Shippea Hill railway station is on the

Breckland Line The Breckland line is a secondary railway line in the east of England that links in the west to in the east. The line runs through three counties: Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. It takes its name from the Breckland region of Norfolk, a ...

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

Burnt Fen Burnt Fen is an area of low-lying land crossed by the A1101 road between Littleport in Cambridgeshire and Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. It is surrounded on three sides by rivers, and consists of prime agricultural land, with sparse settlemen ...

area of

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

and

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

. The line runs between in the west and in the east. Shippea Hill is a

request stop In public transport, a request stop, flag stop, or whistle stop is a stop or station at which buses or trains, respectively, stop only on request; that is, only if there are passengers or freight to be picked up or dropped off. In this way, st ...

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 Cambridge, in one of the few areas within Burnt Fen which rise just above sea level. The station is on the

A1101 road A11, A 11 or A-11 may refer to: Military * Aero A.11, a Czechoslovakian bomber produced before World War II * Consolidated A-11, an attack version of the Consolidated P-30 fighter plane of the 1930s * HMS ''A11'', an A-class submarine of the Roy ...

between

Littleport Littleport is a large village in East Cambridgeshire, in the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. It lies about north-east of Ely and south-east of Welney, on the Bedford Level South section of the River Great Ouse, close to Burnt Fen and ...

and Mildenhall. It has been noted for its low patronage: for example, only 12 passenger entries/exits were recorded at the station in 2015/16.

History

The station was opened in 1845 as Mildenhall Road. In 1885 its name was changed to Burnt Fen, and in about 1904 it adopted the name Shippea Hill. On 7 April 1906, a passenger train derailed due to excessive speed. Eight passengers were injured, two seriously. Ordnance Survey maps from the 1920s show a network of narrow-gauge horse-drawn feeder agricultural tramways running south west from the station yard onto the Hiam Estate. There was also a standard gauge private railway branch running east to a chicory factory, which in turn had a network of narrow gauge agricultural tramways running south east onto the Chivers Estate. On 3 December 1976, at about 4 pm, a passenger train collided with a lorry on an unmanned

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...

near Shippea Hill. The train driver, Robert (Bob) Hitcham, was killed and eight of his passengers were injured. The wooden level crossing gates at Shippea Hill used to be operated manually by the signalman in the local

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'' ...

. In 2012, the signal box was closed and the crossing was renewed with automatic barriers and warning lights.

Quietest UK railway station

Shippea Hill has been recorded as one of the least-used railway stations in Britain. According to

Office of Rail and Road The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the economic and safety regulation of Britain's railways, and the economic monitoring of National Highways. ORR regulates Network Rail by setting its ...

estimates, it was the least-used railway station in 2014/15 (with 22 passengers) and 2015/16 (12 passengers). In 2016/17 there was an increase to 156 passengers. This trend has continued in subsequent years, to a recent record of 432 passengers in 2018/19. Due to its unusual status, it sometimes attracts attempts to boost its numbers. In December 2016, Ian Cumming, a finalist from ''

The Great British Bake Off ''The Great British Bake Off'' (often abbreviated to ''Bake Off'' or ''GBBO'') is a British television baking competition, produced by Love Productions, in which a group of amateur bakers compete against each other in a series of rounds, att ...

'' attracted at least 16 people to the station by handing out free mince pies. Simon Usborne of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' wrote, "It's hard to imagine a more desolate place to get off a train. Shipping containers for sale stand in a muddy yard behind the far platform, opposite the pitched-roof signal box, now shuttered. Otherwise the view is of field after field, some showing maize stumps, others now peat-black and ploughed." Shippea Hill station was not always so quiet. The 1966/1967 timetable shows that about 12 trains a day called in each direction and it was used as a railhead for the airbases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath; many Americans boarded or left the train there.

Geoff Marshall Geoff Marshall is an English video producer, performer, and author from London who runs a YouTube channel which is predominantly transport-themed. Born in London, he spent a short period living in the United States between 2006 and 2009, and no ...

and Vicki Pipe featured the station on their YouTube channel ''

All The Stations ''All the Stations'' is a documentary series published on YouTube, which sees Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe visit all 2,563 stations on Great Britain's National Rail rail network, and all 198 stations in Ireland, on the railway networks of Iarnr ...

'', which catalogued their attempt to visit all currently operating railway stations in Great Britain. In Episode 17, on 3 June 2017, they started their day at Shippea Hill and with a group of their friends plus three genuine passengers, they almost doubled the entire previous years total of 12 passengers in one day. After the video was published, Shippea Hill's passenger numbers spiked.

Services

Shippea Hill is a request stop, so passengers must signal to the conductor or driver if they wish to alight or board. the station is served by one train per day (in the morning peak) to , except on Sundays. Additionally, on Saturdays only there is one train to . Despite the next station, Lakenheath, being only a few miles away, there are no direct services between the two stations.

References

External links

* {{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Railway stations in Cambridgeshire DfT Category F2 stations Former Great Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1845 Greater Anglia franchise railway stations Railway request stops in Great Britain Low usage railway stations in the United Kingdom