Kingthorpe railway station was a railway station that served the village of

Kingthorpe Kingthorpe is a hamlet in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. The hamlet is in the civil parish of Apley, and is east from the city and county town of Lincoln and south from the market town of Market Rasen. It sits on the B12 ...

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 between 1874 and 1956, on the to line.

History

The Louth and Lincoln Railway planned and built a branch line from Bardney to Louth in stages, the first stage between Bardney and opened to goods traffic on 9 November 1874. South Willingham acted as a terminus until South Willingham Tunnel was completed. The line then opened to on 27 September 1875, still goods traffic only. The line was completed through to for goods traffic on 6 August 1876 and opened to passengers on 1 December 1876. It was absorbed by the Great Northern Railway in 1882. The station was located 133 miles 05

chain A chain is a serial assembly of connected pieces, called links, typically made of metal, with an overall character similar to that of a rope in that it is flexible and curved in compression but linear, rigid, and load-bearing in tension. A c ...

s from London Kings Cross via , and Bardney. The branch was mostly single track and the station had only one

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

. A

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

was located at Kingthorpe, to control the

block Block or blocked may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Block programming, the result of a programming strategy in broadcasting * W242BX, a radio station licensed to Greenville, South Carolina, United States known as ''96.3 ...

, and the small

goods yard A goods station (also known as a goods yard or goods depot) or freight station is, in the widest sense, a railway station where, either exclusively or predominantly, goods (or freight), such as merchandise, parcels, and manufactured items, are lo ...

. The yard had only one siding serving a cattle dock. There was no

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at Kingthorpe to allow trains to pass one another but connections to the siding allowed the train's engine to run round a few wagons. At the road entrance to the goods yard was a

weighbridge A truck scale (US), weighbridge (non-US) or railroad scale is a large set of scales, usually mounted permanently on a concrete foundation, that is used to weigh entire rail or road vehicles and their contents. By weighing the vehicle both emp ...

and office. "Kingthorpe 1887 OS map"
''Old Maps Website'', Retrieved 21 January 2020"Kingthorpe"
''Disused Stations Website'', Retrieved 20 January 2020 The B1202 Wragby to Bardney road crossed the railway on an

overbridge An overpass (called an overbridge or flyover in the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth countries) is a bridge, road, railway or similar structure that crosses over another road or railway. An ''overpass'' and ''underpass'' together form ...

at the south end of the platform. The station building included living accommodation for the

Station Master The station master (or stationmaster) is the person in charge of a railway station, particularly in the United Kingdom and many other countries outside North America. In the United Kingdom, where the term originated, it is now largely historical ...

and his family as well as a booking office and waiting room. Architecturally, the building was in the same style as others on the line; built of

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

with a number of brick

string course A belt course, also called a string course or sill course, is a continuous row or layer of stones or brick set in a wall. Set in line with window sills, it helps to make the horizontal line of the sills visually more prominent. Set between the ...

s of a contrasting colour. The number and appearance of the string courses differed on each station; at Kingthorpe, the general bricks were a darker colour with lighter string course bricks. The station building was on the bank of Stainfield beck, and as a result the beck bisected the platform. It was carried across the beck on a

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

; the beck was too large to

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdom ...

. The track crossed the beck on a waybeam bridge, which can be seen in the photograph. The signal box was of timber construction and was at the north end of the platform.

Passenger service

When the line opened five passenger trains a day were provided, but this was quickly reduced to 4, with 5 on Fridays. At the start of the Second World War the service was suspended for three months.Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith, ''Eastern Main Lines: Boston to Lincoln, also from Louth and Horncastle'', Middleton Press, Midhurst, 2015, When it was reinstated in December 1939 the timetable was reduced to three trains in each direction and the 1950 timetable shows that this arrangement continued after the war until closure. Although originally intended to run to

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincoln ...

, trains on the line only ran between Louth and Bardney; passengers had to change at Bardney to get to . Trains were timetabled to get to Bardney in 7 minutes, with a connection to Lincoln taking a further 25 minutes. In the other direction, trains took 7 minutes to get to and 40 minutes to arrive in Louth (these are sample times and varied during the day and in the direction travelled). Passenger services ended on 5 November 1951, goods traffic on 15 September 1956.A J Ludlam, ''Branch Lines of East Lincolnshire: volume 1: Louth to Bardney'', published by Lincolnshire Wolds Railway Society, 2015, However, the track through the station remained open for a further three years until 1 February 1960 to serve Wragby goods yard. The signal box was reduced to a

ground frame Mechanical railway signalling installations rely on lever frames for their operation to interlock the signals, track locks and points to allow the safe operation of trains in the area the signals control. Usually located in the signal box, the ...

in the locking room (the room under the signal box) sometime after closure to passengers and before 1953.

After Closure

The track was lifted in 1961. The station building was demolished and no trace remains. The bridge carrying the B1202 was demolished and the road realigned sometime between 2010 and 2019.

Route

References

{{Closed stations Lincolnshire Disused railway stations in Lincolnshire Former Great Northern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1876 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1951