Wakefield Westgate railway station

Wakefield Westgate railway station is a mainline railway station in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It is 10mi south of Leeds on Westgate to the west of the city centre, on the Wakefield Line and Leeds branch of the East Coast Main Line.HistoryThe first Westgate station opened in 1856 following the opening of the spur line from the city's first station Wakefield Kirkgate. It occupied part of a mansion on the south side built for John Milnes in the mid-18th century. No trace of the station remains as the site was cleared and a school, also demolished, was built on it.The second station, built by the Great Northern Railway (GNR), Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, and Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways on the line from Leeds to Doncaster, opened in 1867 on the opposite side of Westgate. The line approached Westgate from Leeds on an embankment and then passed over a bridge on Westgate at the start of a 95-arch viaduct. Designed by J B Fraser, the station had a tower to which a clock with four faces by Potts of Leeds was added in June 1880. The clock tower and some of the station buildings were demolished in the 1960s.The station was modernised and rebuilt by British Rail in 1967, when direct access to the platform level was achieved by infilling the station forecourt to the former first storey platform level. Opened after the Kirkgate station, Westgate has become the main station in the city due to its location on the main line from Leeds to Doncaster and London. Until the mid 1960s, it had regular services to Bradford Exchange via and Ossett and via Morley Top and to Castleford via the Methley Joint Railway but these services fell victim to the Beeching Axe between 1964 and 1966.