The line was opened in 1848 as the East Lincolnshire Railway which served the towns of Grimsby, Louth and Boston. It was opened to passengers the same year with stations at Ludborough, North Thoresby and Waltham while there was various halts along the Grimsby-Louth section which opened during the railmotor era of the line but all these closed in the 1930s/60s.
Closure
The line was closed from Grimsby-Firsby to passengers on October 5th 1970. The Louth-Firsby section was quickly lifted. The line from Louth-Grimsby was singled and remained open to freight to serve the Associated British Maltsters and the occasional rail tour until December 1980 when the line was closed, despite demands not to close it. The station buildings were demolished at most of the stations along with the signal boxes. The only two original signal boxes to remain on the line were Hainton Street in Grimsby and Louth North. The original grain store remains at Ludborough and the original station master houses remain at Ludborough, North Thoresby and Holton-le-Clay. Louth station building still remains, and is grade 2 listed, but has been converted to flats.
Reopening
In 1978, a small preservation group called the Grimsby-Louth Rail group was set up with aims to preserve the entire section. However, as the Waltham-Grimsby section has been turned into a bypass road, and could not be preserved as a railway, the group was renamed to Grimsby-Louth Railway preservation society. A new company, the Great Northern and East Lincolnshire Railway plc, was formed to purchase the 11-mile trackbed from Louth to Waltham as BR would not sell to a society. The company now trades under the name Lincolnshire Wolds Railway. In 1991 a light railway order was granted to the Great Northern and East Lincolnshire Railway plc who then bought 11 miles of trackbed between Keddington Road, Louth and Waltham. The original plan was to extend to Waltham and to the former level crossing at Keddington road, however plans forced the LWR to lose two miles of the original trackbed due to the section between Holton-le-Clay and Waltham being built on by housing. The railway will as and when time and money permit run from Holton-le-Clay station-Louth. A distance of approx. 8-9 miles. The plan to reach Grimsby has since been thwarted as a result of the construction of the Peaks Parkway which runs the course of the railway, north of Waltham itself.
