There were three Tuxford stations, though none was very near the centre of the village. They were:
Tuxford North, the subject of this article
Dukeries Junction, the next station south, about half a mile away, and
Tuxford Central, about a mile to the south west on a different line.
The positions of the three stations are most easily seen in the "External Links", below.
Context
The station was opened in 1852 by the Great Northern Railway on its main line from King's Cross to Doncaster. The GNR became part of the LNER in 1923, then British Railways on nationalisation in 1948. The station had two platforms and a signal box, originally simply named "Tuxford", which controlled the Lincoln Roadlevel crossing immediately north of the station. The road is now the A6075 and the level crossing has been replaced by a bridge which crosses the busy tracks slightly to the south. The station was closed in 1955 and has since been razed to the ground. The tracks through the station site are now part of the electrified East Coast Main Line.
A railway village
For 45 years from opening until 1897 the GNR station was the only Tuxford station. Local trains called; the next stops were Retford to the north and Crow Park to the south. In 1897 the LD&ECR opened its line from Chesterfield Market Place to Lincoln and turned Tuxford into something of a railway village overnight, by adding two extra stations, a locomotive works, an engine shed, two marshalling yards and a north-to-west connection between the two lines. They also built earthworks for a south-to-west connection, but tracks were never laid.
Former services
Tuxford's three stations were connected, forming a triangle. However, it was only ever possible to catch trains along two sides of the triangle, i.e. between:
Tuxford North and the low level platforms at Dukeries Junction.
Traffic along the third side of the triangle between Tuxford Central and Tuxford North was mainly freight, supplemented by summer weekend excursions from the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire area to the Yorkshire coast; these passed through both stations without stopping. In 1922
five northbound trains a day called at Tuxford en route from Newark to Retford, where there were good connections west, north and east
six southbound trains called heading for Newark, with connections east, south and west.
Of the five northbound stoppers, only two picked up at Dukeries Junction, except on Fridays when three picked up there. Similarly, three southbound trains called at Dukeries Junction, with a fourth on Fridays. Only one train in each direction called at Tuxford North on Sundays, on which days Dukeries Junction was closed. Tuxford North stuttered along until July 1955 and Tuxford Central until September 1955; Dukeries Junction had closed in 1950. The summer excursions continued to pass until 1964. The "third side of the triangle" which connected Tuxford North and Central was closed in 1969.
Modern times
Tracks through the site of Dukeries Junction's low level platforms were slewed when the East Coast Main Line was electrified, enabling trains to go faster. This erased any last trace of the low-level platforms. Unusually for those days, the high-level station buildings were removed in the 1950s. The line through the sites of Tuxford Central and the high level platforms at Dukeries Junction became redundant when High Marnham Power Station closed in 2003; however, the line reopened in 2009 as High Marnham Test Track.
