Pitsford and Brampton railway station

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Pitsford and Brampton signal box on the station platform

Pitsford and Brampton railway station is a railway station serving the villages of Pitsford and Chapel Brampton in Northamptonshire, England.

The station was once an intermediate stop on the Northampton-Market Harborough railway line, which closed in 1981. The station has now been revived as the headquarters of a heritage railway called the Northampton & Lamport Railway.

[edit] History

The London and North Western Railway originally favoured a site close to where the line crossed the road to Welford, which later became Boughton level crossing. The people of Boughton made representations to the company to try to ensure that it was built there. However, the Earl Spencer wanted the station to be built at the point where the road between Chapel Brampton and Pitsford crossed the line. The railway company were reluctant to do this as the line was in a cutting at this point and the road was very poor. The Earl finally got his way, on condition that he paid for the road improvements.

The station opened on February 16, 1859 as "Pitsford" when the line opened to passenger traffic. In June 1859 it was renamed "Brampton and Pitsford", and then on April 1, 1860 it became "Brampton", then finally returning to "Pitsford and Brampton" on 24 November 1881.

The station had a very quiet career, never having many passengers. A special dock was built for loading sugar beet wagons, a very important local crop at one time. The strange irony of this is that the beet dock was the only part of the station to survive demolition when the station finally closed on June 5, 1950.

[edit] Current station

Portable buildings make up the present station, with the exception of the booking office which is the top half of the Lamport signal box and the station signal box which was moved from Little Bowden Crossing near Market Harborough