Peterborough East railway station

• 1. Introduction

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  Peterborough East railway station, in the English city of Peterborough, has almost entirely vanished. Of everything that once stood beside East Station Road, just off Town Bridge, only the engine sheds remain. In its working life, trains left here westward for Northampton and Rugby, and eastward for March, Wisbech and Norwich. The station opened on the 2nd of June 1845 and closed to passenger traffic on the 6th of June 1966. Why did a station planned for one railway line fill up so fast that its owners had to enlarge it almost at once? What happened when a far bigger railway reached the edge of the city and chose to build elsewhere? And how close did this site come to becoming the home of the national railway museum?

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• 2. Too Small From Day One

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  The Eastern Counties Railway opened Peterborough East in 1845 as the first station the city ever had. It was designed as the eastern end of the Northampton and Peterborough Railway, a branch of the London and Birmingham Railway. The site lay on the south side of the River Nene, in the parish of Fletton, then part of Huntingdonshire. The architect John William Livock designed the buildings.

  By the time the line actually reached the town, the building work was still going on. The Illustrated London News reported that the station was in "a very unfinished state".

  A single platform served both Up and Down trains, and it soon proved far too small. Just two months after the line opened, traffic was running at more than one-and-a-half times the original estimate. The company decided to double the line and enlarge the station. In December 1846 the work went ahead, adding refreshment rooms, a larger goods warehouse and still larger engine houses.

  From January 1847 the opening of the Ely to Peterborough Line meant the station was no longer the end of the line. The following year the Midland Railway opened its Syston and Peterborough Railway, which at first also ended at the East station.

  The station's name changed along with its owners. In 1862 the Eastern Counties Railway became part of the Great Eastern Railway, and timetables listed the station as "Peterborough (GE)". From the 1st of July 1923 until it closed, it was simply Peterborough East.

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• 3. Iron and Brick

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  A local directory of 1849 described a station roofed entirely in iron, with six avenues of track beneath a great span. The roof stood on iron pillars and measured 410 feet long and 228 feet wide. Large stone platforms ran along both sides. A range of big brick buildings held refreshment and waiting rooms, booking offices, warehouses, engine houses and porters' lodges.

  Outside, the Eastern Counties company had built a large wharf close to the river. Tramways ran from the wharf to the main line to help with loading and unloading goods. Rows of houses, some three stories high, had gone up nearby for clerks and other staff. The entrance had stone pillars and iron gates, with a constables' lodge close by.

  From this description, it appears the station had by then gained an island platform, split in two by a wagon line. That line and two others, at either end of the platform, continued south into a four-road covered way. The covered way had no platforms and was probably used for moving goods.

  The island platform sat between the Up and Down lines, so the Up line was served by two platform sides. The result was congestion whenever a train occupied the platform. In 1880 the old third class ladies' waiting room and the gents' waiting room were converted into a larger booking office and dispatch office. The booking office had three small windows marked GER, LNWR and Midland Railway. In later years one clerk issued every ticket, so passengers who tried the wrong window were often puzzled to be sent to the next one and find the same face.

  At 4:20am in August 1887, a goods engine of the LNWR shunted wagons into the station faster than normal practice allowed. As they entered the covered way, the wagons jumped the points and struck the iron columns holding up the south side of the roof. Four bays came down, along with the gable over the two platforms on the opposite side. A quarter of the entire roof was wrecked. Because so few people were about at that hour, nobody was injured.

  Some argued the accident was the right moment to rebuild the whole station, and plans for an extensive new one were made in 1896. They were never carried out, and the damage was never fully repaired. All of the covered way seems to have been demolished around this time.

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• 4. A Rival Railway

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  Between October 1848 and August 1852, the Great Northern Railway built its main line from London to York through Peterborough, opening it in stages. From 1848 to 1850, its trains ran into Peterborough East.

  In the autumn of 1849 the Great Northern was desperately short of capital. It approached the Eastern Counties Railway with an offer to buy the station. Its plan was to reach the station over a six-mile stretch of the Midland Railway's Syston Branch, north of the city. The Eastern Counties declined to sell but was willing to let the Great Northern use the station.

  The Great Northern's directors did not take up that offer. By December 1849 they had decided to build a station of their own in the city. Peterborough North opened in August 1850, the same year the company opened its loop line from Peterborough to Bawtry. That loop line brought still more traffic to Peterborough.

  Once the new station was open, Great Northern trains stopped calling at the East station. Parliament had already given the company powers to build two short curves joining its line at Fletton to the Eastern Counties line. Neither curve was ever built.

