Cambridge Railway Station
A Grade II listed station at the end of Station Road, opened in 1845 and the busiest in the East of England.
Most visitors arrive in Cambridge through this station, which lies at the end of Station Road about a mile south-east of the city centre. It opened on 29 July 1845, with Robert Stephenson as engineer, and its long classical front is Grade II listed.
A station the University shaped
Other railway companies reached Cambridge in the following decades. Some had planned separate stations, but the University objected, and they all ended up using this one station. The University also helped to block later nineteenth-century schemes for a central station. The result is a single long platform of 514 yards, split into platforms 1 and 4 by a scissors crossover so that trains from either direction can pass those already stopped. Bay platforms sit at both ends, and an island platform with platforms 7 and 8 opened in December 2011.
The building
The station building has a long classical facade and a porte-cochere that was infilled during the 20th century. Its design has been attributed both to Sancton Wood and to Francis Thompson. In January 2017 the station gained a bigger ticket office, extra gates and machines and a widened concourse.
Using it
The station had more than ten million passengers in 2023-24, making it the busiest in the East of England. Trains run to London Liverpool Street and King's Cross, and to King's Lynn, Norwich and Ipswich. Buses stop immediately south-west of the main building, with services into the centre. Bikes are catered for by Cambridge Cycle Point, a building just north of the main entrance with three storeys of parking and room for up to 2,850 cycles, open since February 2016. The city centre is about a mile away.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
