The Cambridge and St Ives branch (as it is named on New Popular Editions

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was ...

maps) was a railway built by the ''Wisbech, St Ives & Cambridge Junction Railway'' in the late 1840s. The railway ran from

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

in the south, through Fenland countryside to the market town of St Ives; more specifically, the line ran from ''Chesterton Junction'', where it met the present-day Fen line north of the

River Cam The River Cam () is the main river flowing through Cambridge in eastern England. After leaving Cambridge, it flows north and east before joining the River Great Ouse to the south of Ely, at Pope's Corner. The total distance from Cambridge to ...

. Passenger services along the line managed to survive the

Beeching Axe The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Development of the ...

, but with

British Rail 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 ra ...

citing heavy losses the final passenger service ran between St Ives and Cambridge on 5 October 1970. Despite campaigns to reopen the service during the 1970s, the only subsequent rail traffic on the line was a freight service to Chivers in Histon which ran until 1983 and a contract to ferry sand from ARC at Fen Drayton which continued until May 1992. The railway now forms the alignment of the northern section of the

Cambridgeshire Guided Busway The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, known locally as The Busway, connects Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Ives in the English county of Cambridgeshire. It is the longest guided busway in the world, overtaking the O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, South Au ...

: a

bus rapid transit Bus rapid transit (BRT), also called a busway or transitway, is a bus-based public transport system designed to have much more capacity, reliability and other quality features than a conventional bus system. Typically, a BRT system includes ...

scheme.

Stations

''Stations listed northwest to south, in the 'up' direction'' * St. Ivesopened 17 August 1847, closed 5 October 1970. * opened 17 August 1847, closed 5 October 1970. * (or Longstanton)opened 17 August 1847, closed 5 October 1970. * opened 17 August 1847, closed 5 October 1970. * opened 17 August 1847, closed 5 October 1970. * opened 19 January 1850, closed October 1850. * opened 30 July 1845.

What remains

On its 2011 opening, the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway route absorbed the majority of the old railway between St Ives and the point at which the bus joined public roads at Milton Road. The remaining section between the former level crossing over Milton Road and the Fen line was converted to an extension to the Guided Busway in 2015 to join it to the planned

Cambridge North railway station Cambridge North railway station is a railway station located in the Cambridge suburb of Chesterton, close to Cambridge Science Park. The station is on the Fen Line, which runs from Cambridge to King's Lynn. It connects to the Cambridgeshire ...

Stations

What remains

References

Further reading