Stone railway station


Stone railway station serves the town of Stone, Staffordshire, England. The station is located on a junction of the Colwich to Manchester spur of the West Coast Main Line, but has platforms only on the branch from Stafford to Stoke-on-Trent.

History

There have been two stations at Stone and both were opened by the North Staffordshire Railway. The first opened on 17 April 1848 and was next to the Newcastle Road bridge. With the opening of the Colwich line on 1 May 1849, the original station was closed and replaced the same day by the current station. The station was renamed Stone Junction in January 1888, but reverted to the original name Stone at some point between 1923 and 1947. The Colwich platforms were closed in 1947 and subsequently removed.
The station building has been redeveloped by Stone Town Council as a community centre.
APTIS ticketing here ceased in 1993, when the station became unstaffed.

Recent developments

In 2004, rail services were withdrawn from the station and were replaced by buses, operated by BakerBus; this was initially whilst upgrade work was carried out on the Stafford and Colwich to Cheadle Hulme lines. However, the former Stafford to Stoke local service, that formerly called here, was never reinstated once the work was completed and so the rail replacement service continued.
Virgin CrossCountry were reportedly going to reinstate Stone as a stop from June 2006 on the Birmingham to Manchester service, but this never materialised.
However, in December 2008, Stone station reopened for an hourly train service between Crewe and London Euston, as part of a new revamped West Coast main line timetable unveiled by the Department for Transport. This service is operated by London Northwestern Railway, as of December 2017. Passenger usage is now returning to reasonable levels.

Services

Stone is currently served by the hourly semi-fast London Northwestern Railway services between and via and. Trains operated by CrossCountry do not currently call at Stone.
The new West Midlands franchise specification plans will, when implemented in 2018, see the current Euston to Crewe trains replaced by a new Birmingham - Wolverhampton - Stoke - Crewe service that will stop here. This was changed for a new London service via Birmingham, due to opposition against losing a direct link to London.

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