Oulton Broad South railway station is on the East Suffolk Line in the

east of England The East of England is one of the nine official regions of England. This region was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics purposes from 1999. It includes the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire ...

, and is one of two stations serving

Oulton Broad Oulton Broad refers to both the lake and the suburb of Lowestoft in the English county of Suffolk. The suburb is located west of the centre of Lowestoft. It became a civil parish in 2017. It had an estimated population of 10,338 at the 2011 ...

, Suffolk. The other is on the

Wherry Lines The Wherry Lines are railway branch lines in the East of England, linking to and . There are 14 stations including the three termini. They form part of Network Rail Strategic Route 7, SRS 07.11 and are classified as a rural line. The line ...

. Oulton Broad South is the next station along from on the line to , and from Lowestoft the line crosses Mutford Bridge with a view of

Lake Lothing Lake Lothing is a saltwater lake located in Lowestoft in the English county of Suffolk. The lake, which is believed to be the remnant of medieval peat cutting,

to the east and Oulton Broad lake to the west. The station is measured from

London Liverpool Street Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, in the ward of Bishopsgate Without. It is the t ...

via Ipswich. It is managed by Greater Anglia, which also operates all trains that call.

History

The station was opened on 1 June 1859 as Carlton Colville by the East Suffolk Railway when it opened the line between and . The line had been promoted by the Lowestoft and Beccles Railway but they were acquired by the East Suffolk Railway on 23 July 1858, before the line opened. The station was renamed Oulton Broad South on 26 September 1927. At least one

camping coach Camping coaches were holiday accommodation offered by many railway companies in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland from the 1930s. The coaches were old passenger vehicles no longer suitable for use in trains, which were converted to ...

was positioned here by the Eastern Region from 1952 to 1965, from 1955 to 1960 there were two coaches and three in 1961, from 1961 they were all ''Pullman'' camping coaches. The station was part of the 1984 modernisation of the East Suffolk Line. By 1986, the line was equipped with automated level crossings and radio signalling. However, to ensure the line's survival, two sections were also singled. At the eastern end of the platforms the lines passed under a main road from Beccles to Oulton Broad, and just east of this point the line to Lowestoft had a junction to the Kirkley branch, a single-track branch line designed to service a number of sites on the southern side of Lake Lothing. This line also served the Kirkley goods depot adjacent to Beaconsfield Road and the Fen Park. The branch was closed in stages during the 1960s and 1970s, as some of the larger businesses it served also closed down. The line from Durban Road to the goods yards was closed in 1967, although much of the track remained in place until the final closure of the line on 31 December 1972. The final section of the goods yard from the bridge in Mill Road is now a car-park, and a school playing field occupies the site of the other four-siding yard near the park. The line adjacent to the junction with the East Suffolk Line is now a residential caravan site, although the remains of the track bed continue along Victoria Road heading east. Numerous properties have been built on sections of this line. The

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'' ...

at the junction was demolished and no trace remains. Signalling functions were transferred to the box at Oulton Broad North.

Services

the typical Monday-Saturday off-peak service at Oulton Broad South is as follows: On Sundays frequency reduces to one train every two hours in each direction. Trains extending to and from

were withdrawn in 2010. One weekday early-morning train is extended through to and there is a return from there in the evening.

References

External links

{{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Railway stations in Suffolk DfT Category F2 stations Former Great Eastern Railway stations Greater Anglia franchise railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1859 Lowestoft