Lincoln Central railway station

Lincoln Central railway station serves the city of Lincoln in Lincolnshire, England. The station is operated by East Midlands Trains, who provide services along with Northern Rail and East Coast.

Lincoln Central is now the only station in Lincoln, after the closure of Lincoln St. Marks in 1985. The station building was designed in 1848 for the Great Northern Railway by J H Taylor.

The station has the PlusBus scheme where train and bus tickets can be bought together.

East Midlands trains intends to develop an improved customer service area in late 2010 as well as improving the cafe and toilets^[1]

Platform layout and services

There are five platforms at the station, numbered 1–5:

• Platforms 1 and 2 are bay platforms used for stabling units and for services to the east, usually to Peterborough, and occasionally to Grimsby Town and Cleethorpes.
• Platform 3, nearest to the station entrance, serves all terminating arrivals and through services from the west. It is occasionally used for eastbound services originating from Lincoln.
• Platforms 4 and 5 serve terminating arrivals from the east and most westbound departures to Leicester via Nottingham using the Nottingham to Lincoln Line ("Midland line"); and to Sheffield and Doncaster leaving via the Doncaster to Lincoln Line ("Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Line").
• Platform 4 is normally used by trains towards Newark-on-Trent (Newark North Gate/Newark Castle) and Nottingham.
• Platform 4 is also used when multiple-units need to be attached to, or detached from westbound trains as it is straight; the curvature of platform 5 can cause problems with the alignment of modern automatic couplers.
• Platform 5 is mostly used for westbound trains which are required to wait at Lincoln for some time, hence its regular use by many Northern Rail services but also sees use for through trains when platform 4 is being used for attaching or detaching carriages.

New franchise operator East Midlands Trains has started the running of a daily service between Lincoln Central and London St Pancras via Nottingham.^[2] The new direct service between Lincoln and London St Pancras started with a return service from 15 December 2008, ahead of an expected service increase the following year. Lincoln is home to an East Midlands Trains train crew depot, which uses locations around the station for the stabling of trains.

Resignalling

Network Rail instituted a major resignalling scheme for Lincoln Central during the years 2007–2008 which saw:

• the replacement of the semaphore signals with colour light signals,
• the concentration of all signalling control into one signal box rather than the previous four,
• track relaying, and ballasting
• new points and crossovers which allow all three through platforms at Lincoln to be used in both directions and allows trains from the east to enter the two bay platforms (1 & 2) directly.^[3]

As a direct result, terminating trains no longer need to shunt from one side of the station to the other to take up their return workings, reducing turnaround times for terminating trains and improve train service punctuality and reliability.

As part of the overall scheme, Lincoln Central's platforms have been renumbered from 3–7 to 1–5: (the current platform 1 was previously platform 3, 2 was 4 etc.)

All four existing signal boxes - High Street, East Holmes, West Holmes and Pelham Street Junction - were closed and replaced by a new state of the art signalling centre near the West Holmes box. It is likely that the West Holmes and Pelham Street boxes will eventually be demolished, but the High Street and East Holmes boxes are listed buildings so should be preserved.

This work was completed as planned and the station reopened on 1 September 2008.^[4]

Future services

For many years, Lincoln had not been served with a direct rail service to London. However, the awarding of two new rail franchises saw this remedied.

On 14 August 2007, it was announced that National Express East Coast would take over the InterCity East Coast Franchise in December 2007. As part of the commitment, NXEC planned to introduce a two-hourly service between Lincoln Central and London Kings Cross, starting in 2009. This service would have alternated with a two-hourly service to York.^[5][6] The InterCity East Coast Franchise was passed to East Coast in November 2009. In late 2009 East Coast along with NetworkRail published details of the ECML proposed new timetable, including the Lincoln-London services. In spring 2010 it was announced that this new service would be cut back. East Coast, citing financial restraints during the credit crunch, announced instead just one direct train in each direction per day, with extra services running only as far as Newark NorthGate station, meaning Lincoln passengers will still have to change trains there.^[7] On 22 May 2011 East Coast started direct Lincoln-London Kings Cross services, albeit in a much reduced number than they had originally planned. There is one train a day to London leaving Lincoln at 07:08 Monday-Saturday and a return service leaving London at 19:06 Monday-Sunday. Ironically both East Coast and EMTs services between Lincoln and the capital leave Lincoln within 20 minutes of each other and arrive in Lincoln again within 20 minutes of each other.

In 2006, Humber & City, an open-access operator owned by Renaissance Trains, proposed running services between Cleethorpes and Stratford via Lincoln. Nothing concrete seems to have come of the proposal.

Nottingham County Council, the Department for Transport and Network Rail are in discussion about various improvements to the line towards Nottingham including a doubling of service.^[8]

References

External links

Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lincoln_Central_railway_station Lincoln Central railway station] at Wikimedia Commons