Redcar British Steel railway station


Redcar British Steel is an un-served railway station in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England, that was served by trains from 1978 to 2019 before services were suspended.
Opened to serve Teesside Steelworks, it is located on the Tees Valley Line and was latterly managed by Northern. In 2017/18 it was the least used station in Britain, with an estimated 40 passenger entries/exits.
Due to the fact that the British Steel site is no longer publicly accessible, Northern suspended all services to and from the station in December 2019.

History

The station opened on 19 June 1978 and is situated on a re-sited portion of route that was commissioned on that date by British Rail to allow the previous alignment to be used for an expansion of the steelworks site. This included a station at that the current structure replaced.
According to the Strategic Rail Authority, only 486 entries and exits were recorded for the station during the 2004–05 period, mainly due to there being no public access to and from the station and also due to the limited service. However, the numbers had increased to 1,570 entries and exits by the 2014–15 period.
The majority of the steelworks, including the Redcar blast furnace, Redcar and South Bank coke ovens and the BOS plant at Lackenby, closed in 2015, resulting in a drop in passenger usage of the station from the previous year. In the 2016–17 period the entries and exits dropped to only 50, becoming the fourth least used station in Britain. In the 2017–18 period, it was the least used station in Britain with only 40 passengers, surpassing.
Work is beginning on regenerating the site of the former steelworks by the South Tees Development Corporation. As part of their vision they are hoping to revamp the station and improve the service frequency. Services ceased to call at the station from 14 December 2019.
The station received a boost in its usage figures during the 2018-19 period, recording 360 up from 40 during the previous period. This is highly likely to be as a result of its then title of Britain's 'least used railway station'.

Services

At the time of its suspension there were two trains in each direction Monday to Saturday. The two eastbound services served all stations to with one originating from and the other originating from . The two westbound services both originated from Saltburn and continued to Bishop Auckland.