Bare Lane railway station

Bare Lane Add→{{rail-interchange}}
General information
Location	Lancaster
Managed by	Northern Rail
Platforms	2
Other information
Station code	BAR
History
Opened	1864

Bare Lane railway station is a railway station that serves the village of Bare, which is a suburb of Morecambe in Lancashire, England. It is located on the Morecambe Branch Line from Lancaster to Heysham Port and was opened by the London and North Western Railway in 1864.

A level crossing with the public highway known as Bare Lane exists immediately to the west of the station, which until recently was controlled by the adjacent Bare Lane signal box, a fringe cabin to the Preston PSB Area. This box was closed on 8 December 2012, when the signalling equipment was renewed by Network Rail and control of the crossing switched to CCTV and transferred to Preston power box.

The old station building on the platform is now a private dwelling. It was auctioned to the public, and was featured on the BBC programme Homes Under the Hammer, a show about buildings which are auctioned to the public and redeveloped.

The station in 1962

Layout

Although the station has two side platforms, the track layout through it is not the conventional double track used on most main & secondary routes, but two independent bi-directional single lines. Platform 1 serves the Up & Down Morecambe line (which is in effect a long siding all the way to the terminus), whilst platform 2 handles trains on what is now the Up & Down Heysham line. The latter is connected to the now-single track branch down to Heysham Port at Holt Bank Junction (just outside Morecambe station), with the junction points operated from a ground frame worked by the train crew. The two lines converge east of the station, but then immediately split into the single line curves toward Hest Bank and towards Lancaster; the latter was double track until 1988 and is used by the vast majority of trains on the route, whist the former sees only limited use.

This layout dates from the closure of the former terminus at Morecambe Promenade and its associated signal box in February 1994, with Bare Lane signal box taking over control of all signalling on the line thereafter (other than that controlling the junctions with the main line at Hest Bank). As mentioned above however, it was closed in December 2012. The structure though is still intact and has been used for several months by Northern Rail staff as a manned help point for travellers due to the absence of digital passenger information screens at the station.

Services

Morecambe, Lancaster and Heysham Port
West Coast Main Line Bare Lane Lancaster Morecambe Heysham Port West Coast Main Line

The station is served by Northern Rail local services, which operate as a regular Lancaster-Morecambe shuttle.

There are also a few longer-distance services (currently four per day all week) from Morecambe to Skipton and Leeds via the Leeds to Morecambe Line. In addition, for many years the last train each weekday evening was a Transpennine Express service from Windermere, which diverts from its route to Barrow-in-Furness. This service called at Lancaster, Bare Lane and Morecambe, before reversing, calling at Bare Lane again, then rejoining the West Coast Main Line and continuing via Carnforth thus avoiding the 1m 7ch section of the WCML between Hest Bank South Junction and Hest Bank North Junction. This was the only scheduled service to use the original 1864 curve towards Hest Bank and as such functions as a Parliamentary train to avoid the need for formal closure proceedings for this short stretch of line.

From December 2008, the daily TransPennine Express service runs in the early morning (calling at 05.49 and again at 06.02 in the opposite direction) and runs to Windermere from Barrow rather than the other way around as it did previously, although it still runs directly from here to Carnforth. The mid-afternoon Morecambe to Leeds service also runs direct to Carnforth (except Saturdays) due to a lack of suitable timetable paths via Lancaster following the introduction of Virgin Trains new high-frequency WCML timetable.

External links

• Train times and station information for Bare Lane railway station from National Rail
• Railscot - Bare Lane