Sheffield district rail rationalisation plan of the 1960s

The majority of these changes took place in the 1960s and early 1970s, however the plan, by now much modified in the face of rapidly dwindling freight traffic, was not fully realised until the 1980s.

The major part of the rationalisation plan involved: In 1965, Sheffield Midland station's exterior was cleaned for the first time 95 years.

Passenger services to Lincoln, Doncaster, Hull, Grimsby and Cleethorpes were moved from Sheffield Victoria to Midland.

This also enabled passenger trains to reach Sheffield Midland station from the Great Central route following the closure of the Swinton Curve.

New lines were constructed from the Great Central in the Attercliffe/Broughton Lane area to reach the Sheffield District Railway and access to Tinsley Marshalling yard.

All remaining servicing of passenger trains was done at Nunnery carriage sidings, or at Midland station itself in the through roads or on the former Pond Street goods depot.

The resignalling project was completed to encompass Chesterfield, Rotherham and lines north of Sheffield as far as Thurnscoe, Conisbrough, Darfield and Wath.

As with much of the BR Modernisation Plan, a lot of expenditure was made in upgrading facilities to deal with wagonload freight and heavy industry traffic that would rapidly become obsolete.

Tinsley Yard was never used to its full capacity, and although it remained impressively busy until the early 1980s it was almost defunct by the mid-1990s along with its locomotive depot.

Nunnery carriage sidings also closed in the mid-1980s with the introduction of High Speed Trains on the Midland Main Line, which required less servicing, all of which was done from Leeds Neville Hill.

The decision to concentrate Rotherham's traffic on Masborough station was a mistake, which lead to declining passenger numbers.

This was rectified in 1987 with the switching of Rotherham's passenger traffic to a brand new Central station on the site of its predecessor and, later, the closure of Masborough, albeit via a low-cost single line connection that is now seen to be a bottleneck.

A general increase in passenger numbers in the area since the 1980s has shown that, with hindsight, many of the suburban and urban station closures were premature.