Origins The station lies on the original
Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) extension to
Port Darlington, developed from 1828 under the instructions of influential
Quaker banker, coal mine owner and S&DR shareholder
Joseph Pease, who had sailed up the
River Tees to find a suitable new site down river of Stockton on which to place new coal
staithes. As a result, in 1829 he and a group of Quaker businessmen bought of land described as "a dismal swamp", On 27 December 1830, the S&DR opened an extension across the river to a station at Newport, almost directly north of the current
Middlesbrough station. However, with Port Darlington overwhelmed by the volume of imports and exports, in 1839 work started on
Middlesbrough Dock. Laid out by
Sir William Cubitt, the whole infrastructure was built by resident civil engineer
George Turnbull. Thornaby was located on a busy and hence important section of the line for the NER, between Newport and Middlesbrough Docks to the east, and Bowesfield Junction in Stockton to the west (where the Northallerton/Darlington and
Durham Coast Lines diverge), which had the busiest
signal box on the NER system. The main station structure had a glass-covered entrance in a unique design of ironwork, which led to a booking office and waiting rooms for four classes. The newly rebuilt station was formally opened by former local
MP Dari Taylor on 7 February 2003. There are an enlarged car park, a heated waiting room, a staffed ticket office, a shop,
VDU displays and better lighting and security. As a result of this improvement work, and the return of staffing, Thornaby won a National Station of the Year Award in the 2003 HSBC Rail Awards. In November 2023 the station was mentioned in the news after a woman fell victim to a scam involving a
QR code in the station's car park, when the genuine QR code was covered by one designed by fraudsters. After the woman lost £13,000 from her bank accounts, TransPennine Express removed all QR codes from their stations.
Tees Valley Metro Starting in 2006, Thornaby was mentioned within the
Tees Valley Metro scheme. This was a plan to upgrade the
Tees Valley Line and sections of the
Esk Valley Line and
Durham Coast Line to provide a faster and more frequent service across the
North East of England. In the initial phases the services would have been
heavy rail mostly along existing alignments with new additional infrastructure and rollingstock. The later phase would have introduced
tram-trains to allow street running and further heavy rail extensions. As part of the scheme, Thornaby station would have received improved service to
Darlington and
Saltburn (1–2 to 4 trains per hour) as well as to
Nunthorpe and
Hartlepool, possibly a street-running link to
Guisborough and the
Headland, and new rollingstock. However, due to a
change in government in 2010 and the
2008 financial crisis, the project was ultimately shelved. Several stations eventually got their improvements and there is a possibility of improved rollingstock and services in the future which may affect Thornaby. ==Services==