Catching The Train to Leeds

Station Road c1965
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I was born in 1960 within a short walk of this photo. The scene is still clearly recognisable, although the wooden station building spanning the bridge and the steps leading down to the station were demolished and replaced (sometime in the early 1970s?)

Mum would walk to the station with my little sister in a big pushchair, my brother and I holding onto the sides of the pram, to catch the train into Leeds. Mum had to push the pram down past the Fox and Hounds pub, over the bridge, down the slope past the house that is now the Pottery (shown in the photo) onto the Harrogate-bound platform. Then came the scary bit! Supervised by the Station Master we all had to cross the railway tracks across a wooden level crossing which ran under the bridge, up a ramp and onto the Leeds-bound platform. There was no direct ramp onto the Leeds platform - just a flight of wooden stairs (at the far side of the bridge in this photo).
If we were late for the train, it was not safe to cross the tracks and Mum had to bump the pram down the stairs.

The wooden station buildings were painted light blue, and there were roses in the flowerbeds at the back of the platform. If we came home late in the dark, gas lights lit the station building over the bridge and you could hear their hiss and smell the town gas.

On the opposite side of the road in the distance you can see the newsagents. It was run by a lovely man called Mr Hilton. I seem to remember that some years later he died in a tragic accident in Leeds Centre when someone jumped from a window at the Queens Hotel and fell onto his car/van.

Kate Gabriel (previously Catherine Escreet)