Wisbech East was a railway station in

Wisbech Wisbech ( ) is a market town, inland Port of Wisbech, port and civil parish in the Fenland District, Fenland district in Cambridgeshire, England. In 2011 it had a population of 31,573. The town lies in the far north-east of Cambridgeshire, bord ...

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 ...

. It was opened in 1848 and became part of 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 ...

network, providing connections to

March March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the second of seven months to have a length of 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of Marc ...

, Watlington and St Ives, as well as

Upwell __NOTOC__ Upwell is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. Upwell village is on the A1101 road, as is Outwell, its conjoined village at the north. The nearest towns are Wisbech to the north-west and Downham Market to the ...

via the

Wisbech and Upwell Tramway The Wisbech and Upwell Tramway was a rural standard gauge tramway in East Anglia. It was built by the Great Eastern Railway between Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire and Upwell, now in Norfolk to carry agricultural produce. Although called ...

. The station closed in 1968 and no trace of it remains today. A freight-only line remains extant as far as a factory based in the station's former goods yard, and a

heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...

based in March is aiming to reinstate services to Wisbech and construct a new station as near as possible to Newbridge Lane crossing. In June 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies published a report indicating that the reopening of the line to Wisbech and construction of a new station could be viable, in that the ratio of business, economic and social benefits to costs would be just over £1m.

History

Opening

It was 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 ...

which first reached Wisbech from the south in May 1847 with the opening of a line from St Ives via March; a temporary wooden station named ''Wisbeach'' was built on the site of the future Wisbech goods yard (at grid reference TF458093). The East Anglian Railways made its way from the east to Wisbech the following year with a line from Magdalen Road station; their station - on the site of the future Wisbech East station - was also a temporary structure named Wisbeach. A short curve joined the two lines. The two stations remained in use until at least 1851 when a lease was agreed between the two companies giving the operation of the East Anglian Railways to the Eastern Counties, the agreement taking effect at the beginning of 1852. In 1862, the Great Eastern Railway (GER) acquired the line and subsequently closed the Eastern Counties' Wisbeach station to passenger traffic the following year. A line from the station to the harbour was laid in 1863.

Wisbech and Upwell Tramway

It is not thought that the East Anglian Railways provided any accommodation at their primitive wooden station, but this was to change in August 1883 with the opening of the first section of the

. New sidings and a brick engine shed were constructed for the trams that were to work the new route from Wisbeach station (renamed Wisbech in 1877), leaving the wooden passenger station to look decidedly out-of-place. After pressure from Wisbech Town Council for new facilities, the railway company finally issued a

call for tenders An invitation to tender (ITT, otherwise known as a call for bids or a request for tenders) is a formal, structured procedure for generating competing offers from different potential suppliers or contractors looking to obtain an award of business ...

in 1887 and accepted the offer of Harold Arnold & Son of

Doncaster Doncaster (, ) is a city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, it is the administrative centre of the larger City of Doncaster. It is the second largest settlement in South Yorkshire after Sheffield. Doncaster is situated in ...

to build a station for £4,367. A new brick engine shed was also provided, with a 42 ft turntable, on a goods spur; initially it had only a single road to accommodate a trio of engines, but a second was added in 1893 to handle the station's growing traffic in perishables. This went out of use in the 1910s, with only the turntable remaining by 1925 when 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 ...

had taken over responsibility for the line. Activities at Wisbech was by that time principally concerned with the tramway. Tramway services departed from a specially-low platform at Wisbech.

Decline and closure

The ABC Railway Guide for April 1956 shows a service of six trains a day 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 ...

between Monday and Friday, with an extra train on Wednesdays; seven trains called on Saturdays and three on Sundays. The journey time was around 4 hours and the fare was £1– 9s– 6d return for 3rd class travel. The tramway to Upwell was closed in 1966 (passenger services had been withdrawn in 1927), with the line from March to Magdalen Road via Wisbech following in September 1968. The section east of Wisbech was subsequently dismantled, but the rest of the route remained open for freight traffic (from Whitemoor Junction) to Wisbech in order to serve the

Spillers Spillers Ltd was a British company that owned flour milling operations, operated bakeries and also sold pet food and equine feeds. History The business originated in 1829 from the establishment of a flour mill in Bridgwater, Somerset, by Joel Sp ...

(later Nestle Purina) pet food factory, Metal Box (later Carnaud Metal Box, now Crown Cork ) can factory and a coal depot. The line was singled in 1972 with the lifting of the down line.

Present day

Nothing remains of Wisbech East, the station site having been entirely redeveloped and replaced by the

Octavia Hill Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a fa ...

Centre for the handicapped. The Centre was itself subsequently demolished and replaced by housing. The old Wisbech East goods yard was acquired by Spillers from

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 ...

in 1995 and was last used in 2000; most of the yard now forms part of the factory and its car park. The last pet food train called in Summer 2000, although the freight-branch remains in place and runs as far as Weasenham Lane in Wisbech where the former

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 ...

was tarmaced over in 2005.

Possible restoration

In 2003, the Bramley Line group was formed to investigate the possibility of reinstating the line from Wisbech to a new temporary station named "March Elm Road". The group propose to construct a new Wisbech East station. Alternative proposals have also been put forward by the local council and the Association of Train Operating Companies. In February 2017, plans to restore the route using 'ultra cheap' no frills trains were proposed by building a branch line to Wisbech.

References

{{Closed stations Cambridgeshire Disused railway stations in Cambridgeshire Former Great Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1848 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1968 Wisbech