Everything about Leicester Railway Station totally explained
Leicester railway station serves the
City of
Leicester in
Leicestershire,
England. It opened in the
Victorian era, in
1840, replacing an earlier station on the sight. Up until the closure of
Central,
Belgrave Road and
West Bridge Railway stations it was known as
Leicester London Road.
The station is an interchange point between the
Midland Main Line (MML) from
London St Pancras to
Leeds and services on the
Cross Country Route from
Birmingham through
Cambridge to
Stansted Airport and
Norwich. Until the mid twentieth century, the station was host to through trains from
Manchester and
Glasgow to
London. The station is busiest in the
East Midlands handling around 30% of all the region's passengers everyday.
Through-fares to continental Europe are now available from Leicester to Paris, Brussels and other destinations in France and Belgium.
The station has the
Plusbus scheme which allows bus and train tickets to be bought together at a saving.
Services
Main line train services into Leicester are operated by
East Midlands Mainline. There are regular services to London, Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield, the
North East, and limited direct services to/from
Leeds,
York and
Barnsley.
Local services from Birmingham to Cambridge and Stansted Airport are provided by
Cross Country. In
December 2008 Cross Country plan to double its service from Leicester towards Peterborough, Cambridge and Stansted Airport.
East Midlands Connect provide the local services throughout the
East Midlands with hourly services to Loughborough, Nottingham and Lincoln.
The station gets four
East Midlands Mainline trains to/from
London per hour, going to
Sheffield,
Nottingham or
Derby, with additional trains, during the peaks.
History
Leicester was one of the first cities to be served by a railway, when the
Leicester and Swannington Railway built its terminus station at West Bridge on the eastern side of
Leicester in
1832 . The Leicester and Swannington Railway was later absorbed by the
Midland Railway.
In total Leicester had seven railways stations (eight if the two sites at West Bridge are treated separately). In addition to the current Leicester station three other main railway stations existed. The original station at
West Bridge closed to passengers in 1928.
Leicester Belgrave Road (on the
Great Northern Railway) closed to passengers in 1962 and
Leicester Central (on the
Great Central Railway) closed in May 1969. Up until this time the current Leicester station was known as
Leicester London Road.
In addition there were smaller stations within the city boundary at
Humberstone Road on the LMR, Humberstone on the GNR, and for a while a halt was operated on the Leicester - London mainline allowing access to the Cattle Market, although this allowed passengers to leave the trains not board them.
The station buildings
The first station on the present site was constructed by the
Midland Counties Railway and was first used on
4 May 1840, when a train of four first and six second-class carriages, pulled by the 'Leopard' steam engine, arrived from Nottingham. All that remains of the first station are a pair of
Egyptian-looking gateposts in Campbell Street.
The Midland Railway completely rebuilt the station in 1894. The station frontage on London Road remains as a well-preserved late
Victorian building, but the interior of the booking hall and the structures on the platforms were reconstructed by
British Rail in the
1970s.
The station clock is the only hand-wound station clock in the UK.
London, Midland and Scottish Railway
Until the line through
Buxton was closed in the
Beeching era, the
'main lines' were those from London to Manchester, carrying named expresses such as
The Palatine and the
The Peaks, and trains to Leeds and Scotland tending to use the
Erewash Valley Line towards the
Settle and Carlisle Line. Expresses to
Edinburgh, such as
The Waverley travelled through Corby and Nottingham.
British Railways
With the advent of power
signalling in 1986, the
signal box and the crossovers disappeared, and the tracks approaching the station were relaid to allow trains from any direction to enter or leave any platform.
Privatisation
Upon the
privatisation of British Rail, the station became owned by
Railtrack and later
Network Rail, though, in common with most British railway stations, the day-to-day operation was contracted out to the largest user of the station, in this case
Midland Mainline (East Midlands Trains' predecessor). Midland Mainline continued to refurbish the station with the installation of a large electronic departure board in the station entrance hall and smaller boards on all platforms.
In 2006, work was started on the installation of automatic ticket gates. Leicester City Council issued plans for the redevelopment of the station area including a total of eight platforms, but these are not expected to start until 2010.
