The following information was kindly supplied by Christopher Rule in response to a post on social media seeking information about the bookstall / news kiosk on Hellifield station (see structures 231285 and 231300).
I don’t have any specific information about Hellifield bookstall as the W.H.Smith Archive is now housed at the University of Reading. The Archive is accessible to researchers and there may also be a photo of the stall in the 1940s.
Any bookstall at Hellifield would have been operated by W.H.Smith because in 1848 WHS obtained the contract for operating bookstalls at stations on the Midland Railway and has held this to the present day. Probably some sort of record! The oldest bookstall in continuous operation is at Derby: it opened there in 1848 and is still operating (although the actual structure has been rebuilt several times since then).
When the station at Hellifield was opened it is likely that WHS would have opened a bookstall there...
In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century these railway bookstalls served passengers using the station but were also used as distribution centres for newspapers whereby newsboys and their bicycles would be carried on trains to country stations where they would get off the train and cycle around the nearby villages delivering newspapers and then, at the end of their delivery round, would catch a train back to their ‘home’ station.
When I first started working for WHSmith I had to work at the bookstall on Derby station for a month in 1966 as part of my training. It is interesting that Derby bookstall is the oldest WHSmith branch in continuous operation - since 1848. The bookstall at Euston (L&NWR) also opened in 1848, a few months before the one at Derby, but that was only operated by WHS until 1905 when it was taken over by Wymans and later by John Menzies, although I am pleased that it eventually returned to the WHS fold.
A lot of other information on railway bookstalls can be found in "W.H.Smith - Timeline", written by Christopher Rule and published by SELIA, London (2009).