Bury St Edmunds railway station

Early History (1845-1862)

The Ipswich and Bury Railway Company (I&BR), was formed to build a line from Ipswich to Bury St Edmunds. Its Act of 21 July 1845 authorised capital of £400,000 and it shared many shareholders and directors with the Eastern Union Railway (EUR) who were in the process of building their line from Colchester to Ipswich. The companies also shared the same head office location in Brook Street, Ipswich.

The proposed line was 26.5 miles long, with intermediate stations at Bramford, Claydon, Needham, Stowmarket, Haughley Road, Elmswell and Thurston.

The ground breaking ceremony took place in Ipswich on 1 August 1845 where twelve local worthies (including the mayor of Ipswich, Bruff and John Chevallier Cobbold) each filled a wheelbarrow with soil. Building the line was challenging with problems at Ipswich with tunnel construction and at Stowmarket where the local marsh swallowed up a lot of material with test probes finding the bog was 80 feet deep!

On 26 November 1846 the first test train ran to Bury St Edmunds with stops at most stations on the route with the inevitable lavish celebrations. The station at that time had not been completed so a temporary station sufficed. The official opening followed on 7 December 1846 when a special train ran from Shoreditch (later Bishopsgate railway station) to Bury. The Board of Trade inspection took place on 15 December 1846 and the line opened for traffic on 24 December. The station at Bury opened in November 1847.

The EUR and I&BR were worked as one from 1 January 1847, and formal amalgamation was obtained by Act of 9 July 1847. The Eastern Union Railway was taken over by the Eastern Counties Railway .By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble, and most were leased to the ECR; they wished to amalgamate formally, but could not obtain government agreement for this until 1862, when the Great Eastern Railway was formed by amalgamation. Thus Bury St Edmunds became a GER station in 1862.

Great Eastern Railway (1862-1922)

The line from Long Melford opened in 1865 and the line to Thetford opened in 1876. A direct link to Ely was provided in 1880 at Kennett.

The Bury Yard signal box was opened in 1888.It was a GER Type 7 design with a Mackenzie and Holland frame.

London & North Eastern Railway (1923-1947)

Following the 1923 grouping, Bury St Edmunds became a LNER station. During World War 2 Bury was an important freight location for the many airbases in East Anglia.

British Railways (1948-1994)

In 1948 Bury St Edmunds became part of British Railways Eastern Region.

According to the Official Handbook of Stations the following classes of traffic were being handled at this station in 1956: G (Goods), P (Passenger, Parcels & Miscellaneous), F (Furniture Vans, Carriages, Motor Cars, Portable Engines and Machines on Wheels), L (Livestock), H (Horse Boxes and Prize Cattle Vans) and C (Carriages and Motor Cars by Passenger or Parcels Train); there was a 9-ton crane. Private sidings were operated by British Sugar, Burlingham & Son, J Gough & Son, Ridley Coal & Iron and H A& D Taylor.

The Bury St Edmunds to Theford line closed to passengers on 8 June 1953 and goods traffic on 27 June 1960.

The engine shed closed in 1959.

The line to Long Melford closed to passengers on 10 April 1961 and freight on 19 April 1965.

The railway bridge to the east of the station was grade 2 listed in 1988.

The privatisation era (1994 - present)

In April 1994 Railtrack became responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructure. Railtrack was succeeded by Network Rail in 2002.

Passenger services have been operated by the following franchises:

Due to the freight train derailment on a bridge near Ely in June 2007, trains to Peterborough from London (via Ipswich) were terminating at Bury St Edmunds while the bridge was rebuilt. Train services resumed on 21 December 2007.

The yard signal box was grade 2 listed in 2013 but was decommissioned in 2016.

A one million pound restoration scheme was completed during 2016 on the grade 2 listed station.

Train services

The following services currently call at Bury St Edmunds:

Through trains to & from London Liverpool Street via the Great Eastern Mainline were withdrawn at the December 2010 timetable change.

Architecture and layout

Designed by Sancton Wood (the architect also of Ipswich and Cambridge railway stations as well as many stations in Ireland, the principal of which is Heuston Station, Dublin), the station was formally inaugurated in November 1847, eleven months after the opening of the Eastern Union Railway's line from Ipswich.

The most noteworthy feature of the station, which is constructed of red brick with stone dressings, is a pair of towers (originally linked by an overall roof, removed in 1893) on either side of the tracks at the eastern end of the layout. As first built – as a terminus – the station had four tracks, although in practice only one platform was used before the line was extended to Newmarket in 1854. Today a wide space separates the two surviving through tracks, which serve Platform 2 (for trains from Ipswich) and Platform 1 (called at by those heading east).

The semi-elliptical brick arch bridge over Northgate Road to the east of the station, which like the station building is a Grade II listed building, has been credited to Frederick Barnes and Charles Russell.

The two platforms are connected by a subway.

Goods facilities

A goods yard was situated on the down side west of the station.

Engine Shed

The first engine shed was located immediately west of the railway station when Bury St Edmunds was a terminus station for the Ipswich and Bury Railway. The opening of the line to Cambridge in 1854 saw the end of this first shed as it was in the way of the new line. A new engine shed of wooden construction was established on the north side of the line again west of the station. This shed deteriorated over the years and inclement weather in 1901 finished the structure off. The Great Eastern Railway, often parsimonious in matters relating to the locomotive department, left it until 1904 before a new three-road brick built shed with a north-light roof was built.

As part of the Ipswich district in 1914 the shed had 30 men under a fitter-in-charge. The allocation on 1 January 1922 consisted of:

In 1931 during London & North Eastern Railway operation (1923-1947) 17 locomotives were allocated to Bury St Edmunds and Bury was re-allocated to the Cambridge district. At this time it acquired two sub-sheds at Sudbury and Haverhill. By 1950 under British Railways this had fallen to 14 but increased to 16 in 1954.

Although the shed was re-roofed in 1953, the shed was closed to traffic on 5 January 1959 and demolished later that year.