With the North Staffordshire Railway company (1846-1923) or 'The Knotty' Proposals for a line were initiated and the idea for Hanley Railway Station started in 1861 with a goods line and then passengers later on thus sending goods to the station started but not to passengers until the 2nd station opened in 1873, the original station opened along with the first section of the Loop in 1864 but when the latter reached Burslem in 1873, a new station was built on a sharp curve (8 chainsradius) in a cutting below Trinity Street until the 1923 grouping when The Knotty merged into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) and lasted until 1948 but the old station remained for goods traffic. During the Second World War at the start of the Blitz in 1940 Hanley station suffered damage to the building caused by the Luftwaffe as the roof was damaged and a fire was set on the wooden passenger bridge and was not repaired after the war. The trains operated by the LMS during the war would have been used to send soldiers and munitions to Europe at that time to send on the Western Front or onwards to North Africa amongst British, Colonial and US soldiers. After the war, from 1948-97 the Midland region of British Railways had Hanley station in control after the London Midland and Scottish Railway company after 25 years came under nationalisation and lasted until the company was privatised round 1995 and 1997 under Regional Railways. When BRCW DMU diesel trains were introduced at the end of the 1950s as part of the modernisation period the original awnings illustrating where the DMUs would have stopped or passed through the station were demolished but unlike the Mainline which its lines such as where Etruria to Longport, Kidsgrove Central, Crewe and Alsager for Macclesfield is were electrified as in Hanley their lines were not except for Kidsgrove Liverpool Road until Birchenwood Colliery closed in 1973 and Park Farm Open Cast Mine in 1976. When delivering goods by trains on the loop line was in decline all goods like groceries, minerals and Oils etc were to be delivered by trucks to the supermarket's or factories as it's something that still goes on today but in that time when the loop line was in decline from 1961 when there were 5 trains a day going from Hanley it was the passenger service except that some were workers going on business trips.
For Stoke on Trent, like the rest of the Loop Line except for Waterloo Road and Kidsgrove Market Street Halt, Hanley railway station was listed for closure under the Beeching Report under Dr Richard Beeching of ICI and the British Railways Board in 1963. It was closed to passengers and goods in 1964-1966 and to parcel traffic only until the existing line became a single line closed to trains carrying wagons from the nearby Walker's Century Oils now Fuchs Oils on Century Street, Hanley by 1969 after Waterloo Road station closed and from then on after over 100 years of using passengers and goods by trains from steam to electric the Potteries Loop Line ceased to exist but its legacy still lives on in the present day.[3]
A decade after closure, the North Staffordshire Railway Preservation Society came to the disused Hanley railway station site in 1978 when demolition work was in progress. They took the water gauge and preserved it at Cheddleton railway station in the Churnet Valley until it was then reopened in 1996 as a heritage station as well as Leek Brook also in 1996, Consall railway station in 1998 and Kingsley and Froghall in 2001.
Not much of Hanley railway station exists as of 2025[update] but what does still exist of the station is the top of the station wall that can be seen near rear of the car park, as well as parts of the station building with the arches on the outside but the parapet wall part of the over bridge what is next on where the Quality Hotel is still existing looking towards Tesco and the railway owned warehouse on Clough Street what was converted into a furniture shop still exists. The original Hanley railway station, used for the first terminus in 1864 until moving to Trinity Street in 1873, also used as a goods station until 1966 would believe to be on Trinity Street but could be what is now the offices for British Telecom (BT). Not only the tunnel is filled in but the cutting that was later used for annual Sunday markets on Etruria Road opposite the Virtual Reality place formerly "Mr Chan's" and then "Buffet China" had also been infilled as well years after closure as part of that cutting since 2010 is now part of Tesco car park, some of the embankments part of the station still exist and is the site of the car park of the former Grand Hotel (previously the Stakis Hotel, then the Quality Hotel and now the Best Western Hotel).
In 2023 60 years after Hanley Railway Station was listed for closure under the Beeching Report, Stoke on Trent City Centre BID created what Hanley railway station used to be like on where Rockerman's Furniture used to be open as part of the Railway warehouse.[citation needed] Based on the trains that carried the wagons from Walker's Century Oils onto the former furniture shop, members of the public can see that Hanley used to have an active railway station and how they were then operative through over the years.
Like the Potteries Loop Line and what used to be steelwork industries and collieries, factories with chimneys on and narrow boats sending the goods in to the factories from the 18th century to 2000 like Hanley Deep Pit, Shelton Bar Iron and Steelworks for examples. As well as round the six towns of Stoke on Trent, Hanley railway station was also used for the 1952 crime caper movie Hunted starring Dirk Bogarde as a fugitive on the run from London to Stoke-on-Trent by train passing to Hanley Deep Pit now "Hanley Forest Park" to Cobridge railway station onward bound for Scotland. Based on the Potteries Loop Line itself. Some of the works of local Stoke on Trent author Arnold Bennett such as Anna Of The 5 Towns and The Old Wives Tale that mention stations like Hanley to Cobridge, Burslem and Tunstall but by finding out about the Potteries Loop Line and how they used to operate from can be found in the local libraries in Stoke and Hanley. [4]
↑ Hartless, Adrian (April 2019). "3.Eturia to Congleton". Lines North of Stoke to Crewe, Congleton and Leek. Midhurst: Middleton Press. ISBN9781910356296. XXIV.Goods from 1st August 1964
↑ Christiansen, Rex; Miller, R. W. (1971). The North Staffordshire Railway. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. ISBN0-7153-5121-4.
↑ Ballantyne, Hugh (2005). British Railways Past & Present: North Staffordshire and the Trent Valley. Past & Present Publishing Ltd. ISBN1858952042.
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