The Anonymous Widower

A Very Wet Stop At Lincoln

I had intended to have a good lunch at Lincoln and go up the hill to look at the cathedral.

But the weather put a stop to that and I just went to see the progress on the two level crossings in the area. This Google Map shows the area of the station and the two crossings that are being given step-free footbridges.

Lincoln Level Crossings

These are some of the pictures I tried to take.

Progress doesn’t seem to be very fast.

It will be interesting to see if Network Rail’s solution makes things easier. This Google Map shows the southern part of Lincoln.

Lines Through Lincoln

The lines come into the City and through the station on an East-West axis. You can just make out the scar of the Lincoln Avoiding Line, which used to allow trains to by-pass the level crossings. Together with Lincoln St. Marks station, it closed in the 1980s.

According to Wikipedia, train services run between Lincoln and

• Newark North Gate and Leicester via Newark Castle and Nottingham using the Nottingham to Lincoln Line (“Midland line”);
• Sheffield via Retford and direct to Doncaster via the Doncaster to Lincoln Line (“Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Line”).
• Peterborough via Sleaford via the Peterborough to Lincoln Line (“Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Line”)
• Grimsby Town via Market Rasen, with occasional journeys to Cleethorpes

Most of these services operate on an hourly or two-hourly basis although some services to places like Nottingham might go to two trains per hour.

There are also once daily services Monday to Saturday to London St Pancras operated by East Midlands Trains and to London Kings Cross operated by Virgin Trains East Coast.

Lines to Doncaster, Newark, Nottingham and Sheffield run to the West and lines to Grimsby, Peterborough, Skegness, Sleaford and Spalding are to the East.

You can understand, why the Route Utilisation Strategy (RUS) for the East Midlands felt that services could be improved by joining services together in Lincoln to free up platform space. At present some Grimsby Town services go though Lincoln to Newark North Gate.

It’s certainly a tricky problem at Lincoln and I can’t help feeling that at some time in the future, there’s going to have to be a solution that takes freight trains away from Lincoln High Street.

September 15, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport | Freight, Level Crossing, Lincoln, Trains