QUIETEST STATION IS A RAIL SURVIVOR
NO matter where you look, the railways are intrinsically connected with Derby.
Thousands work at the city’s Alstom factory and other railrelated companies and Derby is campaigning hard to become the new home of Great British Rail.
But despite the importance of the railways in our county and the industry’s central role in the city’s history, people may be surprised to know that just a mile from Derby Midland Station is the quietest train station in all of Derbyshire.
According to figures from the Office of Rail and Road, from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021, only 1,728 people either got on or off a train at Peartree. This makes it the lowest in the county, and while these figures were from the height of the coronavirus pandemic, it was also the least-used station in 201920, with 3,892 entries and exits.
The station has just five trains a day on weekdays, four on Saturdays and none on Sundays, all of which are run by East Midlands Railway, despite being on the line connecting Derby with Birmingham, Crewe and beyond.
Trains have also been a strange, slightly geeky interest for me since I became obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine as a small child, to the point I once told my grandmother that a real train she had taken me to see was not a proper train because “it doesn’t have a face”.
So, I decided to meet some passengers – if there were any – who used the station and to understand their reasons for it.
I arrived at around 7am, heading down one of the two ramps used to access the station, which does not have designated parking. The only trains that stop here are on the Crewe to Newark Castle line, via Derby and Nottingham, and the first arrives heading towards Newark Castle at 7.18am.
The station, which can only be reached from Osmaston Park Road, is accessed by using an intercom system and asking for the gate to the platform to be opened. This only takes a few seconds though, and the station itself, despite being below a busy dual carriageway, was surprisingly peaceful, with well-maintained planters along one of the platforms, and a shelter on the other.
Before the first train stops, two CrossCountry trains rattle through. But when the first stopping service does arrive, there aren’t any passengers getting on, and one solitary passenger gets off.
The second train, however, was the 7.48am to Crewe, which was comparatively much busier and around half a dozen people alighted. While waiting on the platform, I spoke to 18-year-old Callum Johal, who is working at a physics laboratory in Tutbury. Tutbury & Hatton is the next station along from Peartree heading towards Crewe, just 12 minutes away.
Callum only started the job on Monday, June 27, but is already finding the station handy. He said: “There are three of us: me, Jimmy and Surj. I have only been getting the train here for a week, and met Jimmy and Surj, but Surj has been working at the Nestle factory at Tutbury for 16 years and he has got the train for all of that time.
“I’m from Sunny Hill, so it’s only a 15-minute walk. I’ve been getting the train all week, and it’s been fine, it’s a pretty standard station and journey. It’s literally just us three in the mornings usually, we may see one other person. In the afternoon, I have seen two or three other people in a day get off or on, but otherwise it’s just us three.
“It’s very handy as I don’t drive, I just bike everywhere. I have two jobs, one in the lab and one at Costa, so I bike 40 minutes each way to get to that. With petrol prices now, I don’t want my mum driving me round everywhere.
“The train back is handy too. I finish at 4.30pm and the train leaves Tutbury & Hatton at 5.05pm, so I end up just doing overtime.
Callum tells me that Surj and Jimmy “always cut it fine” - Jimmy comes down the ramp just as the train comes into view, but Surj is nowhere to be seen. Not for the first time, Callum adds.
Jimmy says he gets the train from Peartree every weekday to get to his job at the Nestle factory in Tutbury. “I need the train,” he says. “I don’t drive and it gets me right outside my work. It’s a 15-minute walk to the station and
a two-minute walk from Tutbury & Hatton to work. It’s vital, but sometimes the service could be better.”
The trains that stop at Peartree are all during the morning and afternoon rush hours. Trains to Newark Castle leave at 7.18am, 8.12am and 5.49pm, while trains to Crewe leave at 7.48am and 5.17pm, with both destinations around an hour and 10 minutes away. Stokeon-Trent is around 50 minutes, and Nottingham is 40 minutes, but on Saturdays there is no service at 8.12am.
Originally called Peartree and Normanton, the station was one of the originals from the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway, opening in August 1839. A branch line to Melbourne opened in 1868 but closed to traffic in 1930, and the station slowly diminished in importance until its eventual closure on March 4, 1968.
It was later reopened when the old Melbourne branch line was reopened as far as Sinfin in 1976, to allow workers to get to and from Sinfin North station on the RollsRoyce plant. That line closed to passengers again in 1998, although it is still accessible for freight trains, but Peartree remained open as it was on the mainline.
The line that runs to the RollsRoyce plant is what drew one train spotter to the station when I was there. He didn’t wish to be named, but told me that he was a guard for CrossCountry based in Leicester.
He hadn’t been to Peartree in some time, and had only visited it in a work capacity before, but told me, “I can believe that it is the quietest station”. He left Leicester at around 7am that morning to see a rare train coming through the station.
He said: “There is a fuel train going down to the Rolls-Royce factory and I was just up for a couple of pictures. I have only come here in an official capacity before, but not to visit. It’s just a total one-off today.”
Pressing the button to get off the platform, another fairly quiet morning passes at Peartree station. But one thing is for certain despite its nondescript appearance, for at least some people the station serves a useful purpose.
It’s literally just us three in the mornings usually, we may see one other person.
Callum Johal