Trains at Leicester, MML, 19/03/26

Leicester railway station (formerly Leicester Campbell Street and Leicester London Road) is a mainline railway station in the city of Leicester in Leicestershire, England. The station is managed by East Midlands Railway and owned by Network Rail. The station is served by CrossCountry and East Midlands Railway services.

Leicester station was opened in 1840 by the Midland Counties Railway, and rebuilt in 1894 and 1978. It is on the Midland Main Line, which runs from London St Pancras to Sheffield and Nottingham. It is 99 miles 7 chains (159.5 km) north of London St Pancras.

Leicester was one of the first cities (though then a town) to be served by a railway, when the Leicester and Swannington Railway built its terminus station at West Bridge on the western side of Leicester in 1832.

The Leicester and Swannington Railway was later absorbed by the Midland Railway.

In total, Leicester had seven railway stations (eight if the two sites at West Bridge are treated separately).

In addition to the current Leicester station, three other main railway stations existed. The original station at West Bridge closed to passengers in 1928.

Leicester Belgrave Road (on the Great Northern Railway) closed to passengers in 1962 and Leicester Central (on the Great Central Railway) closed in May 1969.

From 1892 up until this time, the current Leicester station was known as Leicester London Road.

In addition, there were smaller stations within the city boundary at Humberstone Road on the LMS, Humberstone on the GNR, and, from 1874 until 1918, a halt at Welford Road was operated on the Leicester – London main line allowing access to the Cattle Market.

At this halt, passengers were allowed to leave the trains but not to board them.

Further expansion was contemplated for some time, but it was not until 1890 that the go ahead was given for Campbell Street station to be replaced by the present Leicester railway station.

All that remains of the first station is a pair of gateposts in an Egyptian style at the end of Station Street. The offices for Royal Mail now occupy some of the site of the old station buildings on Campbell Street.

When sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s, the station was served by the InterCity sector until the privatisation of British Railways.

With the advent of power signalling in 1986, the signal box and the crossovers disappeared, and the tracks approaching the station were relaid to allow trains from any direction to enter or leave any platform.

Duration of the video: 10:25 - 14:54

We’ll be seeing services by East Midlands Railway, Cross Country and some freight as well.

I hope you enjoy this video if you did smash that like button and don’t forget to subscribe for more upcoming videos and feel free to leave any comments or recommendations of stations that you like for me to do as I’ll try respond back to them as soon as possible.

It’s been quite awhile since I last did Leicester but it’s always an enjoyable station to come and do any train spotting there plus I managed to some quite special things coming through such as East Midlands Railway 810’s , New Cross Country Livery 170 and a railtour which had a GBRF 57 then a pair of 37’s which was nice to see.

My next station will be Stratford which is situated on the Great Eastern Mainline it’s been quite a long time since I last revisited there but I’m sure I’ll see plenty of variety come through so until then thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.