Wragby railway station was a railway station that served the town of

Wragby Wragby ( ) is a town and civil parish in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated at the junction of the A157 and A158 roads, and approximately north-west from Horncastle and about north-east of Lincoln. History ...

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 1960, 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 135 miles 06

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 but at Wragby there was

loop Loop or LOOP may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live * Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets * Loop Mobile, an ...

to allow trains to pass one another; two

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 ...

s were provided, one on each leg of the loop. A small waiting room was provided on the second platform. A timber

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 half way along the loop, 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

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 three long sidings serving a cattle dock. 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; a

provender Fodder (), also called provender (), is any agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock, such as cattle, rabbits, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs. "Fodder" refers particularly to food given to the animals (includ ...

store (a shed on short legs to prevent access by rodents) was used for storing grain and other perishables."Wragby"
''Disused Stations Website'', retrieved 21 January 2020 Wragby Signal Box was provided with two electric token machines."Picture of Donington Electric Ticket machine"
'Daves Rail Pictures Website'', Louth to Bardney Branch, retrieved 23 January 2020 These machines, along with their partners at Donington and Bardney, prevented two trains from entering the single line sections in opposite directions. A token, known as a ticket on this branch, would need to be carried by the driver of every train. The signalman at Wragby would have leave his box to collect the token from each train as it arrived and issue another token for the next section. 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 Wragby, the general bricks were a lighter colour with darker string course bricks.

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. * Lincol ...

, 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 11 minutes, with a connection to Lincoln taking a further 25 minutes. In the other direction, trains took 13 minutes to get to Donington on Bain and 33 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 1 February 1960.A J Ludlam, ''Branch Lines of East Lincolnshire: volume 1: Louth to Bardney'', published by Lincolnshire Wolds Railway Society, 2015,

After Closure

The track was lifted in 1961. The station building remains standing adjacent to the A158 road on the outskirts of the village, along with its platform, and has been converted into a private residence. The trackbed towards Louth is built on by houses and to Bardney is agriculture.

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