Poacher Line

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Legend To Nottingham East Coast Main Line Grantham East Coast Main Line Ancaster Rauceby To Lincoln Sleaford To Peterborough Heckington Swineshead Hubbert's Bridge Boston Thorpe Culvert Wainfleet Havenhouse Seacroft Closed 27 April 1964 Skegness All minor stations closed on Sundays

The Grantham to Skegness Line, promoted as the Poacher Line, runs for 55 miles (89 km) between Grantham and Skegness in Lincolnshire, England.

The route was selected as one of the seven pilot schemes under the Department for Transport's Community Rail Development Strategy in 2005 and was formally designated as a community rail service in July 2006. Passenger use of the line has grown since becoming a community rail line and the Poacher Line Community Rail Partnership actively promotes the route through marketing promotions, ticketing offers, music trains and guided walks. Redundant space at stations at Sleaford and Boston is being brought back into community use. Members of the Partnership include Lincolnshire County Council, East Midlands Trains, Association of Community Rail Partnerships and Network Rail.

Trains on this route originate from the East Midlands via the Nottingham to Grantham Line as an hourly through service from Nottingham to Skegness. The line is operated by East Midlands Trains British Rail Class 156 "Super-Sprinter" and British Rail Class 158 "Sprinter Express" diesel multiple units.

Route

The towns and villages served by the route are listed below:

• Grantham
• Ancaster
• Rauceby
• Sleaford
  • connections with Peterborough to Lincoln Line

• Heckington
• Swineshead
• Hubbert's Bridge
• Boston
• Thorpe Culvert
• Wainfleet
• Havenhouse
• Skegness

The route is a community rail line.

According to a news report from November 2005, [1], the section between Boston and Skegness was unable to take heavier trains; although work to enhance the track is taking place during winter 2009/10. The line is not electrified and is partly single track (the sections between Sleaford & Heckington and Hubbert's Bridge - Boston - Sibsey were all singled in the early 1980s to reduce track maintenance costs).

Grantham to Skegness takes about 1 hour 30 minutes on the Poacher Line. The reference is to the traditional song Lincolnshire Poacher.

The line is important for south Lincolnshire as it hosts the most frequent and reliable service from Sleaford (and east Lincolnshire) to reach London. Sleaford can be accessed by a second route (Peterborough to Lincoln Line), however this suffers from being at the heart of infrequent and unreliable services which do not run late at night nor on Sundays. In 2007, Central Trains, the then operator, announced that longer trains would be used on the line as overcrowding at weekends has become a severe problem.

East Midlands Trains took over the operation of all routes in the East Midlands in November 2007 and have in the past expressed an interest in running London - Skegness trains on summer Saturdays. Unfortunately this has been delayed Network Rail putting back the track repairs between Boston and Skegness to 2010.

History

The East Lincolnshire Railway from Boston to Louth opened in March 1848, and the section from Grantham to Boston known as the Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway opened in 1855, both owned by the GNR company. The section from Wainfleet to Skegness opened in August 1873 (by the Wainfleet and Skegness Railway Company, later owned by the GNR in the late 1890s). The GNR became part of the LNER in 1923. When other nearby lines were still open it was a less important route, although the section from Boston to Little Steeping was shared with the more important Peterborough to Grimsby line (via Louth) until October 1970, hence the unusually sharp curve in the track near Little Steeping where it joins the Skegness line (which was originally opened as a branch from Firsby). This also had a section from here to Woodhall Spa and on to Lincoln. There has never been a direct line from Skegness to Mablethorpe; travellers to Mablethorpe went via a branch line from Willoughby (from the south which opened in October 1886), or Louth (from the north which opened in September 1888). The Skegness line inspired the famous poster, designed in 1908 for the GNR.

Allington Chord

Due to the line being formerly shared with the East Coast Main Line, there used to be a bottleneck on the three miles north of Grantham to the Barkston South junction, which held up valuable time on a more important route. A solution was urgently needed to get the Skegness trains off this route. In October 2005, trains heading for Skegness were diverted back towards Nottingham until the Allington junction, where a new £11m short section of track was built to allow trains to head on to the Grantham Avoiding Line. This has increased reliability although slightly increased journey times.

External links

• Poacher Line website
• Allington Chord
• Opening of Allington Chord
• Information at the DfT
• Musical trains
• South East Lincolnshire Traveller's Association
• Train Spotting World
• Association of Community Rail Partnerships
• East Midlands Trains promotion