Siddick Junction railway station

Siddick Junction railway station was opened by the Cleator and Workington Junction (C&WJR) and London and North Western Railways in 1880 to provide exchange platforms for passengers wishing to change trains from one company's line to the other. A passenger travelling from to, for example, would change at Siddick Junction. As a purely exchange station - like and elsewhere in the country - the owning companies would not need to provide road or footpath access or ticketing facilities as no passengers were invited to enter or leave the station except by train.Ten years later, in 1890, the community of Siddick had grown sufficiently to justify upgrading the station to handle the full range of passengers.The station was officially "Siddick Junction" but Bradshaw referred to it as plain "Siddick".HistoryThe coastal line through Siddick had existed for years when the C&WJR was built in the late 1870s. The new line was one of the fruits of the rapid industrialisation of West Cumberland in the second half of the nineteenth century, specifically being born as a reaction to oligopolistic behaviour by the London and North Western and Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railways.It was originally intended to drive the new line northwards across country to meet the Caledonian Railway and cross into Scotland by the Solway Viaduct, but an accommodation was made with the LNWR leading to the intended northern extension being greatly watered down to a line through and the short link from to Siddick.All lines in the area were primarily aimed at mineral traffic, notably iron ore, coal and limestone, none more so than the new line through to Siddick, where the junction was a general goods and passenger junction, but much more so a freight junction. The line earned the local name "The Track of the Ironmasters".