Trains

Hibel Road was created to give the North Staffordshire Railway access to Manchester and the LNWR an alternative route from Manchester to London.  Passenger traffic in the early BR period (and to the present day) continues to follow these models: commuter trains between Stoke and Manchester London Road (now called Manchester Piccadilly), and expresses to and from London Euston.  Other passenger trains of the period included the Manchester-Bournemouth Pines Express, and excursion trains on holidays and match days.

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Northbound through freight was dominated by coal from the mines around Biddulph and sand from Congleton towards St Helens for glassmaking.  The line was a main artery between Derby, Stoke and the North-West, so many other freight loads can be seen.  Lying on the boundary between Manchester South and Stoke districts in the London Midland Region, and adjacent to the Eastern region thanks to the ex-GCR Macclesfield-Marple line, the yard was a convenient spot to change locos.  Local goods traffic served the Hibel Road goods yard, the coal sidings just south of the station (off scene), and  removed by-products from the gasworks.

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Hibel Road shed (shed code 9C) was within the orbit of Longsight after 1935, and was the only ex-North Staffs shed to be assigned to an ex-LNWR parent shed after grouping.  Tank engines were the most common locos on the line: 3Ps before the war, 4P/4MTs after.  Unusually, the entire post-nationalisation allocation comprised Fowler 4MT 2-6-4Ts: 11 in November 1950, falling to just 6 by 1959.  The shed closed in 1961.

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Most of the locos calling at (or just passing through) Hibel Road were ex-LMS: Jubilees and Patriots hauled the expresses, 4Fs the sand trains, WDs and Fowler 7Fs the long-distance freights.  The Marple-Bollington-Macclesfield line was operated by LNER types, and these would have been serviced at Hibel Road after the LNER shed was demolished in the 1930s; once again, tank engines - N5s which were replaced by C13/C14s then A5s and finally L1s as the bigger types were displaced from London suburban routes by dieselisation.