Saturday 17th May 2025
Welcome to another town with a station pair located virtually on the same line of longitude (see also Canterbury and Yeovil, previously featured in this fortnightly series).
We’re in the Derbyshire town of New Mills visiting its stations known as New Mills Central and New Mills Newtown.
Both are served by Northern offering residents and leisure travellers a link to Manchester Piccadilly, with New Mills Central seeing two departures an hour (one of which starts and finishes there) via Bredbury, and New Mills Newtown having an hourly service via Hazel Grove and Stockport. Both lines see additional trains during the peak travel periods.
In the other direction the other train each hour at New Mills Central from Manchester Piccadilly that doesn’t terminate, continues eastwards on the lovely scenic Hope Valley line via Edale, Hope and Bamford to Sheffield while the hourly service at New Mills Newton continues south via Chapel-en-le-Frith to Buxton.
No wonder both lines see a preponderance of leisure travellers in the off-peak and at weekends with the former route particularly popular with walkers and ramblers. When I travelled on a recent Saturday the Sheffield bound train was packed with standing and sitting-on-the-floor room only leaving Manchester with more passengers joining as we headed towards New Mills Central and the Peak District.
With its more frequent service, it’s not surprising New Mills Central is the busier of the two stations. In 2023/24 the Office of Road and Rail counted 208,000 passenger journeys arriving or departing at Central whereas New Mills Newtown saw 159,000.
It was Newtown which arrived on the scene first, in 1857, on a line which originally only went as far south as Whaley Bridge but was extended in 1863 to connect with the Cromford and High Peak Railway to Buxton.
Central arrived a couple of years after that, in 1865, when it was called simply New Mills and appeared on the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway’s new line called the “Marple, New Mills and Hayfield Junction Railway”. The branch continuing to Hayfield has long closed but the link through the Hope Valley to Sheffield has seen the town prosper with many tourists visiting and enjoying the local scenery.
If you lean over the edge of the high wall alongside New Mills Central station you can see where the branch line continued through the now disused tunnel to Hayfield with the Hope Valley line on the right.
New Mills Central station has a real presence as it sits alongside a huge embankment on the north side…
… and its buildings on the westbound platform 1 in true 1860s railway architecture.
These buildings provide a contrast to the limited facility of a waiting shelter on the eastbound platform 2…
… along with some seats and a rubbish bag.
Platform 1 has a booking office and waiting room but only open on Monday to Friday mornings…
… and that’s about it for facilities. There’s a siding just to the west of the station where the hourly terminating train waits its time…
… and there are information boards with timetables and maps…
… and lots of information about the surrounding scenic area…
… including recommendations for where to walk…
… and direction signs.
It really is a splendid location and probably at the top of the list for scenery in the stations featured in this series so far.
Over at New Mills Newtown, which is about a 15 minute walk away. things are a bit more mundane with a car park fronting the entrance to the Buxton bound southbound platform 1…
… although the Friends of New Mills Stations do try and make the best of it with some welcoming artwork…
… and teasing what delights are available on nearby walks.
For example. the SettValley Trail is a 2.5 mile recreational trail on the track bed of the former branch line to Hayfield…
… and very popular it is too.
Back at the station there’s a ticket office which, like Central, is only open on weekdays mornings…
… alongside a rather depressing looking waiting area.
Although there is a standard type of shelter beyond the ticket machine on the same platform…
…which offers more seating.
Another shelter on the Manchester bound platform 2 is more substantial but has fewer seats.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the station is the lovely footbridge…
… linking the two platforms.
Unlike New Mills Central, both platforms at New Mills Newtown are accessible with an entrance down to platform 2 from the main road which passes over the railway line at the northern end (you can see the bridge beyond the footbridge in the photo above the one above).
It’s a rather steep incline down to the platform though…
… and you need to know the entrance is there, beyond the bus shelter and telephone box, as it’s not signposted.
Northern’s timetables are on display…
… as is information about the Friends and local walks.
More confusing is the identity crisis from information in the adjacent bus shelter confirming the station is in Derbyshire…
… but having branding for the Greater Manchester network.
It’ll be interesting to see if Mayor Burnham extends the yellow paint as far as New Mills – both Newtown and Central, or whether Derbyshire will rightly lay claim to their locations.
The train I caught into Manchester late on a Saturday morning was another well used one with many passengers boarding.
I enjoyed my visit to both New Mills’ stations. They’re certainly appreciated by local residents and visitors to the area.
Roger French
Did you catch the nine previous blogs in this series? 1: Hertford; 2: Canterbury. 3: Wigan, 4 Dorchester, 5 Windsor, 6 Wakefield, 7 Reddish, 8 Yeovil, 9 Newark-on-Trent.
