Rush Hour Trains at: Rugby, WCML, 21/07/23

An excellent rush hour period spent at Rugby on the West Coast Mainline where we see countless services from Avanti West Coast, London Northwestern Railway and freight from Freightliner, DB Cargo UK, GBRF and Royal Mail.

Rugby was opened and built by the London and Birmingham Railway in 1838. This was the first orientation to be built and at first was a simple wooden structure and was located half a mile to the West of where the present is currently, and this was because at the time it was the location of the only access road into the area and was the only road north or rugby.

The station didn't last long however, once the Midland Counties Railway had a junction made it meant that a new station could be built on the junction making connections easier. Because of the location of the new station it meant that a new access road had to be built which would link the station to the town centre, because the station was built on a junction it meant that it was managed by 2 different companies, the London and Birmingham Railway and the Midland Railway. Because of this it meant that the station wasn't really what you would call conventional, it was slowly rebuilt over a course of 10 years but the platforms were significantly lower than the trains serving them which in turn caused a lot of passengers to complain as they either had to jump down off the trains or climb up, often struggling and sometimes resulting in injury.

The station was getting busier and busier and would continue to do so until 1880 when a new station had to be built as the LNWR deemed the station to be unsatisfactory, this was caused by the Northampton Loop opening which would connect Rugby to Northampton, at the time £70,000 was allocated to build a brand new station where the current one now lies, obviously having gone through several modifications. The Midland Railway still had a presence at the station however it was very small as they had local trains running to Leicester from the surviving platform that was used at the previous stations location. But this was closed in the 1960's and no trace of the line can be found.

When the station was built it consisted of a large central island platform and bay platforms located at either end for various terminating locals services, the way in which the island platform was accessed was via a tunnel running from the booking hall under the lines and up via a ramp. When the station was built it also came with a rather impressive steel and glass trainshed roof which covered an area of 117ft which spanned across the station and the surrounding tracks. The sides of the roof originally had glass side screens but were later removed, the roof was poorly maintained and fell into a state of disrepair. The glass on the roof was taken away leaving the station exposed to rainfall. It was completely removed in 2000 and instead replaced with canopies covering the platforms.

For a long period of time rugby boasted one of the longest stations on the rail network at 1,381 feet. However during the redevelopment of the station during 2007/2008 the island platforms were shortened.

During the time when the West Coast Mainline was being modernised to allow for higher speeds of trains along the length of the line and through stations rugby was given a new makeover with new signals installed and platforms built which would allow trains to pass past one another without affecting the speed of the passing train and making connecting services easier. Previously the max speed for non stopping trains was 75mph but once the work was completed it allowed for a max line speed of 125mph.

For a better visual representation of how the station used to look I recommend that you check out Mrdeltic15's channel as he has some truly incredible films from the 90's which shows how the station used to look and the types of trains that was used that sadly you wouldn't see much use of this day and age.

My next rush hour film will be from Hitchin on the East Coast Mainline.


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