*Christmas Countdown Special Day 14* - Trains at Leicester, MML, 28/11/25

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: 16:30 - 17:41

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

I hope you enjoyed 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 would like for me to do in the comments below as I’ll try get back to them as soon as I can.

It’s been a very long time since I did any train spotting at Leicester but it’s always a nice station to come and revisit though no matter what time of day it is it’s bit disappointing that I didn’t see that much freight come through however it would’ve been more than 2 but one got cancelled and the other one came through early but seeing some freight is better than nothing though.

My next station will be Barking which is situated on the London, Tilbury and Southend Mainline it’s been quite a long time since I did any train spotting there but hopefully it’ll be worth revisiting that station though so until then thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.