storey Mount Clare station, now a museum, took its first passengers on 22 May 1830 as the end of the line for the Baltimore and Ohio, whose cars were then pulled by horses. That same year Liverpool's Crown Street, the first terminus with a train shed, opened on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first line with stations in the modern sense; it was demolished in 1836 when Lime Street took over. Its Manchester counterpart, Liverpool Road, looks like a row of Georgian houses and survives within the city's Museum of Science and Industry.
Many 19th-century stations were grand Gothic or Baroque statements of civic and corporate prestige, and European designs often copied British ones, sometimes with British money, as in Italy. Newer stations on high-speed lines such as Japan's Shinkansen or France's TGV feel more like airports. In many parts of Africa, South America and Asia stations double as markets.
Layouts vary with the ground. Some stations stack lines at different levels, as at Berlin Hauptbahnhof where two routes cross, or at Paris-Gare de Lyon and Philadelphia's 30th Street, which separate intercity and suburban services. Platforms can sit on an island between tracks or along each side. Tight sites produce staggered platforms at Tutbury and Hatton or curved ones at Cheadle Hulme, and where lines diverge a German wedge-shaped Keilbahnhof may appear.
Source: Train station
