Leicester railway station

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Leicester
Leicester station frontage
Location
Place Leicester
Local authority Leicester
Operations
Station code LEI
Managed by East Midlands Trains
Platforms in use 4
Live departures and station information from National Rail
Annual Passenger Usage
2004/05 * 4.457 million
2005/06 * 4.361 million
History
Key dates Opened 1840
Rebuilt 1894
National Rail - UK railway stations

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z  
* Annual passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Leicester from Office of Rail Regulation statistics.
Portal:Leicester railway station
 UK Railways Portal

Leicester station is a railway station in the city of Leicester, England. It is just east of the city centre, on London Road which is also the busy A6 road. It was formerly known as Leicester London Road.

Leicester formerly had two other mainline stations before the Beeching Axes, these were Leicester Central and Leicester Belgrave Road railway station.

The platforms, railway lines, and car park are well-hidden from the nearby area as they are in cuttings for much of the approach to the station.

The station is an interchange point between the Midland Main Line 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 second busiest in the East Midlands handling around 30% of all the region's passengers everyday.

Contents

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 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 Midland Mainline service to London St. Pancras via Luton Town
    • Second fast East Midlands Trains service to London St. Pancras through from Nottingham
    • Hourly CrossCountry service to Birmingham New St
  • Platform four -
    • Hourly East Midlands Trains service to Lincoln via Syston and Newark with peak hour trains to Sleaford

Leicester was one of the first cities to be served by a railway, when the Leicester and Swannington Railway built its station at West Bridge, on the western side of the Fosseway in 1834. This fell out of use when the line was diverted to join the Midland Railway

Leicester used to have two other railway stations, including Leicester Belgrave Road (on the Great Northern Railway), and Leicester Central (on the Great Central Railway). Until the penultimate Leicester station, Leicester Central, was shut in 1969, the current Leicester station was known as Leicester London Road. The heritage Great Central Steam Railway currently operates a station called Leicester North at its southern terminus in the suburb of Belgrave.

The Midland Counties Railway was originally proposed to connect the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway to Leicester because of competition to supply coal. However, with the existing canal network, and the navigability of the River Trent to Nottingham, there had been few people willing to invest.

George Hudson was chairman of the York and North Midland Railway, a proposed line from York towards the industrial markets of Manchester and Liverpool. He was interested in a southwards route and encouraged the building of North Midland Railway, later becoming its chairman. Meanwhile financiers in Birmingham, including G.C.Glyn, a banker and chairman of the London and Birmingham Railway, were looking to expand their system. Derby was in between. The Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway would it give a link from Yorkshire to London, and access to the coalfields, as well as other minerals.

Meanwhile the promoters of the Midland Counties Railway found investors further afield, who suggested a line linking Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, with an extension to Rugby for London.

The Midland Counties Railway, North Midland Railway, and Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway merged in 1844 to form the Midland Railway. All of the company's traffic for London and the South passed through Leicester station, initially running via the MCR's line to Rugby to join the tracks of the London and North Western Railway. From 1857, traffic to the south was diverted to run to Hitchin and thence into King's Cross station. The Midland opened its own London terminus at St Pancras in 1867.

Detail of frontage
Detail of frontage

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. [1]

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.

With the advent of power signalling in 1969, 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.

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 has been contracted out to the largest user of the station, in this case Midland Mainline. Midland Mainline have 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 8 platforms, but these are not expected to start until 2010 by which time the station will have a new occupant, as Midland Mainline's franchise is due to expire at the end of 2007. Currently, little in the way of remedial work appears to be taking place.

Leicester Regeneration Company [2] 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.

Network Rail have recently released their freight utilisation strategy [3] ], and if a cross country freight route was to be taken forward the railway through Leicester, from Syston to Wigston Junctions would be enhanced with additional slow lines and platforms at Leicester created.

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.

Many of the UK's major city's can be reached directly, however due to complex and busy junctions at Birmingham, Peterbrough and Sheffield some cities require one change.

The following places can be reached directly from Leicester (Journey times approximate)

The following places are only reached directly from Leicester at certain times:

  • Doncaster - 1 hour 45 mins (Evenings)
  • Wakefield - 1 hour 45 mins (Evenings)
  • Leeds - 2 hours (Peak times)
  • York - 2 hours 20 mins (1 journey each way - weekends only)

The following places can be reached from Leicester by changing once (Journey times approximate)

From November 2007, passengers will be able to travel to Paris and Brussels by changing at St Pancras when Eurostar trains move from Waterloo to St Pancras. East Midlands Trains, who take over from Midland Mainline, also in November 2007, have said they will introduce earlier journeys to London to allow passengers to arrive in Paris or Brussels before 9am. [4]

The following places can be reached directly from Leicester (Journey times approximate)


The following places are only reached directly from Leicester at certain times:


The following places can be reached from Leicester by changing once (Journey times approximate)

  Preceding station     National Rail     Following station  
South Wigston
or Narborough		   CrossCountry
Birmingham - Leicester		   Terminus
Nuneaton   CrossCountry
Birmingham - Stansted Airport		   Melton Mowbray
Terminus   East Midlands Trains
Leicester - Lincoln		   Syston
Market Harborough   East Midlands Trains
Midland Main Line		   Loughborough

  • Through tickets are available via Eurostar services to the continent.
  • The station has the PlusBus scheme where train and bus tickets can be bought together at a saving.

  1. ^ "Leicester station clock webcam". 
  2. ^ "Leicester Regeneration company > Buisness Quarter". 
  3. ^ "Route utilisation strategy > Freight". 
  4. ^ "East Midlands Trains > General Information > Our Plans > Fleet improvement". 

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