Station amenities
The main entrance to the station is on London Road, a slope takes pedestrians towards Station Street and the City centre. The ticket office, travel centre, lost property and lockers exists within the small (for a large station)
concourse. This concourse gives access, to the main station
overbridge to all platforms, and via a corridor to the lifts. There is a
footbridge at the north end of the station giving access to the long stay
car park and Cambell Street.
The station is based on two
island platform which are wide with a long series of buildings. Inside these buildings are many services and amenities including a
newsagents and several food outlets including a licensed
restaurant. There are also toilets and a large waiting room.
Midland Mainline errected a first class lounge containing a business card machine at the south end of platform 3 during 2000. Passenger information systems were updated at the same time and now use
dot matrix display screens. Leicester retains a manual tannoy system, a rarity amongst the larger stations in the UK. In 2006 automatic ticket barriers were installed on all approaches to the station, these were complemented with
ticket vending machines and additional
FastTicket machines.
The station benefits from an office for the
British Transport Police and
Cash point in the forte corche as well as the only taxi rank and short stay drop off and pickup area.
Today
Rail routes run north-south through Leicester along the route known as the
Midland Main Line, going south to
Kettering,
Bedford,
Luton and London; and north to
Derby,
Nottingham,
Lincoln,
Sheffield and
Leeds.
Junctions north and south of the station link the
east-west cross country route, going east to
Peterborough and
Cambridge; and west to
Nuneaton and
Birmingham.
Train operators using the station include
CrossCountry and
East Midlands Trains. Due to a 15mph maximum speed to the south of the station, all passenger trains stop at the station with the exception of the morning southbound
The Master Cutler express from
Leeds to
London St Pancras.
Leicester is a bottleneck station as it has only four platforms, all platforms are well utilised especially platforms two and three which receive freight as well as passenger trains. A freight loop goes to the east of the station alongside the carriage sidings which run adjacent to platform four.
Platform one -
Platform two -
Platform three -
- Hourly fast East Midlands Trains service to London St Pancras
- Hourly semi-fast East Midlands Trains service to London St. Pancras via Luton Airport Parkway
- Hourly semi-fast East Midlands Trains service to London St. Pancras via Luton Town
- Second fast East Midlands Trains service to London St. Pancras through from Nottingham
- Hourly fast CrossCountry service to Birmingham New Street
Platform four -
- Hourly East Midlands Trains 'Ivanhoe' service to Lincoln via Syston and Newark with peak hour trains to Sleaford
Future
Regeneration of the station
Leicester Regeneration Company are leading plans which aim to regenerate the city centre area of Leicester, the station is to be incorporated into a new business quarter . Plans for the station include to rotate it around so that passengers come out into an open city square rather than the current ring road. This would also enable the sharp bend at the south of the station to be straightend and linespeeds increased.
Renewed plans were released in 2008 for the £150 million redevelopment, promising over 2800 new jobs in the area due to the new shops and offices which would be created .
Network Rail have recently released their freight utilisation strategy, over the coming years as a cross country freight route is developed the railway through Leicester, from Syston to Wigston Junctions would be enhanced with additional slow lines and platforms at Leicester created.
Ivanhoe Line
After phase one of the Ivanhoe Line was completed in the mid 1990s it was originally planned that phase two would extend the line west to Burton upon Trent on the current freight-only line via Coalville and Ashby-de-la-Zouch. However this development now looks unlikely, in the short term at least. The Conservative Party released a brief of there plans for the reopening recently, however this is thought by many to be political spin.
Leicester Central station
Leicester Central was Leicester's station on the Great Central Main Line which opened in 1899 and closed in 1969. When open, the station had services between London (Marylebone) and Sheffield via Leicester and Nottingham until closure of most of the route in 1966. The section between Rugby Central and Nottingham (initially Victoria, later cut back to Arkwright Street) remained open until 1969. This service was unusual in being self contained - none of the stations were used by trains on any other service.
Leicester Central was situated on Great Central Street which is today just off the inner ring road.
The station buildings remain largely intact, although the platform were demolished. The large section of the former Great Central Railway alignment through Leicester is now part of route 6 of the National cycle route none locally as the 'Great Central Way'.
Today the heritage preserved Great Central Railway currently operates a station called Leicester North at its southern terminus in the suburb of Belgrave.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Leicester Railway Station'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://leicester_railway_station.totallyexplained.com">Leicester railway station Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