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS
BusAndTrainUser 
TfGM website has q and a on their aspirations for rail in Greater Manchester. It includes a list of stations joining the Bee network.
https://tfgm.com/future-bee-network-rail-stations
I didn’t realise until trying to buy a weekly System One train, tram and bus ticket earlier in the year that you can’t. You could can get Bus and Tram, Train and Tram or Train and Bus.
Blimey Manchester is still in the dark ages. Merseyside has Trio which morphed from Zone tickets thats been available for years, well 29th October 1978.
There was even was even a Brighton Area travelcard for multi modal bus and train use advertised in a February 1985 Brighton Bus Guide which I found while doing further research after obtaining the latest dreadful April 2025 Frequencies & Bus Map for Brighton that doesnt even say it has all Operators on the cover.
People rightly get very hung up about the costs of Franchising, but it’s value for money integrated travel that citizens and visitors like myself want.
My experience with BEE Network buses and trams in Manchester has shown that communication fare products is something Andy Burnham has got right, well actually it’s Transport Commissioner Vernon Everitt and his team at TfGM.
John Nicholas
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Still sad that Hayfield was suppressed. Even more so through trains to Derby.
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With both stations clinging to the hillside on either side of the valley, the 15 min walk between them includes quite a drop down to the River Goyt and a stiff climb up the other side. Good exercise if you are not in a hurry. It just about offers a connection from the Hope valley line to Buxton, as an alternative to your scenic bus trip the other day.
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New Mills is a charming little town on the edge of the Peak District and well worth a visit. Bizarrely the train fare to/from Manchester is different from both stations.
Off Peak day return from Newtown is £9 whereas it’s £9.60 from Central which means you can’t travel outward from Newtown and return to Central on the same ticket!
Kirk
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Typical archaic railway logic. Two stations serving the same community but because they’re on different lines no inter-availabity or common sense pricing. And the same TOC. It is precisely factors like this that GBR needs to tackle.
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Correction the siding is to the west! (The opposite side to the tunnel.) Brian
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Corrected; thanks.
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Thanks for another great blog. This is not an area of the UK I know very well but what a great teaser!
Pedant corner: ‘Another shelter on the Manchester bound platform 2 is more substantial but has less seats.’ Oops! It’s fewer seats.
If you can’t count them individually, then it’s less, e.g. the off-peak fare from New Mills Central is £9.60 but from New Mills Newtown it’s less; The thing being assessed is the total fare, which is singular, not the number of coins, notes, credit cards, phone apps, and the like that can be used to purchase the fare.
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Many thanks; hoping to make fewer mistakes like that one in the future! Now corrected.
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Delighted you were able to visit my local stations, Roger!
If you had been able to visit Central on a weekday morning you could have entered the ticket office, adjoining which is a good quality waiting room with a huge mural celebrating the Kinder Mass Trespass in 1932 when a large body of Manchester ramblers took the train to Hayfield and climbed up Kinder Scout to be met by hostile gamekeepers. Several ramblers were arrested and subsequently charged and found guilty, but it was the start of serious efforts to open up the wilder parts of the countryside to everyone.
Quite some years ago, before the turn back siding was instituted, trains turning back were stabled in a siding in the Hayfield-bound tunnel depicted in your photo.
I am not surprised that your train from Piccadilly was overcrowded. On weekend and holiday mornings trains tend to be packed with ramblers large numbers of whom disembark at Edale for the start of the Pennine Way which entails climbing up Kinder from that side. You can imagine how awful that was up to the recent past when the Hope Valley locals were two car Pacers!
Much appreciated this, Roger. Many thanks!
Brian Musgrave.
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The Greater Manchester Traincard and Countycard season tickets are valid from both New Mills stations. The Traincard covers all rail services in the TfGM area plus Metrolink in Zone 1. The Countycard covers the same and also includes buses.
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Leaving closed rail routes aside , and assuming there is no desire to operate longer trains for more capacity ( is rail the only industry that tries not to meet marginal demand with cheap marginal increases in supply ?) I can see there should be scope for more frequent services but noting whichever way you cut it Manchester Piccadilly is a limiting factor, unless one makes greater use of Stockport – which in itself is area of opportunity for population growth.
Looking at the OS map we can also see that while there are two stations in New Mills there are three existing rail lines with the one in the middle joining the route to Sheffield before the once substantial junctions at Chinley.
Ideally branches should have at least a half hourly service giving 15 mins but this might not be possible
The obvious, excluding fast through Trans Pennine type services to me look as if they could be
Manchester Piccadilly-Stockport – New Mills Newtown – Buxton every half hour (as existing), but there really is scope that Buxton could take 20min or 15min frequencies but there is then capacity issues unless terminate and reverse some at Stockport.
