Passenger types: suburban

Freight types: van and parcel traffic

Operators: 1 station manager, 1 assistant

Wakefield lies between Sheffield and Halifax on the branch which traverses the island peninsula in the McKinley extension room. But don’t be fooled by the ‘branch-line’ tag; this is no sleepy halt with only a couple of trains a day in each direction.

Wakefield hums with activity around the clock, and is unique among McKinley locations in that it only serves a single industry, Alberry’s distribution centre.

These days we’re only a couple of clicks away from our latest online order, but back in the day it was a very different story. Alberry’s was the Amazon of its time, stocking and distributing thousands of items from hair curlers to radios, and bicycles to that wonder of the post-war era, the domestic vacuum cleaner. Housewives across Britain (and perhaps their husbands too) eagerly awaited the arrival of the latest Alberry’s postal catalogue, from which every conceivable household item could be ordered. Alberry’s processed thousands of such orders every day, with the yard at Wakefield doing the heavy lifting as vans are emptied and filled to satisfy the needs of Britain’s 1950s and 1960s consumer generation. Wakefield, which also sees a steady stream of local passenger traffic running through its two-platform station, never sleeps for long.