Bradford Interchange - History

History

The original railway station, named Bradford Exchange, was opened by the joint efforts of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the Great Northern Railway on 9 May 1850. In 1867, the Leeds, Bradford and Halifax Junction Railway, which had previously used Bradford Adolphus Street, built a link to the tracks into Exchange station to join the two existing companies; Adolphus Street station was then closed to passenger use.

The station was completely rebuilt on the same site in 1880 with ten bay platforms and two arched roofs. Constructed of wrought iron, these rested at the outer sides on plain stone walls and classical corinthian style columns down the middle. Glass covered the middle half and timber (inside)/ slate (outside) covered the outer quarters of each span. The four end screens were glazed in a fan pattern with decorative timber outer edging. The dimensions were a length of 450 feet (140 m), a width of 100 feet (30 m) for each arch and a height of 80 feet (24 m), track to apex. The station never had a formal frontage; instead, passengers entered by an opening in the northwest side.

By 1973, the station with its 10 platforms was deemed too large and was again rebuilt, this time on a different site slightly further south. The old Exchange station was demolished soon afterwards and was used for a time as a car park; the site now houses Bradford Crown Court and is due to be developed as a 'Justice Quarter' with new Magistrates' and Coroner's Courts. In 1977, a bus station was built alongside, and, in 1983, the station was renamed Bradford Interchange to link buses and trains in a covered environment. The bus station featured a large ridge and furrow design of overall roof, which was subsequently demolished in 1999 to allow for a rebuilding of the bus station, which was opened in 2001. This was paid for partly by the sale of some adjacent land to the south of the site and some now-surplus land on the old bus station site. During the 1970s and 1980s, the station was considered the mainline station for Bradford with express services to London King's Cross, Trans-Pennine services to Liverpool and Newcastle and summer Saturday services to the South-West. The Inter-city services were moved to Forster Square station in 1992 when the line was electrified. The station also had an adjacent Red Star Parcels terminus but, like most other mainline stations following the privatisation of British Rail, it lost this facility during the 1990s.