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• 5. The Fletton Crossing

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  In 1848, some 70 trains a day were involved in shunting over the Fletton level crossing, just west of the station. The crossing lay on the main road from the south into Peterborough, and from the moment the railway arrived it was a notorious bottleneck.

  By 1855 people were complaining that the gates were regularly shut for 25 minutes at a time. The brick industry grew in the area, and the city spread south into Woodston and Fletton, so the delays only worsened. They were at their worst during the fair, when crowds of people and herds of nervous animals were crushed together at the gates.

  For many years the Great Eastern Railway ignored petitions and protests. It built a pedestrian footbridge over the crossing in 1872, and in 1874 it agreed to move many of its shunting operations to other yards. Animals and vehicles still faced long waits. The crossing and the narrow street beside it also kept Peterborough's tramway network confined to areas north of the River Nene.

  By 1913 the Great Eastern and the local authorities were well advanced in negotiating a new bridge. Then the First World War ended the scheme. Not until the 20th of September 1934 did a road viaduct open, spanning both the river and the railway. Making room for it meant demolishing the Crown public house and some railway cottages. Fletton Road Junction Signalbox had closed in May 1934.

  Until 1920, when a wheel was installed, two gatemen were needed on every turn of duty. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the station was resignalled. In April 1932 Peterborough East Box opened, perched on a gantry above the main platform line at the west end.

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• 6. The Black Bridge

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  On the 12th of May 1963, fire destroyed the old timber bridge over the river at Stanground, known as the Black Bridge. Until the line reopened to normal traffic on the 9th of June, trains were diverted via Spalding and the GER/GNR joint line.

  The bridge had a long record of fragility. In March 1856, the original wooden bridge was reported to be "positively dangerous". Trains crossed on the Up line at only 4 mph and on the Down line at only 2 mph. Plans to replace it with a brick structure were never realised.

  The wooden bridge built after the 1963 fire carried two tracks, where the old one had carried five. It was built on the previous piles, which were undamaged below ground and water levels. Track and signalling changes were needed to link the yards at each end of the bridge.

  After that rebuilding, a speed limit of 10 mph was imposed. The wooden replacement was later demolished, and in June 1981 a new concrete bridge opened. It allowed the limit to rise back to the normal speed.

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• 7. Closure and Parcels

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  In 1948, nationalisation of the railways made British Rail responsible for the station. With the 1955 Modernisation Plan, its days were numbered.

  Passenger services on the Northampton line ceased on the 2nd of May 1964. Yet in 1965 around 40 trains per day were still calling at Peterborough East. Passengers stopped for good when the Rugby line closed between Yarwell Junction and Seaton.

  That was not the end of the building. It was converted into a parcels centre and became the base of the East Anglia BRUTE service, short for British Rail Universal Trolley Equipment. The centre handled some 15,000 parcels a day.

  On the 29th of June 1970, the station became redundant when operations moved to the new British Rail Express Parcel Terminal. That terminal had been built on the site of the New England locomotive sheds. In July 1981, the Post Office took over the terminal after British Rail withdrew its unprofitable Collected/Delivered parcels business.

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• 8. Museum Plans and Fletton Quays

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  In 1971 the Peterborough Locomotive Society, predecessor of the Peterborough Railway Society, floated a different future for the site. The National Railway Museum had previously been located at Clapham. The society proposed that it should move to Peterborough rather than to another London site or to York. Peterborough City Council, the Peterborough Development Corporation and the Huntingdon and Peterborough County Council all backed the idea. The East station and the former locomotive shed would become a static museum.

  The site's unique advantage was a possible link to a live museum on the former LNWR locoshed site. From there a preserved steam railway could run along the Nene Valley to Wansford. As it turned out, the National Railway Museum went to York.

  In 1972 the East Station was demolished. Part of the main platform and a bay at the east end survived for a time, but they have since gone too, following the South Bank redevelopment. In 1977 the Peterborough Railway Society bought the turntable from the locoyard, which had been kept to turn track maintenance machines. It was moved to Wansford.

  Starting in 2017, the site was redeveloped as Fletton Quays, a mixed-use scheme. It includes new government offices, more than 350 riverside apartments in high-rise towers, and some shops, among them a Greggs, now closed, and a Bewiched Coffee. A Hilton Hotel was also planned, due to open in March 2023. The car park outside the government offices sits roughly where the old station stood.

  Trains still pass through the site. The Ely to Peterborough Line continues to run across it, a well-used link between East Anglia and the Midlands.

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