Stockport – Hazel Grove – Chinley-Sheffield every half hour ( this give the potential for better Park and Ride sorting out at Hazel Grove of every 15mins with the Buxton Service. This service could start at Manchester Piccadilly OR form the basis of daily service through Reddish South Denton and Guide Bridge to either north (Stalybridge) or back via Hyde to Rose Hill or New Mills Central and Sheffield
The lines that can get to New Mills Central thus give scope to amend services (Particularly where Gorton and Denton can also be opportunity areas in Greater Manchester
Basic Half Hourly Manchester Piccadillyvia Reddish North New Mills Central with hourly onto Sheffield,
Basic Half Hourly Manchester Piccadilly via Ardwick Gorton Hyde New Mills Central hourly onto Sheffield. ( as above could be hourly from Manchester Picc with Hourly from Stockport via Denton Guide Bridge )
This gives a full stopping service to Sheffield every half hour (min) from Manc Picc on which the Trans Pennines overlays non stop or limited stop services
JBC Prestatyn
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increasing frequency is always preferable customer experience over lengthening trains where possible. Ideally clockface evenly spaced scheduling although peak hour “relief” trains with a shorter headway can also work.
Bottlenecks can sometimes be mitigated by having services that join/divide around the bottleneck where there are multiple branches that can be served.
MilesT
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Replying to Miles T
Agreed with both comments but on the routes through New Mills I cannot really see a sensible split as to me it seems the demand out of manchester is fairly balanced in any direction , maybe a little less through Hope itself other than Sheffield so I cannot see a different general service pattern would be much better. Of course there is potential for things like some loop service out north of Sheffield and back to Stalybridge and Manchester Picc but these all seem better as out and back, however if say Sheffield to Stockbridge is realised that perhaps could be a better terminator for a couple of the New Mills services to save space in Sheffield
JBC Prestatyn
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Why SettValley rather than Sett Valley? I assume it’s trendyspeak, but can’t see the point.
More importantly, New Mills like the nearby Glossop is in Derbyshire and thus within the grasp of the East Midland Combined Authority, who have a much-publicised intention of integrated transport. This hardly matches the idea of extending Burnham’s fiefdom. The real nonsense, though nobody dare say this (oops, I’m just about to), is that this Derbyshire outlier hasn’t long since been transferred to Greater Manchester, presumably split between Tameside and Stockport MBCs. In distance terms, Horwich for example is about twice the distance from Manchester as Glossop and further than New Mills.
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Funnily enough, I was talking to friends in north Derbyshire last week about cross-boundary buses and had a look at fares in the area according to TfGM and High Peak websites. This is bus rather than rail but seems relevant. It’s complicated.
https://tfgm.com/public-transport/maps/greater-manchester-bus-boundary-map shows the area between the Glossop-Hayfield- New Mills road (served by High Peak 60 and 61) and the GM boundary as an add-on. The Beeline buses crossing in to this area (237, 341, 358 and 360) charge Beeline fares throughout.
High Peak’s commercial 199 and Derbyshire-tendered 394 charge £2 single in GM and £3 for cross-boundary services. Beeline day tickets are still £5 but weekly or monthly beeline tickets are higher priced if they include the add-on. Single fares for local services in the area vary up to the £3 cap and High Peak have their own £5 day ticket for the area. A weekly covering their own cross-boundary services undercuts Beeline’s.
Derbyshire Wayfarers are valid on their side of the Derbyshire boundary, which coming back to rail, is at both New Mills stations.
I very much doubt that many passengers or bus drivers can follow all the details of these fares. I suspect that franchising will replace the high cost of using more than one operator with a high cost for going out of your franchised area.
Jim Froggatt
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An excellent area to walk around with plenty of train activities.
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The complexities over bus and train fares in this area go back to the the fact that SELNEC PTE included some of this High Peak area which was not included in the Greater Manchester Council area so did not come under GM PTE, but GM PTE fares continued to be available.
As to the current situation, another problem with the cross-boundary services operated from out side the area, such as 199 and 394, is that, although they charge the £2 single within the area they do not do the Hopper Fare or daily price capping – of course their ticket machines are not linked into the TfGM system. This is not clearly stated by TfGM and people, having no doubt heard Andy Burham’s ‘one ticket’ sales pitch, do get caught out by it. Recently I was on the X43 to Burnley when somebody boarded at Prestwich expecting not only to be able to use their £2 Hopper ticket, but use it all the way to Rawtenstall!
I guess you could say franchising frays at the edges, and things could get more complicated when they have to interface with Merseyside and Wet Yorkshire schemes.
A Henthorn Stott
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