Oakington Railway Station

Construction and opening

Oakington railway station, together with Histon, Longstanton, Swavesey and St Ives stations, opened on 17 August 1847 with the opening of the Cambridge to St Ives railway. The line was built by the Wisbech, St Ives & Cambridge Junction Railway company, which only the previous year had received parliamentary approval to build a railway between Cambridge and Wisbech via St Ives and March. This was a period of frenzied railway building by numerous competing companies. Indeed, Cambridge railway station had only opened two years previously in 1845, and on 17 August 1847, the same day as the Cambridge to St Ives railway opened, the rival Ely & Huntingdon Railway company opened a line from St Ives to a station that they called Huntingdon even though it was actually in Godmanchester. (That line was subsequently extended to Huntingdon in 1883). The Wisbech, St Ives & Cambridge Junction Railway company had already opened the March to Wisbech section of its line on 3 May 1847, three months before the Cambridge to St Ives section. The final section between St Ives and March was opened on 1 March 1848, but by that time the company had already been taken over by the Eastern Counties Railway.

Commenting on the opening of the Cambridge to St Ives line, the Cambridge Independent Press reported that “a great number of passengers arrived and departed during the day; some prompted by business, and many treating their curiosity with a ride on the railway having never seen such a thing before. The Company have started six trains a day, but we think before they will be filled with passengers, a lower rate of fares must be published, in order to induce persons to travel. There were no festivities on the occasion, which, we hear, are reserved until the opening of the Wisbech line in October. The trains passed and re-passed without the least incident, much to the amazement of crowds of country people who had congregated at the various stations, and by the roadside, to witness the novel sight.“

Early years and heyday

By 1860 the Eastern Counties Railway, which had become the dominant railway company in the region, controlled nearly 700 miles of track. It did not always enjoy the best reputation, however, with a pamphlet from 1860 commenting that “Notoriously there is no rail system in the Empire so badly worked as the Eastern Counties. There is no system on which the passenger trains are so few or so irregular; none on which the rates for passengers…are so excessive…“. Shortly after, the Eastern Counties Railway merged with a number of smaller companies to form the Great Eastern Railway.

The main traffic on the Cambridge to St Ives line was of agricultural produce, although transport of coal from the north to London also became important especially once the Great Eastern Railway was able to gain access to the large coalfields of South Yorkshire via the Great Eastern / Great Northern Joint line that operated from 1882 and ran from Doncaster to Huntingdon via Lincoln, Spalding, March and St Ives. Passenger numbers on the Cambridge to St Ives line were generally low and limited to local travellers, as the express trains tended to go via Ely instead of St Ives.

The railway also allowed the transport of heavy building materials, such as the Welsh slate that forms the rooves of most of the 19th century buildings in Oakington (earlier buildings were generally thatched and timber-framed). The cottages on Station Road between the railway and Westwick Bridge were probably built to house railway workers, as were Station Cottages in Westwick.

Most of the trade loaded onto trains at Oakington station was agricultural produce from Cottenham, including fruit, wheat and cheese. Fruit growing in the area became particularly important from the late 1800s onwards, with 900 acres of orchards being recorded in Cottenham by the end of the second world war, and this led to significant quantities of apples, plums, damsons and other fruit being transported on the line. A newspaper report from September 1911 reported over 50 tons of fruit per day from Cottenham orchards being loaded onto trains at Oakington station for transport to London and elsewhere.

Some of this fruit was destined for Chivers Jam Factory in Histon, which had been built beside the railway in 1975, complete with its own sidings, and rapidly expanded. Indeed, in 1907 the railway carried 14,800 tons of fruit and jam in connection with the factory, which together with transport of workers and of coal for the factory boiler house made Histon station one of the busiest and most profitable country stations on the Great Eastern Railway network. In 1899 a proposal was even made for the construction of a narrow-guauge light railway between Oakington and Cottenham, to allow smallholders in Cottenham who grew fruit for Chivers to transport their produce by rail to Chivers factory. This would have been mainly a roadside tramway, and was proposed to run down the main street of Cottenham. The proposal was forgotten, however, when it was decided that it was easier to transport the fruit by road instead.

Mail was also carried: in 1917 the Cambridge to Willingham mail cart, which went via Milton, Landbeach, Cottenham and Rampton, was withdrawn and the mail for Cottenham and Rampton then went by rail to Oakington instead. It was then taken by road to Cottenham and Rampton.

Track layout

The development of the station is illustrated in the sketch maps below. Note that ‘Up’ refers to the track and platform for trains heading towards Cambridge, while ‘Down’ refers to those for trains heading towards St Ives. The 1886, 1902 and 1925 maps are drawn from the Ordnance Survey maps from those years. The 1960s map is based on the 1925 one but with additional input from ES.

