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This was almost ten years before the Beeching Axe cut a swathe through other rural train services in the East Riding (like the Hull and Hornsea line) and reflects the moribund state of passenger traffic even from the village stations closest to Hull like Willerby and Little Weighton.
Freight traffic on the Hull and Barnsley was generally more successful than passenger services, particularly the coal trade. Traffic was at an all time high in 1913 when mineral receipts alone totaled almost £400,000 and the main line between Springhead sidings in Anlaby and Sandholme was frequently carrying a hundred trains a day in each direction. However in the years of the First World War and the 1920s there was a steady decline in the coal, mineral and freight traffic carried.
The independent life of the Hull and Barnsley railway came to an end in March 1922 when it was amalgamated with its old rival the North Eastern Railway (soon to be the LNER). However, the decline in coal, mineral and freignt traffic continued as before. As competition from road freight increased so the number of trains using the Hull and Barnsley route diminished : by 1955, the year in which passenger services ceased, there were only sixteen or seventeen freight trains daily each way over the main line. Furthermore, a recession in the coal and steel industries during 1958 led to a full re-appraisal of the line and the greater part of it through the Wolds was closed. A limited goods service to Little Weighton continued until 1964 when that too ended.
Thus ended the relatively short operational life of an enterprise which, in 1880, had been greeted in Hull with both optimism and enthusiasm. There is little doubt that the railway's chances of success were blighted from the outset by the high cost of building it through difficult terrain as well as over-optimistic forecasts of the traffic it would generate. It could be argued that the earlier scheme of 1872, with its tunnel under the Humber, would have been a cheaper, more viable project in the long term since it would have presented fewer construction difficulties and have brought London 15 miles nearer. Instead, by 1921 over four and a half million pounds had been spent on a railway which became little more than a white elephant. As one historian, writing in 1948 when the line was still largely operational, commented:
"That it played its part in the development of Hull cannot be doubted, but whether its contribution was commensurate with the effort and money expended on it is not so certain."
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