Nottingham Victoria railway station

Nottingham Victoria railway station was a Great Central Railway and Great Northern Railway railway station in Nottingham, England. It was designed by the architect Albert Edward Lambert, who also designed the rebuild of the Nottingham Midland station (now known simply as Nottingham station).

It was opened by the

Background

In 1893 the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway obtained authorisation to extend its North Midlands railway network into London. This new line was opened on 15 March 1899 (by which time the railway company was known as the Great Central Railway) and became known as the London Extension, stretching from Annesley to a new station at Marylebone in London. The line passed through Nottingham, where a new station was to be built.

Construction and opening

The station's construction was on a grand scale: a 13-acre (53,000 m²) site was acquired at a cost of £473,000 (£56.1 million)

The three-storey building was dominated by a 100-foot (30 m) clock tower topped with a cupola and weather vane. At the north end of the building, access could be gained to the parcels office via two large metal gates. Once inside the building on the ground floor level, one reached the large and lofty booking hall. It was over 100 feet (30 m) long and 66 feet (20 m) wide, and contained the best-quality pine and a hard-wearing oak floor, along with a gallery on each side to gain access to spacious offices on the first floor. The booking hall contained seven ticket-issuing windows, three each for the Great Central and Great Northern and one for excursion traffic; a clock-type train indicator served all platforms. An iron overbridge led from the booking hall and spanned the platforms, to which it was connected by four broad staircases. A small footbridge at the end provided access to the island platforms at the south end, themselves connected to a side exit leading onto Parliament Street.^[2]

The station itself comprised two large island platforms, each between 1,250 feet (380 m) and 1,270 feet (390 m) long, with two bays at each end for local traffic, giving a total of 12 platform faces. On each island platform were dining and tea rooms together with kitchens, sleeping facilities for staff, waiting rooms, and lavatories. All these buildings were, like the rest of the station, lined with glazed tiles, which were generally buff in colour and embellished with a chocolate dado. Large 42 feet 6 inches (12.95 m) steel pillars held up an enormous three-part glazed canopy measuring 450 feet (140 m) in length, with a centre span of 83 feet 3 inches (25.37 m) and a pair of flanking spans each of 63 feet 9 inches (19.43 m). There were additional glass roofs over the double-bay platforms, each carried on central pillars. An electrically lit subway system, below track level and covering the breadth of the station, could be used for transporting luggage, thereby avoiding the need to carry it over the footbridges. The subway was linked to the main station by four lifts serving respectively the booking hall, cloakroom, and two island platforms. The refreshment rooms had their own underground subway and lifts.^[6]

The station had

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (September 2017)

Services

The traffic that passed through was varied. It included London–

In 1905, there were nine goods trains to London each day, the fastest taking only 2 hours 15 minutes.[13]^: 133

Decline

During the 1960s, the whole Great Central route was run down by diverting services away from it, cutting others, and slowing down expresses to very slack timetables.^{[citation needed]} Locomotives and rolling stock were old and unreliable, and the line did not benefit from British Rail's new diesel locomotives. As passenger numbers fell, going either by car or by other lines, closure seemed inevitable. The last through service from Nottingham Victoria to London ran on 3 September 1966. All that was left was a DMU service between Nottingham and Rugby, the Nottingham Victoria to Grantham services having been re-routed to Nottingham Midland on 3 July 1967.

Victoria station was finally closed on 4 September 1967 and demolished (amidst much opposition),^[14] leaving only the clocktower to survive amongst the new Victoria Shopping Centre and flats. The station site was bought by Capital and Counties Property Company Limited from British Rail with a plan to spend £7.5m on the first stage of development. This was reportedly the largest commercial development in Britain ever carried out by a private developer outside of the London area.^[15] Goods trains continued to pass through the site of Victoria until May 1968, with two running lines left in place amidst the demolition of the main station.^[16]

Present day

The site is now occupied by the

Upon the closure of the

Nottingham's other mainline station,

Redevelopment plans for the Victoria Shopping Centre will see an extension built northwards, filling in the last section of the former station's deep cutting and concealing the entrance to the Mansfield Road Tunnel.

Former services

See also

• Nottingham railway station
  (1848–Present)
• Nottingham Carrington Street railway station (1840 to 1948)
• Carrington railway station (1899 to 1928)

References

Further reading

• Clarke, John (November 1966). Cooke, B.W.C. (ed.). "Nottingham Victoria – A memory of 1966".
  ISSN 0033-8923
  .
• Clarke, John (December 1969). Cooke, B.W.C. (ed.). "Nottingham Victorian Bars".
  ISSN 0033-8923
  .