Most of the main infrastructure was already in place by 1886. The 1902 map shows a slightly expanded good shed and the addition of the shelter on the down platform, while the 1925 map shows two additional sidings added alongside the down platform. Speaking in 2026, ES recalled that these sidings were mainly used for outgoing goods. Towards the end of summer, the area around these sidings was full of carts of soft fruit to be transported to Liverpool, Manchester, and other destinations. The fruit was brought in by horses and carts, tractors and old lorries from the orchards that stretched along both sides of the Westwick to Cottenham road all the way from the junction with Gun’s Lane onwards. Waggons would arrive every morning for loading and were shipped off every afternoon. ES also recalled a goods yard around the goods shed (mainly for incoming goods), which also incorporated a coal yard. The track of one of the sidings went through the goods shed, where there were unloading ramps that went over the track. The additional siding in the 1960s map is not shown on the 1925 Ordnance Survey map, but ES recalled it being present and it is also shown on a track layout diagram held by the East Anglian Railway Archive.

Post WW2: Decline and closure

Passenger numbers in the period after the second world war were boosted by service personnel at RAF Oakington, although many of these used Longstanton station rather than Oakington. In 1948 (when Oakington was part of RAF Transport Command) there were some 1,100 people based at RAF Oakington with about 600 being on leave each weekend and wanting transport to London and elsewhere.

In 1950, provided that services were not disrupted by periodic plane crashes at RAF Oakington (which at this point was a Flying Training School), a journey from Cambridge to Oakington took about 14 minutes, according to a timetable from that year, and was 6¾ miles. Oakington to St Ives was 8 miles and took about 18 minutes. Trains typically then continued to March (an additional 19 miles and 36 minutes) from where connections to places such as Peterborough, King’s Lynn and Wisbech were available.

Oakington station, as well as other stations on the line, was also known for its gardens, with a newspaper article from 1956 reporting that “For the sixth year in succession Oakington Station has obtained first prize in the British Transport Commission Station Garden Competition. Much time and energy has gone into the garden, to give a really attractive display of geraniums, stocks, sweet peas, and many other assorted flowers. Much credit is due to Porter E. Ward, assisted by Porter A. Neal, in setting out the displays.”

During this period the Cambridge to St Ives line also served as a diversionary route, including for such famous trains as the Flying Scotsman, when other lines were temporarily unavailable. It was also used as a trial line for testing new developments in rails, signalling, and the new diesel-powered locomotives that were to replace steam engines. A Heritage Survey carried out by the University of Cambridge Department of Archaeology in 2010, prior to the dismantling the line, found a 660 m length of continuously welded rail across the north side of the former Oakington airfield, close to Longstanton. This was the only such length on the track, and appeared to be put in an experimental section.

Dark clouds, however, were appearing on the horizon. Increasing car ownership from the 1950s led to a general decline in passenger numbers nationally and cuts to rail services began to be made, such as the withdrawal of passenger services from Cambridge to Kettering via St Ives in 1959 when the St Ives to Huntingdon railway line was closed. Coal transport was also declining, especially following the Clean Air Act of 1956 (which permitted only smokeless fuels to be burned in certain areas of cities and towns and promoted use of electricity and gas instead of coal).

There were still 80 trains per day passing through Oakington station in 1960, of which 14 were stopping passenger trains. Significant amounts of fruit were still being transported by rail but there was increasing competition from road transport (although one farmer was reported as saying that he preferred the trains because “the fresh air blowing through the trucks helps to keep the fruit fresh”). The Chivers Jam factory in Histon was also steadily shifting its transport from rail to road.

The 1960s were a peak period of railway closures nationally, with the Beeching report of 1963 recommending the closure of 6,000 miles of railway lines (out of a total of 18,000) with some of the remaining lines being converted to freight only. The lines to be closed were mainly in rural areas and those carrying relatively low numbers of passengers and amounts of freight. The Cambridge to St Ives line was recommended for closure by Dr Beeching, as it was losing £49,000 a year. Nevertheless, it survived the initial round of closures (despite the fears of a newspaper report of December 1962). 1963 also saw the last regular working steam train on the Cambridge to St Ives line.

Freight services ceased operating from Oakington on 19th April 1965, and from Swavesey and Longstanton a year later, although freight trains did continue to use the line. The Chivers sidings at Histon were also closed and the track was removed in February 1967. Finally, with continuing low passenger numbers all stations on the line (including St Ives) were closed to passengers on 5 October 1970. The St Ives to March line had already closed in 1967, and the March to Wisbech line in 1968. The last scheduled passenger train from Cambridge was the 21:28 to St Ives on Saturday 3 October 1970, which then departed for the return trip to Cambridge at 22:00. Normally only a two-carriage service, it consisted of four carriages on this occasion to allow more people to take a final ride. It also stopped at all stations on the return trip, when normally it was scheduled to run non-stop back to Cambridge. The train was met at St Ives by local people protesting at the closure, dressed as mourners at a funeral with black top hats and overcoats, who sang a variant of Clementine (with ‘Clementine’ replaced by ‘Cambridge line’) as the train departed.

