Trains at: Leicester, MML, 10/12/22

An enjoyable but cold afternoon spent at Leicester on the Midland Mainline where we see plenty of services from East Midlands Railway, Cross Country and freight from DC Rail.

Leicester was one of the first towns to receive a railway and railway station. The reason why I say town is because back then it was a town. The station was opened in 1832 by the Leicester and Swannington Railway which would eventually become part of the Midland Railway.

At the time there were roughly seven railway stations located throughout the town, the original station was built on the outskirts of the town at West Bridge and was eventually closed in 1928, Leicester Belgrave Road which was located on the Great Northern Railway closed in 1962 and Leicester Central which was located on the Great Central Railway was closed to passenger traffic in 1969. These three were the main railway stations in the town before they were subsequently shut down. The current station was formally known as Leicester London Road.

The station was first opened in 1840 by the Midland Railway and for a while just had the one platform serving it, as at the time the amount of traffic passing through along with the passenger numbers didn't require a second platform to be built, it wasn't until around 1858 when the first of the expansions took place and this was because there were more routes being opened up for trains to get to and from Leicester which meant that a second platform had to be built. Additionally for a long while this was the home to the headquarters of the Midland Railway company. Because they had now built two platform it also meant that they could have them dedicated to serving trains in a certain direction. So P1 was used for handling trains going North and P2 was used for southbound traffic.

Between 1892 and 1894 the Midland Railway completely rebuilt the station after many years of contemplation and some flaws in the planning. There was a new booking office opened by the then mayor of the town in 1892 when the station was renamed from Campbell Street station to Leicester London Road, the front entrance to the station consisted of four archways with two of the having the word 'Departure' inscribed into them and the other two have the word 'Arrival' These weren't done for the overall aesthetic appearance, this was done to help the local can drivers at the time.

Fundamentally the frontage of the station remains the same now as it did almost 120 years ago, the interior of the booking hall and the platforms however were redesigned in 1978 by Sir Robert McAlpine.

Once privatisation came into effect under British Rail the station fell into the care of Railtrack and eventually Network Rail, whilst these stations were under their control they actually contracted the work out to update the stations to the local railway operating company which at the time would have been Midland Mainline, when BR took over there wasn't any work done to the station. They obviously kept it tidy but in terms of modernising it they never looked into it. Once Midland Mainline were given the go ahead they began to introduce new things to the station such as large departure boards in the station and smaller ones dotted around the station. Along with smaller refurbishment work taking place.

In 2006 the station had automatic ticket barriers installed to crack down on fare evasion which still sadly takes place today.

My next station will be Nottingham on the Midland Mainline.

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