The Buxton line is a railway line in Northern England, connecting Manchester with Buxton in Derbyshire. Passenger services on the line are currently operated by Northern Trains.
History
The line has its origins with the Stockport, Disley and Whaley Bridge Railway, which the LNWR built to connect with the Cromford and High Peak Railway at . In 1863, it built an extension from Whaley Bridge, via to Buxton. This forestalled the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway's plans for the area, and also the Midland Railway's attempts to reach Manchester.
The latter two railways were forced to combine forces in a line following the LNWR, but north of it, through New Mills (part of what is now known as the Hope Valley line), branching at Millers Dale. As a result, Buxton, one of the largest towns in the Peak District, never achieved mainline status.
The LNWR had offered the use of the line but, with its climb through Dove Holes, the Midland did not consider it useful for express trains, saying that it went up a steep hill merely for the sake of going down. The LNWR may have saved costs in construction but it proved difficult to operate, even with the powerful locomotives they had been forced to introduce for their lines north of Manchester. In later days, a stretch was operated using banking engines, the longest such section on the British railway system. In 1957 there was a serious accident at in which driver John Axon, who died at his post attempting to control a runaway goods train, received the George Cross medal. From 8 October 1956, services on the Buxton branch were in the hands of Class 104 diesel units based at Buxton depot, though some remained steam worked for longer (for example, the 08:20 train to Manchester switched to diesel on 17 June 1957).
The Beeching cuts threatened closure but the line was reprieved at a hearing in 1964. In its 1964 accounts, British Rail counted the cost of the reprieve at £133,000 (£2.4m at 2014 prices) in a full year, plus £44,000 which could have been saved if freight was also withdrawn.
The line was electrified, at 25 kV AC overhead, between Manchester and Hazel Grove in 1981. A chord just south of Hazel Grove was built in 1986, allowing trains to change from the Hope Valley Line and thus faster running into Manchester Piccadilly. Colour light signalling, controlled from LNWR-built boxes at Edgeley Junction and , cover the line as far as Norbury crossing, which itself has a small hut controlling two semaphore signals in the Middlewood area. Further south, signalling is mostly semaphore and is controlled from signal-boxes at , Chapel-en-le-Frith and Buxton.
In June 2016, a landslip at Middlewood station following heavy rain meant that all services were suspended between Hazel Grove and Buxton until 25 June. A rail replacement bus service was in operation during the closure.
On 31 July 2019, the line was closed between Hazel Grove and Buxton amid fears that the earthwork dam at Toddbrook Reservoir would collapse following heavy rain, which would flood the village of Whaley Bridge. The Hope Valley line between and was also closed because of this. The line was re-opened on 8 August. Bus replacements were on operation between Buxton and Macclesfield during the closure.
Present-day services
Over the section of track between Manchester and Hazel Grove there are three trains per hour in each direction at peak times. The Manchester to Buxton service runs half-hourly during peak hours, and once hourly at off peak. Up until the timetable changes on 11th December 2022, this combined with an hourly (daytime-only) Blackpool North to Hazel Grove service to give Davenport, Woodsmoor and Hazel Grove stations thrice-hourly off peak services to and from Manchester. Since then, the Blackpool North train has run to and from Manchester Airport instead, reducing the number of trains between Piccadilly to Hazel Grove down to two trains per hour at off peak. No services ran beyond Piccadilly between May 2018 and May 2019 due to the electrification of the line through Bolton.
South of Hazel Grove, the off-peak pattern is half-hourly. The hourly Liverpool to Norwich East Midlands Railway and Manchester Airport to Cleethorpes TransPennine Express services run over the Edgeley to Hazel Grove section but only one East Midlands Railway service calls at Hazel Grove on weekday mornings and Sundays, all others being non-stop between Stockport and Sheffield.