The first Hellifield railway station was opened by the "Little" North Western Railway in 1849. It was a modest structure, similar to those at Gargrave and Long Preston and sited to the south of the present one. A much larger replacement was built by the Midland Railway to the designs of architect Charles Trubshaw and opened on 1 June 1880, immediately to the north of the junction of the line from and the newly completed Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway route from via. It soon became a busy junction, with trains going to:
It was also the location of a busy locomotive depot and a large goods yard. The line from Blackburn had its local passenger service withdrawn on 10 September 1962, but it remains open for goods traffic and periodic diversions when the West Coast main line is closed north of for engineering work. The adjacent locomotive shed closed the following year and local trains from the station to Carlisle ended in May 1970, although it continued to be served by expresses to and from Glasgow until 1975. Thereafter it was downgraded to unstaffed halt status and served only by stopping trains between Leeds and Morecambe. In April 1977 the main station building was designated as a Grade II listed building. By the late 1980s the main buildings and canopies were in very poor condition and under threat of demolition, but following a £500,000 cash injection from British Rail in conjunction with English Heritage and the Railway Heritage Trust, they were refurbished and returned to private commercial use. Trains to and from Carlisle also started calling again in May 1995 to further encourage use of the station and its newly restored amenities. Between 2005 and 2008, the station was used as the operating base for Kingfisher Railtours' Dalesman steam-hauled charter trains over the Settle-Carlisle Line. Facilities on offer to the travelling public at the station include the Long Drag cafe & gift shop and a heritage room used to exhibit items and photographs connected to the Settle-Carlisle route. The station is also still used by special trains and steam-hauled railway tours as a water stop and traction changeover point. It has also undergone further structural refurbishment in the summer of 2013, with Network Rail carrying out £500,000 of work on the Grade II listed buildings to repair/replace the glazing and repaint the canopies. The station has full step-free access, via a subway with inclined ramp from the main entrance. Train running information can be obtained from timetable posters or by telephone, with digital PIS screens due to be installed in the autumn of 2019 as part of a rolling station upgrade programme by the train operator Northern. The last remaining signal box at the station is one of only two manual boxes left in operation between Leeds and . It acts as the 'fringe' box to the Leeds workstation of York IECC in the Skipton direction, as well as controlling the junction and a pair of goods loops that are used to help regulate the increasingly heavy levels of freight traffic on the Carlisle, Leeds and Blackburn lines.
Station Masters
William Ash 1849 - ????
R.L. Tudor 1880 - 1899
George Margrave 1900 - 1905
Edwin Hooper Russell 1905 - 1917
William Henry Huff 1917 - ????
J.H. Duckworth 1927 - 1935
Charles Hopkins 1935 - ????
Accidents and incidents
On 22 December 1955, an express passenger train overran signals and was in a rear-end collision with another. Irregular operation of signals was a major contributory factor and the signalman at Hellifield South Junction was blamed for the accident.
Services
There is a regular service each day from Hellifield to Leeds and to Carlisle and Lancaster. There are fourteen services southbound on weekdays and fifteen on Saturdays. Northbound there are eight trains each to Lancaster and to Carlisle plus one evening service to Ribblehead – these run about every two hours. Five of the Lancaster trains run through to Morecambe. One train ran through to Heysham to connect with the daily ferry service to the Isle of Man, but from May 2018 it is necessary to change at Lancaster for Heysham. On Sundays there are six trains to Carlisle, five to Morecambe and eleven to Leeds, one of which continues to Nottingham. Also on Sundays in the summer, a train operates from Blackpool North, Preston and Blackburn and along the Ribble Valley Line via Clitheroe to Hellifield and onwards towards Carlisle in the summer. This service, 'Dalesrail', is operated by Northern Trains. There are plans for more services from Clitheroe. The Ribble Valley Rail group is campaigning for this route to be re-opened.