The last station master at Oakington was Herbert Wakefield who was also Chairman and Councillor of the Parish Council from 1976 to 1991.

A photographic survey of the line was carried out in June 1970, just prior to closure. The photographs from it are stored in the Cambridgeshire Collection, and a selection are reproduced below, courtesy of the Collection.

Continued freight transport

After closure to passengers in 1970, a freight service between Cambridge and the gravel pits at what is now Fen Drayton Lakes Nature Reserve continued to run until 1992 (when quarrying work stopped) for the transport of aggregates. During the 1970s one train per day (on weekdays) made a return trip, but by the late 1980s this had dropped to once per week. A Westwick resident in the 1980s recalled “The St Ives branch line was used twice a day with sand and gravel trains. If your timing was out in the morning you were late for work as the 7.30 train stopped us all and took at least ten minutes for all of the trucks to cross.” (JW, writing in the April/May 2004 edition of the Village Journal).

These ‘sand trains’ carried sand and gravel for the Amey Roadstone Company, mostly from the Fen Drayton pits down to London for use in construction projects such as the M25 and Gatwick Airport runway. The waggons were not particularly well-suited to carrying sand as the doors did not fit very well, so cracks had to be blocked with rolls of newspaper before the sand was loaded, otherwise it would leak out during the journey. Some often did leak out anyway, leaving pale sand lying along the track.

Until 1983 there was also a seasonal freight service between Cambridge and Histon for the delivery of fruit such as Spanish oranges and pulp to Chivers Jam factory. Most of Chivers traffic went by road, and because the Chivers sidings had been removed in 1967 the limited rail fruit traffic had to use the British Rail line alongside the factory. The Chivers factory and site was demolished in 1986, and subsequently replaced by a business park and a new food factory.

Station dismantling

Meanwhile, various parts of the station were gradually removed or demolished.

The Oakington signal box was removed in January 1976 and taken to the Bressingham Steam Museum (founded by horticulturalist Alan Bloom who previously had a nursery in Oakington) near Diss. The signal box dated from the early 1900s and was one of the few remaining Great Eastern Railways signal boxes. It had previously been bought by a railway enthusiast from Foxton, but he had problems moving it to his house and so offered it to the museum instead. Unfortunately, rotten wood meant that the Oakington nameplate and internal levers and mechanical workings from the signal box are now housed at the museum in a signal box from Raydon Wood station instead.

The down track (previously used by trains heading towards St Ives) was removed at around the same time as the signal box, making the line through Oakington single-track. The shelters on both platforms was demolished around 1981, and the gatekeeper’s hut at around the same time.

Special trains

There were various campaigns from the 1970s onwards to reopen the line to passengers. In January 1979 the Railway Development Society chartered a special train and on 31^st January made a return trip from Swavesey to Cambridge and back. The following year, in April 1980, a 10-coach Inter-City train was hired for a day. It set off from Swavesey and called at Longstanton, Oakington and Histon before running non-stop to London Liverpool Street. It was necessary to start at Swavesey rather than St Ives because the railway tracks at St Ives had recently been removed and the station demolished as part of the building of a new bypass.

Ten years later, in March 1990, the Railway Development Society chartered another special service and ran a journey from Swavesey to Cambridge. However, so many people turned out to ride on it that the train was overwhelmed. A newspaper report recorded that there were 500 people waiting at Swavesey, 100 at Longstanton, 200 at Oakington and 100 at Histon. At least 200 people were left standing, and the train arrived at Cambridge more than 20 minutes late.

The Guided Busway

Even after the last freight trains in 1992 most of the track remained in place. It was finally removed in 2007 when the railway was converted into the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. The busway opened (after many delays) on 7 August 2011 and is said to still be the longest guided busway in the world. The busway stop in Oakington was constructed on the south side of Station Road, opposite to the original railway station and platform; the latter still exist on the north side and are in private hands.

A section of railway track has also been kept at the recreation ground by the pavilion.

The railway and busway are compared in the sketch maps below.

In 2026 the former station building, up platform, and goods shed were all still in place and in private hands, with the shed largely hidden from the busway by trees. North of Station Road the cycle path runs alongside the former up platform, where the up railway track once was, while the busway tracks roughly coincide with the down line and the down platform. Commercial premises occupy the site of the former sidings, and the new busway platforms lie to the south of Station Road.

Sources:

• Histon On and Off the Rails, Histon and Impington Village Society, 2021
• Alan Moore’s East Anglian Railway Archive
• http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/o/oakington/
• Mike Petty’s Oakington Scrapbook
• Ralph Warboys’ History of Oakington
• Cambridgeshire Collection
• Tracing the Line: Investigations along the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway Part 2: The Railway Herritage Survey, 2010, https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.100866

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