Sudbury railway station is the northern terminus of the

Gainsborough Line The Gainsborough line is the current marketing name of the Sudbury branch line, a railway branch line off the Great Eastern Main Line in the east of England, that links in Essex with in Suffolk. It is in length and single-track throughout. ...

, a branch off the

Great Eastern Main Line The Great Eastern Main Line (GEML, sometimes referred to as the East Anglia Main Line) is a major railway line on the British railway system which connects Liverpool Street station in central London with destinations in east London and t ...

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 ...

, serving the town of

Sudbury Sudbury may refer to: Places Australia * Sudbury Reef, Queensland Canada * Greater Sudbury, Ontario (official name; the city continues to be known simply as Sudbury for most purposes) ** Sudbury (electoral district), one of the city's federal e ...

, Suffolk. It is down the line from the southern terminus of and 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 ...

; the preceding station on the branch is . Its three-letter station code is SUY. The platform has an operational length for two-coach trains. The station is currently operated by Greater Anglia, which also operates all trains serving it, as part of the

East Anglia franchise The East Anglia franchise is a railway franchise for passenger trains on the Great Eastern Main Line and West Anglia Main Lines in England. It commenced operating in April 2004 when the Anglia and Great Eastern franchises, together with the W ...

. Sudbury is an unstaffed station with one platform as the line is single-track, and with a self-service ticket machine. Volunteers from Sudbury In Bloom man the station, which is annually entered into the Anglia In Bloom station competition; it won the Silver Gilt award in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It also won the Best Station Garden at the 2008 ACoRP Community Rail Awards.ACoRP Winners List
Community Rail Awards Winners List

History

Early History (1849-1862)

The first Sudbury station was built by the Colchester, Stour Valley, Sudbury & Halstead Railway, which even before the opening on 30 July 1849, had seen the line leased by the Ipswich and Bury Railway who then themselves merged with the

Eastern Union Railway The Eastern Union Railway (EUR) was an English railway company, at first built from Colchester to Ipswich; it opened in 1846. It was proposed when the earlier Eastern Counties Railway failed to make its promised line from Colchester to Norwich. T ...

(EUR) in early 1849. The station was a single platformed terminus station at the end of a single-track line from . Trains then shared tracks with the

Eastern Counties Railway The Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) was an English Rail transport, railway company incorporated in 1836 intended to link London with Ipswich via Colchester, and then extend to Norwich and Great Yarmouth, Yarmouth. Construction began in 1837 on t ...

into . It is uncertain when the nearby engine shed was built although given the fact the Stour Valley was a far-flung branch of the EUR, it is likely engines were based here in the single-track brick-built engine shed from opening, as the next nearest facility for the EUR facility was

Ipswich engine shed Ipswich engine shed was an engine shed located in Ipswich, Suffolk on the Great Eastern Main Line. It was located just south of Stoke tunnel and the current Ipswich railway station. Locomotives accessed the site from Halifax Junction which wa ...

. The Eastern Union Railway was taken over by the

in 1854. By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble and most were leased to the

(ECR). Although they wished to amalgamate formally, they could not obtain government agreement for this until 1862, when the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

(GER) was formed by the amalgamation.

Great Eastern Railway (1862-1922)

The original station was replaced in 1865 by the

when the line was extended to to create the

Stour Valley Railway The Stour Valley Railway is a partially closed railway line that ran between , near Cambridge and in Essex, England. The line opened in sections between 1849 and 1865. The route from Shelford to Sudbury closed on 6 March 1967 leaving only t ...

. In 1866 Sudbury engine shed was part of the Cambridge district and the diaries of the District Locomotive Supervisor referred to Sinclair Y and Z 2-4-0 classes as well as some of the original EUR 2-2-2 locomotives active there. An 1886 plan of the station area showed two platforms and a back road used for goods trains. The station was approached by a tree lined road whilst the extensive goods yard served a number of maltings and a timber yard as well as the small engine shed. The goods yard incorporated the original station site. In 1889 extensive signalling and block working was introduced on the line through Sudbury. In addition to the existing signal box located just west of Sudbury station, Sudbury Goods Junction signal box was opened, located east of the station and controlled a level crossing and entrance to the goods yard and engine shed. On the last day of the GER (31 January 1922) the following locomotives were allocated to Sudbury:

London and North Eastern Railway (1923-1947)

After the grouping of 1923 operation of the station passed to the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

(LNER). The station signal box was closed in 1934 with the signalling all being controlled by Sudbury Goods Junction signal box.

British Railways (1948-1994)

After nationalisation on 1 January 1948, Sudbury became part of the

Eastern Region of British Railways The Eastern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948, whose operating area could be identified from the dark blue signs and colour schemes that adorned its station and other railway buildings. Together with the North Eastern Region ( ...

. The engine shed was demolished in July 1956, although watering and stabling of locomotives still took place until October 1959. The station was unstaffed from 14 August 1966, when Paytrain operation of the line began, and local goods services were withdrawn on 31 October 1966. Sudbury became a terminus again following the

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

to railway services, which led to the closure of the through Stour Valley route on 6 March 1967. The track was removed and the station only required a single platform. The footbridge was moved to the

East Anglian Railway Museum The East Anglian Railway Museum is located at Chappel and Wakes Colne railway station in Essex, England, which is situated on the former Great Eastern Railway branch line from Marks Tey to Sudbury. Services on the Sudbury Branch Line are ope ...

