Lincoln railway station
Lincoln railway station serves the city of Lincoln in Lincolnshire, England. The station is owned by Network Rail and managed by East Midlands Railway. East Midlands Railway provides the majority of services, supplemented by Northern and London North Eastern Railway.
The station is part of the PlusBus scheme, where train and bus tickets can be bought together at a saving. Lincoln Central bus station, the city's main bus station, is within a couple of minutes' walk from the railway station, located to the north-east of the station, on the opposite side of St. Mary's Street and easily accessed via a pedestrian crossing and pedestrianised plaza.
History
The station buildings were designed by John Henry Taylor of London in 1848, for the Great Northern Railway company. It is built in a Tudor revival style of yellow brick, with stone dressings and slate roofs, with 6 ridge and 8 side wall stacks. The buildings and footbridge were Grade II listed in 1990.The station has been the only station in Lincoln since the closure of in 1985. Like, the station retained its "Central" suffix for a number of years following St Marks' closure, but since 2019 has been formally known as Lincoln. The station's "welcome" message, recorded by East Midlands Trains, refers to the station as Lincoln Central.
In late-2010, East Midlands Trains announced that it intended to develop an improved customer service area and improve the café and toilets.
Platform layout and services
Train services run between Lincoln and- and via and using the Nottingham–Lincoln line ;
- & via and direct to via the Doncaster–Lincoln line.
- & via the Peterborough–Lincoln line
- via, with occasional journeys to
- London Kings Cross on a two hourly basis, Monday to Saturday.
There are five platforms at the station, numbered 1–5:
- Platforms 1 and 2 are bay platforms used for daytime stabling of trains and for terminating arrivals from the east which will return east.
- Platforms 3, 4 and 5 are bidirectional through platforms used for services on all routes. All three through platforms are used in whichever way is most operationally advantageous.
- Platform 3 is the platform face adjacent the main station building and is nearest to the station entrance. The ticket barriers, buffet/shop, a waiting room, accessible toilet and staff facilities are all sited on platform 3.
- Platforms 4 and 5 are the two faces of the island platform. Passenger waiting rooms and toilets are on the island platform, as is the staff conference room.
Types of trains
- East Midlands Railway: Operate a range of Class 153, Class 156 and Class 158 units, with Class 222 units operating the daily service to London St Pancras. Occasionally, the 222s are used on Leicester services when the normal units aren't available.
- Northern: Operate a range of Class 142, Class 144, Class 150, Class 158 units and more recently, Class 195 units.
- London North Eastern Railway: Operates solely Class 800 Azuma trains. The morning peak departure is usually formed of a 9-car Azuma with majority of other departures formed of a 5-car Azuma.
Development Work
Resignalling
instituted a major resignalling scheme for Lincoln during the years 2007–2008 which saw:- the replacement of the semaphore signals with colour light signals,
- the concentration of all signalling control into one signal box rather than the previous four,
- track relaying, and ballasting
- new points and crossovers which allow all three through platforms at Lincoln to be used in both directions and allows trains from the east to enter the two bay platforms directly.
As part of the overall scheme, Lincoln's platforms have been renumbered from 3–7 to 1–5:
All four existing signal boxes – High Street, East Holmes, West Holmes and Pelham Street Junction – were closed and replaced by a new state of the art signalling centre near the West Holmes box. Pelham Street and West Holmes boxes were demolished, but the High Street and East Holmes boxes are listed buildings and are preserved.
Current and future development
Lincoln is included in the Lincoln Transport Hub redevelopment scheme, with aims to improve connectivity between bus and rail services in Lincoln by the construction of a new bus station adjacent to the railway station, alongside improvements to the railway station itself, including a new pedestrianised plaza outside the main entrance on St Mary's Street. Construction of the Transport Hub commenced in August 2016 and was completed in January 2018.There are also plans for improvements to the railway station itself, alongside the construction of a new footbridge over the railway line from Tentercroft Street into the city centre to increase the connectivity of the city centre on foot and by cycle.
In addition to this, there is currently construction of a coffee shop within the station premises.
Future services
For many years, Lincoln had not been served with a direct rail service to London. However, the awarding of two new rail franchises saw this remedied.On 14 August 2007, it was announced that National Express East Coast would take over the InterCity East Coast franchise in December 2007. As part of the commitment, NXEC planned to introduce a two-hourly service between Lincoln and London King's Cross, starting in 2009. This service would have alternated with a two-hourly service to. The InterCity East Coast Franchise was passed to East Coast in November 2009.
In late 2009 East Coast along with NetworkRail published details of the ECML proposed new timetable, including the Lincoln-London services. In spring 2010 it was announced that this new service would be cut back. East Coast, citing financial restraints during the credit crunch, announced instead just one direct train in each direction per day, with extra services running only as far as Newark North Gate station, meaning Lincoln passengers will still have to change trains there. On 22 May 2011 East Coast started direct Lincoln-London Kings Cross services, albeit in a much reduced number than they had originally planned. There is one train a day to London leaving Lincoln at 07:30 Monday-Friday and 07:33 on Saturday, there is no East Coast Service to London on a Sunday. The return service leaves London at 19:06 Monday-Friday, 18.08 on Saturday, and 19.08 on Sunday. The operation passed over to Virgin Trains East Coast in early 2015 and as of June 2018 the King's Cross service is now operated by London North Eastern Railway. LNER have started running two-hourly trains between Lincoln and King's Cross.
In addition to the London North Eastern Railway service, East Midlands Railway operate one train per day Monday-Saturday from Lincoln to London St Pancras, and a return journey is made in the evening. Monday-Saturday, the East Midlands Railway service to London St Pancras leaves Lincoln at 07.05, and the return journey leaves London St Pancras at 18.05 Monday-Friday, and on a Saturday the service leaves at 17.08.
The new Northern franchise started in April 2016 had service improvements on the Lincoln line – the service frequency to Sheffield & Retford was increased to twice hourly, whilst the Lincoln to Sheffield service was incorporated into Arriva Rail North's Northern Connect regional network and extended to via Barnsley.
In 2006, Humber & City, an open-access operator owned by Renaissance Trains, proposed running services between and via Lincoln.
Nottinghamshire County Council, the Department for Transport and Network Rail are in discussion about various improvements to the line towards Nottingham including a doubling of service.
In April 2019, the new East Midlands Railway franchise was awarded which included several key improvements for services in Lincoln. These included an increase of to Lincoln services to 2 trains per day as well as the introduction of hourly services between and via Lincoln from December 2021 instead of the current hourly Peterborough-Lincoln service and 5tpd between and Lincoln. Other improvements as part of the new franchise, hourly services will be introduced between and via Lincoln with limited extensions to replacing, the current two-hourly service from to which will terminate here instead of Grimsby this will be achieved by extended the existing to Lincoln service to Grimsby Town. On 9 May 2019, following the end of the standstill period, Abellio confirmed they planned to extend the Leicester service to Grimsby Town meaning that Lincoln would retain its direct link.
Accidents and incidents
- On 4 June 1962, an express passenger train was derailed due to excessive speed on a curve. Three people were killed and 49 were injured.