All alone at Denton Station; image: Paul Cooper Photography WWW.PCOOPERPHOTO.COM.

To Denton, Greater Manchester, to ride the ghost train.

The station, located on the Stalybridge-Stockport line in Greater Manchester was last week named as the loneliest railway station in Britain — there’s just one return service per week.

I joined a handful of rail enthusiasts and insouciant day-trippers at the weekend to ride the cult service.

Here’s a taster of my feature.

The weekly train is known as a parliamentary service, a statutory requirement to avoid official procedures to terminate the service.

The line, dating from the mid 1800s, survived the Beeching Report of 1963, a series of cuts to restructure the then nationalised railway system.

But it was shunted into a railway siding after the re-routing of TransPennine Express in 1989.

All aboard the ghost train; image: Paul Cooper Photography WWW.PCOOPERPHOTO.COM.

“It provokes a lot of interest for railway nostalgia,” explains train guard Stephen Hughes.

“Passenger numbers are often boosted by regular rail-heritage events along the line.”

The next service departs in one week’s time.

Read the full article via Telegraph Travel, My trip to Denton, Britain’s loneliest railway station.

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