Swinton and Pendlebury Journal; Friday 3rd 1960
Station Closure is a Retrograde Step
Until four years ago there were five railway stations in Swinton and Pendlebury and neighbouring Irlams O Th Height. Then British Railways closed Irlams O Th Height station. Next stage was the decision to shutdown Pendlebury Station on Sundays. Now comes the latest move - the proposed closure of Pendlebury Station completely, because it is operating uneconomically. This will leave the Borough with only Swinton, Moorside, and Clifton Junction Stations. Which will be the next to go? It was suggested at a meeting of the Borough Council on Monday - when it was agreed that a protest should be lodged with the Transport Commission - that it may be Moorside.
Mr Whitehead said the closing of Pendlebury Station on Sundays was the thin end of the wedge, with millions being spent on highways to cope with the rapidly growing traffic and they were told traffic would ultimately multiply threefold by 1974. Yet British Railways went on closing stations which might in time provide relief for desperately overburdened roads. People who use buses between Manchester and Wigan through the Borough had enough experience of that already.
The next thing would be the closing of Moorside Station, yet if thought appeared to be given, for instance to the number of people who use the local station so well for day and half day excursions in the summer, besides which there were big industrial developments in the Clifton Valley, to where men could have been after they bought from outside areas on the Wigan side.
Their Duty
British Railways have made an excellent case for closing the station he said, but it is their duty to provide a service that meets the needs of the public. They may say that people will not go to the station, but if the service is attractive enough, they will go.
Mrs Crompton also thought the closure of retrograde step. Whenever one travelled home about teatime and saw the great queues for buses, knowing that people would lose 30 or 40 minutes of their evening in the struggle to get home, one wondered why the public seem to have forgotten the value of the railway.
Shortsighted
Councillor Sharples for British Railways were shortsighted in closing the station. It would affect people use the train to get to work and there was apparently no thought for future traffic using the station with the development of Agecroft Colliery. If they would only brighten up the stations, they would attract some of the people who are congesting the roads.
Councillor Shaw disagreed and said he could not see people travelling from Wigan getting off at Pendlebury and walking a couple of miles to Agecroft because there were no bus fares from Pendlebury Station to Agecroft. After all, a station was like a business and must be run economically.
As one who went to Wigan regularly, Councillor Harrison said he would be one affected by the closure, although there were time when he appeared to be the only passenger, he had to admit.
To go instead to Swinton station would add 7d to the fare and at least 10 minutes to the journey. He added I support the protest although I fear the evidence is against us
Many use the station in summer of course, and if it was closed the railway would lose altogether the custom of those who normally travel from Manchester to there.
Councillor Suggate said that although the station was not economic at the moment it did not mean it could not be made so ultimately following the redevelopment of Pendlebury, which was to come, they were going to need alternative means of travel.
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It later transpired that shutting the station would save £2,199 per year
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Swinton and Pendlebury Journal, Friday October 7, 1960
Death of a station
Swinton man makes late-night trips just to be last
The 11:21 train from Manchester arrived at Pendlebury Station on Saturday night. There were only six people aboard, and one of them was a man who had made a special trip to Pendleton just to be on the train, for, with the closure of the station, it was the last train to stop at Pendlebury. The man was 37-years-old shopkeeper Mr Jackson, proprietor of 419 Chorley Road, Swinton.
Mr Jackson makes something of a hobby travelling on last trains. When he lived at Crumpsall, Manchester he travelled to Irlams o th Height to perform a similar solitary private ceremony in connection with the closure of the station there. He obtained the last ticket issued at Irlams o th Height station on March 3, 1956.
On Saturday, Mr Jackson caught the Manchester bound train from Pendlebury at 10:48 p.m. to Pendleton and returned on the 11:16 train to see the porter at Pendlebury Mr D. White extinguish the gas lamps on the station, close the doors for the last time and issue Mr Jackson with the last ticket, from Pendlebury to Swinton. Mr Jackson has travelled to many parts of Britain for more than 10 years in connection with the closure of railway lines, stations and tram routes.
The day after the closure of Pendlebury Station he took part in a 44-mile tour by three special tram cars in Sheffield to mark the abandonment of tramways there. Tomorrow he hopes to ride in one of the last Sheffield tramcars used for the final ceremonial procession in the evening.
