Beeston Station

Some thirty years have passed since we had a station in Beeston.  Another thirty years before that Cyril Clark lived in the station house, so who better to recall the years between the wars when the railway was an integral part of village life?
My father was appointed Station Master at Beeston from a station in Lincolnshire in 1927.  He remained and lived there for about six years till 1933 when we moved to Lofthouse.
I followed his footsteps on the railway.  Within a year of leaving school saw me in 1932 as lad porter then telegraph lad at Ardsley LNER.  1936 saw me going to Lincolnshire as a signalman where I have remained ever since in the Boston district, the last thirty years as relief signalman from which position I retired four years ago after 48 years railway service.
I can well remember as a boy of twelve arriving at Beeston with father, grandfather, grandmother, my elder brother and two sisters and on alighting from the train taking my first sight of Yorkshire and of the station house.  I was not very impressed with its black walls in the middle of the other station buildings on the Up Platform.
My bedroom was above the office and general waiting room.  At about 5.30 am, after my first night, I was awakened by strange sounds and voices unlike any I had ever heard before.  I looked out of the bedroom window and was amazed to see the platform full of miners in their clattering, wooden soled clogs going to the train which would take them to their respective collieries in the district and was further surprised at about 3 pm to see them returning with blackened dusty faces and clothes. (No baths, showers and changing rooms in those days!)
Breakfast time saw many people catching trains to Leeds for work, among them Mr Drury, the then station master at Leeds Central, who lived in a Station Road house high above the station in the hollow.  The same people started returning on trains from 5 pm.
Saturdays saw hundreds of football fans arriving at Beeston to walk to Elland Road to watch Leeds United when playing at home.  The waiting rooms and platform were so crowded whey they all returned to travel home after the match.
Later on I got to know very well Ernest Hart, that great Leeds and international player of the time, (along with his partner and right half, Willis Edwards) who also used the train to Beeston from his home and then walked to Elland Road on match and training days.  After the match, while waiting for his train home, he would sit talking to me about the match etc.
Being railway minded, having lived all my short life on stations, it was not long before I became "part of the station" and big friends of all the staff.
There was Harry Cramm, dad's clerk, who lived in Old Lane, Jim and Walter the signalmen, porter Charlie Ingram from Leeds, John Capstick at Beeston, and a lad porter Clifford.  Charlie later went to Leeds Central and was followed by Harry Fant from Morley.  After the early morning trains Clifford used to load up his two wheeled parcel cart with parcels to deliver all round Beeston.  On Saturdays and school holidays I often went with him to help and got to know a great many people in Beeston.
I also well remember that tragic day when the afternoon Kings Cross - Leeds express, coasting full speed on the falling gradient from Ardsley tunnel to within a couple of miles of Leeds, ploughed into the Beeston gang of platelayers working on the line between Beeston Junction and Beeston Station killing with terrible injuries either three of the five man gang, of five of seven; of which I can't quite remember.
I know the tragic scene of the accident shocked and upset father for weeks after.  Being young I cannot remember the outcome of the ensuing enquiry and inquest into the fatalities, as to why the lookout man gave no warning and no one else saw or heard the approaching train.
In the winter when the lines were greasy father was often also called out to trains sticking on the sharp incline from Beeston Junction to the Tingley branch.
The goods yard dealt with all manner of goods, from coal for the merchants to waggons of shoddy manure from the mills and bones from the bone factory down the road being loaded and sent away.  So with the goods yard, parcel and passenger traffic, Beeston in those days was a very busy little station.

Beeston Station was opened in 1860.  It was built on the Great Northern line from Leeds through Tingley which was the Bradford, Wakefield and Leeds Railway at its incorporation in 1854.  The Low Moor Company's ironworks was close by (opposite Stank Hall, this side of the Woodman) so a station in Beeston was a commercial necessity.  The line passed from GNR ownership to LNER and British Railways before the station closed to passengers on 2nd March 1953.  It remained as an occasional halt until it was dismantled early in the 1960s.