Notes: Grindley Brook Halt was located on the LNWR’s line that ran from a junction on the Crewe to Chester line, approximately two miles to the north of Tattenhall Village, to Whitchurch. The line was opened by the LNWR on 1st October 1872 and it was it was 14 miles in length and built to main line standards with double track throughout. It was intended to provide competition to the GWR route between Chester and Shrewsbury and the LNWR hoped that it would attract the majority of the coal traffic from South Wales which was destined for the Mersey Docks in Birkenhead. Some coal traffic did use the line, especially that originating from the Abergavenny - Merthyr line which was also under LNWR control .However most of the coal traffic bound for Birkenhead came from the North Wales coal fields around Wrexham which was GWR or GCR territory, this did not use the Whitchurch - Waverton line

Grindley Brook was not one of the original stations opined with the line but was an unmanned halt added much later by the London Midland & Scottish Railway opening on 4th July 1937 and served by the local trains running between Chester and Whitchurch. The halt was located on the south side of an overbridge that crossed the line at this location. Steps led down to the platforms which were in a cutting from the overbridge; it is likely that the platforms were simple wooden affairs.

Passenger train services remained mostly of a local nature, connections were possible to Liverpool and the area became popular with many businessmen who commuted by train. By 1950 the service had been reduced to five daily trains with an additional service on Wednesdays running through to Shrewsbury. There was never a Sunday service.

The area through which the line passed is quite rural and because of this passenger numbers were never very large and never reached expectations . The branch declined rapidly after WW2 with more and more commuters abandoning railways in favour of more convenient road transport while an ever increasing amount of goods traffic switched over from

An observer on the last freight through Grindley Brook in January 1963 recorded the halt as intact but with the station nameboard hanging off one of its supporting posts but all trace of the station had gone by 1978 and no photographs of the halt are known to exist either before or after closure.

Additional source: London & North Western Railway Society Journal September 2004 and Backtrack magazine March 2007, thanks to Tony Robinson for sending his text from these journals. Further reading: Down the Line by RM Bevan - A nostalgic journey along the old branch railway from Waverton (Chester) to Whitchurch, CC Publishing. Tickets from Michael Stewart

To see other stations on the Waverton - Whitchurch line click on the station name: Whitchurch, Malpas, Broxton, Tattenhall & Waverton