Milton Keynes Central railway station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Milton Keynes Central is a railway station that serves the central area of Milton Keynes. The station is on the West Coast Main Line where it is served by Virgin Trains inter-city services and by Silverlink County local services.

This station is one of the five stations serving Milton Keynes. The others are Wolverton (Milton Keynes North), Bletchley (Milton Keynes South), Fenny Stratford (also Milton Keynes South) and Bow Brickhill (Milton Keynes South-east). In addition, Woburn Sands railway station is just outside the city boundary and serves the south-east of the Borough.


Milton Keynes Central
Location
Place	Milton Keynes
Local authority	Milton Keynes
Operations
Managed by	Silverlink
Platforms in use	5
Annual entry/exit 04/05	3.815 million **
History
Key dates	Opened 1982
National Rail - UK railway stations
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
** based on sales of tickets in 2004/05 financial year which end or originate at Milton Keynes Central. Disclaimer (PDF)

1 Scale and planned development
2 Facilities in the local area
3 Rail services
4 Footnote
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Scale and planned development

At present, there are three south-bound tracks and two north-bound tracks; in May 2006, the Department of Transport confirmed^[1] that work on a third north-bound track (for Inter-city services) and a fourth south-bound track (for services to Bedford) is funded to begin in 2007 and complete by the end of 2008. In June 2005, Silverlink announced their intent to extend their Marston Vale Line service from Bedford to Milton Keynes Central, when the new platform is built. (The service currently terminates at Bletchley). On 4 December 2006, work began on both projects, with completion scheduled for December 2008.^[2]^[3]

[edit] Facilities in the local area

The station is the terminus for many bus services and is on the Milton Keynes redway system, a network of cycle paths. The station itself has a small shop and there are other shops and restaurants on the south side of the station square. There are a number of hotels on Midsummer Boulevard.

The station square itself is a favourite site for skateboarding and freestyle BMX and as a result the granite facings of the planting surrounds has suffered severely from the continuous bumping and grinding. The absence of any maintenance has led local commentators to speculate that English Partnerships has plans for build over it.

[edit] Rail services

Inter-city passengers wishing to go to Northampton should change¹ to a north-bound Silverlink service here. Passengers for all stations to Bedford should take a south-bound Silverlink service here as far as Bletchley and change to the Marston Vale Line. Virgin Trains also provide a coach service to London Luton Airport and Luton railway station.

West Coast Main Line

Principal stations
(from south to north)

London Euston
Watford Junction
Milton Keynes Central
Rugby (for Birmingham Loop)
Nuneaton
Tamworth
Lichfield Trent Valley
Stafford
Crewe then