Kettering railway station serves the town of Kettering in Northamptonshire, England. It lies south-west of the town centre, on the Midland Main Line, north of London St. Pancras.
History
The station was opened in May 1857 by the Midland Railway, on a line linking the Midland to the Great Northern Railway at Hitchin. Later, the Midland gained its own London terminus at St Pancras railway station. In 1857, the leather trade was in recession and so over half of Kettering's population was on poor relief; the railway enabled the town to sell its products over a much wider area and restored it to prosperity.
The original station with a single platform was designed by Charles Henry Driver, with particularly fine 'pierced grill' cast ironwork on the platform. In 1858, it was reported that the station was now lit by gas lamps with gas supplied from the town mains. It was also reported that the line was one of the very few without telegraphic wires.
From 1866, the station was also the terminus of the Midland cross country branch line from via St Ives and Huntingdon, until closure in June 1959.
In 1879, the line was quadrupled. New fast lines were built to the west of the original slow lines. Three new platforms were built: numbers 2 and 3 on an island between the fast and slow lines, with number 4 to the west of the fast lines. The Midland Railway commissioned single-storey weather-boarded waiting rooms and canopies, with cast-iron columns and spandrels for the island platforms 2 and 3 and platform 4, to match those designed in 1857 by Charles Henry Driver.
From 1879 (for freight) and 1880 (for passengers), Kettering was also a junction for the direct line from Kettering to Nottingham, via Oakham and Melton Mowbray. This closed to passengers in 1966, but was left as a through route for freight (as far as Melton Mowbray only from 1968.) For later services on this line, see "Corby Services" below.
Other additions included a two-bay engine shed, erected by C. Deacon & Company for the Midland Railway, at the north end of the forecourt around 1875 and a goods shed with offices, built at the south end around 1894.
The Midland Railway replaced the main station buildings on platform 1 between 1895 and 1898 with a new booking hall, booking office, parcels office and refreshment room. These current buildings may be by Charles Trubshaw. It is regarded as one of the best remaining examples of Midland architecture.
In the 1970s, the glass canopies became a maintenance headache for British Rail, who proposed to remove the tops of the cast iron columns and replace the glass canopies with plastic sheeting. Kettering Civic Society objected to the plans and the canopies and columns were reprieved, later to be sympathetically restored by Railtrack in 2000.
London, Midland and Scottish Railway
Until the line through Bakewell was closed in the Beeching era, the 'main lines' were those from London to Manchester, carrying named expresses such as The Palatine. Express trains to Leeds and Scotland, such as the Thames-Clyde Express, generally used the Erewash Valley Line then on to the Settle and Carlisle Line. Expresses to Edinburgh, such as The Waverley, travelled through Corby and Nottingham.
Corby services
Just north of Kettering, on Engineer's Line Reference SPC2 (St Pancras to Chesterfield), is Glendon Junction for the Oakham to Kettering Line. This leads through Corby to Manton Junction, where it joins the Leicester to Peterborough Line. This historically provided an alternative route for expresses to Nottingham via Old Dalby.
Passenger services were withdrawn from this line in the 1960s, though it remained open for freight. In 1987, Network SouthEast experimentally introduced a shuttle service between Kettering and a new station in the nearby town of Corby. The service was withdrawn a few years later. Corby was often regarded as being the largest town in western Europe with no railway station. East Midlands Trains, and Midland Mainline before it, was committed through its franchise to run a shuttle bus from Corby to Kettering station. Occasionally the line is used as a diversionary route when the route between Kettering and Leicester is closed.