During a journey, the term
station stop may be used in announcements to differentiate halts during which passengers may alight and halts for other reasons, such as a
locomotive change. While a junction or
interlocking usually divides two or more lines or routes, and thus has remotely or locally operated
signals, a station stop does not. A station stop usually has no tracks other than the main tracks and may or may not have
switches (points, crossovers).
Intermediate station An intermediate station does not have any other connecting route, unlike
branch-off stations, connecting stations,
transfer stations and
railway junctions. In a broader sense, an intermediate station is generally any station on the route between its two
terminal stations. In practice, most stations are intermediate. They are mostly designed as
through stations; there are only a few intermediate stations that take the form of a stub-end station, for example, at some
zigzags. If there is a
station building, it is usually located to the side of the tracks. In the case of intermediate stations used for both passenger and freight traffic, there is a distinction between those where the station building and goods facilities are on the same side of the tracks and those in which the goods facilities are on the opposite side of the tracks from the station building. at the cost of a small slowdown of trains from the additional stop. In some cases, new infill stations are built at sites where a station had once existed many years ago, for example, the station on the
Chicago 'L''s
Green Line.
Halt A
halt, in railway parlance in the
Commonwealth of Nations,
Ireland and
Portugal, is a small passenger station, usually unstaffed or with very few staff, and with few or no facilities. A halt is usually equipped with a platform or platforms on the through track(s) and the appropriate signage, but not with
switches. In some cases, trains stop only on
request when passengers on the platform indicate they wish to board, or when passengers on the train inform the crew they wish to alight. These can sometimes appear with signals and sometimes without.
United Kingdom The
Great Western Railway in Great Britain began opening
haltes on 12 October 1903; from 1905, the French spelling was Anglicised to "halt". These GWR halts had the most basic facilities, with platforms long enough for only one or two carriages; some had no raised platform at all, necessitating steps up onto the carriages. Halts were normally unstaffed, with tickets being sold on the train. On 1 September 1904, a larger version, known on the GWR as a "platform" rather than a "halt", was introduced; these had longer platforms and were usually staffed by a senior-grade porter, who sold tickets and sometimes booked parcels or milk consignments. From 1903 to 1947, the GWR built 379 halts and inherited a further 40 from other companies at the
Grouping of 1923. Peak building periods were before the
First World War (145 built) and 1928–1939 (198 built). Ten more were opened by
British Rail on ex-GWR lines. The GWR also built 34 "platforms". Many such stops remain on the national railway networks in the United Kingdom, such as in
North Wales, in
Shropshire, and in
Warwickshire, where passengers are requested to inform a member of on-board train staff if they wish to alight, or, if catching a train from the station, to make themselves clearly visible to the driver and use a hand signal as the train approaches. Most have had "Halt" removed from their names. Two publicly advertised and publicly accessible National Rail stations retain it: and . Many other halts are still open and operational on privately owned, heritage, and preserved railways throughout the British Isles. The word is often used informally to describe stations on the national rail network with limited service and low usage, such as the
Oxfordshire Halts on the
Cotswold Line. It has also sometimes been used for stations served by public services but accessible only by persons travelling to/from an associated factory (for example
IBM near Greenock and
British Steel Redcar– although neither of these is any longer served by trains), or military base (such as
Lympstone Commando) or railway yard. The only two such "private" stopping places on the national system, where the "halt" designation is still officially used, seem to be Staff Halt (at Durnsford Road, Wimbledon) and Battersea Pier Sidings Staff Halt, both of which are for railway staff only. In
Ireland, a few small railway stations are designated as "halts" (, sing. ). In some
Commonwealth countries, the term "halt" is used. In Australia, with its sparsely populated rural areas, such stopping places were common on lines that were still open to passenger traffic. In the state of
Victoria, for example, a location on a railway line where a small diesel railcar or
railmotor could stop on request, allowing passengers to board or alight, was called a "rail motor stopping place" (RMSP). Usually situated near a
level crossing, it was often designated solely by a sign beside the railway. The passenger could hail the driver to stop, and could buy a ticket from the train guard or conductor. In South Australia, such facilities were called "provisional stopping places". They were often placed on routes on which "school trains" (services conveying children from rural localities to and from school) operated. In West
Malaysia, halts are commonplace along the less-developed
KTM East Coast railway line to serve rural 'kampongs' (villages), which require train services to stay connected to important nodes but do not need staff. People boarding at halts who have not bought tickets online can buy them from the staff on board. In rural and remote communities across Canada and the United States, passengers wanting to board the train at such places had to flag the train down to stop it, hence the name "
flag stops" or "flag stations". == Accessibility ==