, where it is in use today. Despite the fact that all of the track bar a single line into the platform remained, Sudbury Goods Junction signal box was retained to control the level crossing. It was not until 15 February 1981 that the level crossing and signal box were closed. The station building was unused between 1966 and 1974, and housed the Sudbury Museum until a fire in 1985. In 1982, following the sectorisation of British Rail, the station became part of the London and South East sector, which was renamed

Network SouthEast Network SouthEast (NSE) was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982. NSE mainly operated commuter rail trains within Greater London and inter-urban services in densely populated South East England, although the netwo ...

in July 1986. In 1991, to make way for the construction of the Kingfisher Leisure Centre, the station was re-sited to the edge of the town centre, making it the third station site.

The privatisation era (1994-present day)

From privatisation the track at Sudbury station was the responsibility of

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 ...

.Following the collapse of this organisation in 2002 responsibility fell to

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

. The train services have been operated by the following train operating companies: *

First Great Eastern First Great Eastern was a train operating company in England owned by FirstGroup that operated the Great Eastern franchise from January 1997 until March 2004. Services First Great Eastern operated all stops and limited stops services on the ...

between 1997 and 2004 when the First Great Eastern franchise became part of the Greater Anglia Franchise. *

National Express East Anglia National Express East Anglia (NXEA) was a train operating company in England owned by National Express that operated the Greater Anglia franchise from April 2004 until February 2012. Originally trading as ''One'', it was rebranded National Exp ...

between 2004 and 2012 *

Abellio Greater Anglia Greater Anglia (legal name Abellio East Anglia Limited) is a train operating company in Great Britain owned as a joint venture by Abellio (transport company), Abellio, the international arm of the state-owned Dutch national rail operator Neder ...

from 2012 with the current franchise, renewed in 2016, to be operated until 2025.

Accidents

On 27 January 2006 at least four passengers were slightly injured when a train ran into the

buffer stop A buffer stop, bumper, bumping post, bumper block or stopblock (US), is a device to prevent railway vehicles from going past the end of a physical section of track. The design of the buffer stop is dependent, in part, on the kind of couplings ...

at Sudbury. The 18:05 service from Marks Tey was travelling at a speed at the time of the collision of approximately six miles per hour. An investigation determined that the driver failed to apply the brakes in a "timely and appropriate manner".

Services

The typical off-peak service is one train per hour to Marks Tey, with frequency increased slightly during the weekday peak:

Historic services - July 1922

July 1922 was during the last summer of Great Eastern Railway operation before the LNER took over I January 1923. The services were detailed on table 290 of Bradshaw's timetable guide for that year. Down services were towards Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge (the line split at the next station

Long Melford Long Melford, colloquially and historically also referred to as Melford, is a large village and civil parish in the Babergh District, Babergh district, in the county of Suffolk, England. It is on Suffolk's border with Essex, which is marked by ...

) and towards Marks Tey in the up direction. The first weekday departure in the down direction was the 0645 departure to Cambridge and the 07.29 departure to Bury St Edmunds. Both trains offered arrivals in those stations around 08.10. The first through train of the day was the 08.44 Colchester - Cambridge calling at Sudbury at 09.39 and departing three minutes later. There was a connecting train for Bury St Edmunds at Long Melford. Similarly the 1105 Colchester - Cambridge train arrived at Sudbury at 11.47 departing two minutes later. The 01.26 (pm) Colchester service to Bury St Edmunds called at Sudbury 0221 departing at 02.30 - the long wait the result of Anup service from Cambridge. The next down services departed Sudbury at 04.22 (to Cambridge) and 0643 (Bury St Edmunds), before the last train of the day which was the 0640 Colchester to Bury St Edmunds calling at Sudbury at 07.30. In the up direction Bradshaw records the first Sudbury departure as 08.16 towards Colchester (the 0726 through service from Bury St Edmunds) which arrived at Colchester at 08.59. This was followed by three through trains from Cambridge at 10.14, 12.13 (pm) and 02.46. A Wednesday only working from Bury St Edmunds arrived at Sudbury at 05.08 and then the 04.57 service from Cambridge which terminated at Sudbury at 06.22. This connected into the 05.50 Bury St Edmunds which departed Sudbury at 06.37 and was the last up movement towards Colchester. Finally the 07.22 Cambridge terminated at Sudbury at 04.42. With trains terminating and originating from Sudbury some carriages would have been kept in the station area overnight. On Sundays three trains operated from Sudbury to Colchester and return (although one started at Marks Tey).

References

External links

History page at Subterranea Britannica
showing the station before and after

redevelopment Redevelopment is any new construction on a site that has pre-existing uses. It represents a process of land development uses to revitalize the physical, economic and social fabric of urban space. Description Variations on redevelopment include: ...

{{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Disused railway stations in Suffolk Former Great Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1849 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1865 Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1865 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1991 Railway stations in Suffolk DfT Category F1 stations Railway stations opened by British Rail Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1991 Greater Anglia franchise railway stations Sudbury, Suffolk 1849 establishments in England