Former railway building, Cowbit, Lincs - geograph

Cowbit railway station was a station in

Cowbit __NOTOC__ Cowbit (locally pronounced ''Cubbit'') is a village and civil parish in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 1,220. It is situated south from Spalding and no ...

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

, England. It was located on the route between and .

History

The station was opened by the Great Northern Railway on 2 September 1867. It was closed by

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

on 11 September 1961. It was a frequent 'best kept garden' finalist in the 1950s. Despite extensive resignalling and installation of lifting boom barriers at the level crossing serving the Cowbit-Moulton Chapel main road in the summer of 1976, the March-Spalding line was closed on the late evening Saturday 27 November 1982 following the passage of Class 40 diesel No. 40024 ''Lucania'' on a northbound charter special. Tracklifting took place in two stages over the next three years: in autumn 1983 the Up line to March was lifted whilst the Down line to Spalding was lifted in summer 1985, mainly employing Class 31s and the Spalding pilot 08 shunter. The level crossing itself was resurfaced on 1 November 1985. From 18 to 23 April 1977, Cowbit Up goods loop was the location of an episode of

BBC Television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...

's ''Life at Stake'' series.

Standard Corridor The Second Corridor (previously Third Corridor) type of railway carriage was one of the standard mid-20th century designs, and was coded SK (previously TK) by the LNER and BR, and CF by the LMS. The layout of the coach was a number of compart ...

Nos. W26121 and E24620, together with Brake Standard Corridor No. E35256, were repainted on one side in the colours of a

Netherlands Railways Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS; ; en, "Dutch Railways") is the principal passenger railway operator in the Netherlands. It is a Dutch state-owned company founded in 1938. The Dutch rail network is one of the busiest in the European Union, and th ...

commuter train to carry out a re-enactment of the

1975 Dutch train hostage crisis On 2 December 1975, seven South Moluccans seized a train with about 50 passengers on board in open countryside near the village of Wijster, halfway between Hoogeveen and Beilen in the northern part of the Netherlands. The hijacking lasted for ...

. Two Class 31 diesel-electrics from March depot provided the motive power. The station buildings all survive in private ownership, the main station building has now been fully renovated, and work on converting the signal box (owned separately from the main building) into a private house has been ongoing for some years. Many of the signs from the building and box survive in private ownership. The former waiting shelter on the platform opposite the main station building has been converted into a dog grooming parlour trading under the name of "Paws at the Station". In December 2018, outline planning permission was granted to Messrs Bacon & Drury for a development of 45 homes on land north of the station either side of Mill Drove South. The scheme would involve new homes being built on the former trackbed and the demolition of the goods shed since it is not a listed building.

Future reinstatement

The trackbed has been built on south and north of the station thus inhibiting reinstatement of the route on its original alignment. Additionally, the alignment to the south has also been breached by the new A16 bypass road. While

Railtrack Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of ...

stated that the route is in its long-term plans for reinstatement because of the revival of the freight business, redevelopment continued unabated.

References

External links

Cowbit station on navigable 1946 O. S. map
{{Closed stations Lincolnshire Disused railway stations in Lincolnshire Former Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1867 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1961