Rush Hour Trains at: Leighton Buzzard, WCML, 04/11/24

A very enjoyable evening spent at Leighton Buzzard on the West Coast Mainline where we see plenty of services from London Northwestern Railway, Avanti West Coast and freight from Freightliner and GBRF.

The station was opened by the London and Birmingham Railway in 1838 and was simply known as Leighton, the line had been planned to go through Buckingham but this was opposed by the Duke of Buckingham which forced the line to head east through Linslade. The original line was dual track.

In 1848 the station became a junction when the branch line to Dunstable was opened. This was used by freight and passenger traffic, the freight traffic would typically take animals from Dunstable and bring them to Leighton Buzzard where they would be unloaded and taken up into the high street for the local market. Freight traffic was introduced to the line in 1859 when the London and Northwestern Railway acquired the line to build a new station and incorporate a freight yard known as Wing Yard. The new station was located 160 meters to the south of the old station. This is now the current site of the station. The station used to have 2 signal boxes, the northern signal box controlled access to the branch line and the signal box to the south of the station was used for the actual control of the signals for the line, yes I know that doesn't make any sense what so ever but it seemed to work for them at the time.

In 1927 the LMS (London Midland and Scottish Railway) had created a cross over junction for the slow and fast lines. By this time the line had been made into 4 lines because of the amount of traffic running along the line, this was to play a major role in the first major train crash at Leighton Buzzard in 1931 when a driver on-board Royal-scot hit the cross over at 50-60 mph when he was actually supposed to take it at 15mph, 6 people died that day including the driver and the fireman as the loco turned over as it hit the junction.

In 1957 to 1958 the station buildings were rebuilt and a new concrete awning was constructed over the platforms, at the entrance to the station there was a new booking/waiting hall, central heating, electric lighting and a cycle storage area.

In 1967 Wing Yard was closed to freight traffic following the closure of the Dunstable branch line. The yard is now the car park which you see during the entirety of the film.

In 1989 the station went through a £1.8million make over which also included the platforms being lengthened to accommodate 12 car trains.

The latest change to this station was the removal of the old footbridge that would allow you to cross the station without having to go through the station building. So you could walk from Southcourt Avenue to the park behind the car park.

My next rush hour film will be from Leamington Spa on the Chiltern Mainline.

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