Talk:Fairfield railway station (England)

Latest comment: 4 years ago by Peeky44 in topic "very low passenger usage"

Six platforms edit

I've added on about the fact that at one point, this station had six numbered platforms - the remnants of the others can still be seen, although are mostly hidden in the undergrowth.

The tale I was told by my grandfather (an ex-British Rail employee) was that the station was redeveloped in the 1950s in anticipation that a motor racing venue would be built nearby, hence six lines would be needed instead of the original four (2 for local, 2 for fast, 2 for special services to serve the motor racing). The racing venue went to Aintree Racecourse instead and the extra two platforms never used.

I have absolutely no idea how true that story is and can find no references to back it up - but I'm adding it here in case anyone else has heard the tale. There is a link in that Droylsden is one place which claims to be the home of speedway.

Bods (talk) 15:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)Reply


In the early 80's, I read a Tameside Council book on the history of the borough. It claimed that the station had been built to anticipate a racecourse on where Fairfield Golf course is now.

Indeed you can speculate that the failed proposal fro Fairfield Athletic FC as a Football league club was maybe part of that venture.

Heatonparkincakes, Manchester 2nd June, 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.72.131 (talk) 18:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)Reply

Requested Move edit

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page not moved: no concensus in 33 days. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)Reply


Fairfield railway station (Greater Manchester)Fairfield (Greater Manchester) railway station — This article's title does not follow the convention of placing the locality immediately after the station name to distinguish it from other railway stations with the same name. There are a few templates that use this sequence to create links and these are currently going to a disambiguation page as the location cannot be used. Bill Oversixty (talk) 20:57, 10 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

  • Oppose per past consensus at Talk:Whitchurch railway station (Hampshire)#Requested move and my comments there that I still stand by. Dpmuk (talk) 23:00, 10 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
    I'd also be interested to know which templates are broken by the current name as I can't find them. Dpmuk (talk) 23:03, 10 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment this seems to work fine the way it is, with disambiguation at the end. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:23, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment The templates which use the location immediately after the station name are s-rail/lines succession templates. As far as I am aware this station does not include the location in its actual name so in my view it is important to follow an established naming convention. In my opinion if you hit a disambiguation page from a link rather than a search then that is careless editing and should be discouraged. Had I been able to do so at the time I would have supported the renaming of Whitchurch railway station.Bill Oversixty (talk) 08:12, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
    Ah, OK, I see what you mean. I don't however think this should dictate what we name stations - this should be decided independent of any issues such as this. The root cause of this problem comes down to Template:National Rail stations and this would be reasonably easy to fix if consensus was we should use the style we currently have for this station. For now the easiest fix is to create a redirect which I've just done. Note however that articles may still have to be updated, as in this edit for the links to work correctly (as the template can't guess the county). Dpmuk (talk) 10:26, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
    Thanks for this. I was aware of the difficulty with Template:National Rail stations but it did seem to me looking at other articles on railway stations in the UK that the convention was to place the location after the station name. I had thought of a redirect but I considered renaming would be better. I am not familiar with template design but looking at similarly named station templates it should be possible to add one-off stations. If not already dealt with I will also update Gorton railway station succession template.Bill Oversixty (talk) 10:51, 11 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 2 edit

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 03:57, 26 October 2014 (UTC)Reply


Fairfield railway station (Greater Manchester)Fairfield (Manchester) railway station – To bring the station into line with the general naming convention applied to other stations including Clifton (Manchester) railway station and Swinton (Manchester) railway station, according to which the disambiguator follows directly after the station name. Lamberhurst (talk) 17:48, 18 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

  • Oppose. The disambiguator following the name is done when that is the official name of the station used by Network Rail, but the name of the station is not "Fairfield (Manchester)", it is just "Fairfield" as it is not ambiguous within the UK. I would be OK with "Fairfield railway station, Manchester" or "Fairfield railway station, England" or something along those lines to match the disambiguators given to the American and Australian Fairfield railway stations. Thryduulf (talk) 00:50, 19 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
Despite the fact that NR doesn't indicate the station as such, a disambiguation is necessary for us and it comes down to a choice between the natural disambig of Foo (disambig) station (used by all other open Greater Manchester stations) and an artificial parenthetical/comma construction at the end. Lamberhurst (talk) 07:45, 20 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
"Foo (disambig) station" is no more natural disambiguation than "Foo station (disambiguation)", either here or for the other stations that use it. Both Swinton (Manchester) railway station and Gorton railway station are simply at their official names. The appropriate disambiguation here is either "Fairfield railway station (Greater Manchester)" or "Fairfield railway station, Greater Manchester". Thryduulf (talk) 10:51, 20 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"very low passenger usage" edit

The more I read this article, the more the following statement grates on me: "For a suburban station, Fairfield has very low passenger usage (see figures right)." Firstly, I'm not convinced that stating something then referring to another part of the page (in this case the infobox) for the justification is best practice. Secondly, I wonder if this statement may now be out of date as the infobox states that Fairfield had 41,000 passengers in 2018/19, the last year data is available - and that's approaching double the number from 2014/15. Finally, I think this breaks the Manual of Style guidance on WP:WHATPLACE - because it states that this is low usage for a suburban station, but doesn't define the scope. Are are looking at all suburban railway stations (in which case it would be much higher than many), all suburban stations in the UK or in GB (which will be skewed by places like London and Glasgow) or is this comparison intended for just Greater Manchester suburban stations? Does this comparison in any way account for level of service? I would prefer to see this expressed as a comparison with other similarly-situated stations in Greater Manchester and/or the UK. A few examples that spring to mind would be Moses Gate (usage about half), Levenshulme (usage 10x higher), Hackbridge (usage 20x higher) or London Road (Brighton) (usage 10x higher) but there are probably some others that are more appropriate (other than Moses Gate). --Peeky44 What's on your mind? 14:55, 26 April 2020 (UTC)Reply