The Barton line is a

railway line Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to road ...

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

and

North East Lincolnshire North East Lincolnshire is a unitary authority area with borough status in Lincolnshire, England. It borders the borough of North Lincolnshire and districts of West Lindsey and East Lindsey. The population of the district in the 2011 Census was ...

, England. It runs from

Barton-upon-Humber Barton-upon-Humber () or Barton is a town and civil parish in North Lincolnshire, England. The population at the 2011 census was 11,066. It is situated on the south bank of the Humber Estuary at the southern end of the Humber Bridge. It is sou ...

south east to

Cleethorpes Cleethorpes () is a seaside town on the estuary of the Humber in North East Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, England with a population of 29,678 in 2021. It has been permanently occupied since the 6th century, with fishing as its original industry ...

and was designated by the

Department for Transport The Department for Transport (DfT) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport ...

as a

community rail Community rail in United Kingdom, Britain is the support of railway lines and stations by local organisations, usually through community rail partnerships (CRPs) comprising railway operators, local councils, and other community organisations, an ...

line in February 2007. Barton station is near to the

Humber Bridge The Humber Bridge is a single-span road suspension bridge near Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. When it opened to traffic on 24 June 1981, it was the longest of its type in the world; the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge surpassed ...

. It is situated on the south bank of the

Humber Estuary The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Trent, Trent. From there to the North Sea, it forms ...

Stations served

The stations served by the route are listed below. * Barton-on-Humber * Barrow Haven * New Holland * Goxhill *

Thornton Abbey Thornton Abbey was a medieval abbey located close to the small North Lincolnshire village of Thornton Curtis, near Ulceby, and directly south of Hull on the other side of the Humber estuary. Its ruins are a Grade I listed building, including ...

* Ulceby *

Habrough __NOTOC__ Habrough ( ) is a village and civil parish in North East Lincolnshire, England, north-west of Grimsby and inland from the Humber estuary at the southern edge of the A180 road, just west of Immingham and south of South Kill ...

* Stallingborough *

Healing With physical trauma or disease suffered by an organism, healing involves the repairing of damaged tissue(s), organs and the biological system as a whole and resumption of (normal) functioning. Medicine includes the process by which the cells ...

Great Coates Great Coates is a Villages in the UK, village and civil parish in North East Lincolnshire, England. It is to the north-west and adjoins the Grimsby urban area, and is served by Great Coates railway station. The northern part of the parish exte ...

Grimsby Town Grimsby Town Football Club is a professional association football club based in Cleethorpes, North East Lincolnshire, England, that competes in , the fourth level of the English football league system. Nicknamed "the Mariners", the club was f ...

Grimsby Docks The Port of Grimsby is located on the south bank of the Humber Estuary at Grimsby in North East Lincolnshire. Sea trade out of Grimsby dates to at least the medieval period. The ''Grimsby Haven Company'' began dock development in the late 1700 ...

New Clee New Clee is a suburb and an parish, ecclesiastical parish of Grimsby in North East Lincolnshire, England. The ecclesiastical parish is ''New Clee St John & St Stephen'', based on the eponymous parish church, includes suburban streets, the station ...

Services and rolling stock

Services on the line were operated by

Northern Trains Northern Trains, Trade name, trading as Northern, is a British train operating company that operates Commuter rail, commuter and Inter-city rail, medium-distance intercity services in the North of England. It is owned by DfT Operator for the Dep ...

and its predecessors until May 2021 when

East Midlands Railway East Midlands Railway (EMR; legally Transport UK East Midlands Limited) is a British train operating company owned by Transport UK Group, and is the current operator of the East Midlands franchise. Originally owned by Abellio (transport compan ...

took over. As at July 2023, services operate every two hours in each direction on weekdays. Sunday trains only run during the summer months (May to early September). Class 153s operated the line until December 2021 when replaced by Class 156s. In May 2023, the Class 156s were replaced by Class 170s. On Monday to Saturday, the first service of the day from to , the 06:00 departure, and the 06:58 return was operated by a First TransPennine Express Class 185 (for operational reasons), although this service did not call at and due to the low platforms. This practice ceased at the December 2013 timetable change and the first train from Cleethorpes now serves all intermediate stations other than

, which is currently served by trains on request during daylight hours only. Freight services previously served the chemical works at

and the sidings at . Since the closure of the chemical plant no scheduled freight services operate on the route, though occasional trainloads have operated from the bulk grain terminal at New Holland (which now occupies the former pier it remained rail-connected for a period, but the tracks are now in disrepair and unusable).

Infrastructure

The line is mostly double track, except for the sections at each end and the connecting curve between and . The eastern portion of the route as far as Habrough is shared with the South Humberside Main Line to and , whilst the short section either side of Ulceby also forms part of the busy freight artery between and the Port of Immingham. West of Ulceby the line is double as far as Oxmarsh Crossing (near New Holland), reverting to single for the final to the terminus at Barton. This section has several manual

signal boxes On a rail transport system, signalling control is the process by which control is exercised over train movements by way of railway signals and block systems to ensure that trains operate safely, over the correct route and to the proper timeta ...

with semaphore signalling and staffed & gated

level crossings A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line or the road etc. crossing over or under using an overpass or tunnel. The te ...

in operation.

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and railway infrastructure manager, infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. ...

planned to re-signal the line in 2015–16, with control passing to the York Rail Operating Centre – the level crossings on the line were automated and the existing signal box at Ulceby Junction abolished (those at Goxhill, Barrow Road and Oxmarsh Crossing remain).

History

The to section of the line follows the

Great Grimsby and Sheffield Junction Railway The Great Grimsby and Sheffield Junction Railway was an early British railway company which existed between 1845 and 1847 with the intention of providing rail services between Grimsby, New Holland and Gainsborough in the county of Lincolnshire. ...

, opened in 1848. This subsequently became part of the

Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) was formed in 1847 when the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway joined with authorised but unbuilt railway companies, forming a proposed network from Manchester to Grims ...

and eventually the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after London, Midland and Scottish Railway, LMS) of the "Big Four (British railway companies), Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It ope ...

at the 1923 Grouping. The line was extended to Cleethorpes by the MS&LR in 1863, with a branch from Goxhill to the docks at

Immingham Immingham is a town and civil parish in North East Lincolnshire, England, on the south-west bank of the Humber, Humber Estuary, northwest of Grimsby. It was relatively unpopulated until the early 1900s, when the Great Central Railway began de ...

added in 1911. The line was particularly busy during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, as it served

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

airfields at Goxhill and Killingholme in addition to the various industrial installations in the area.History of the Barton Cleethorpes Railway Line
NE Lincs CC website article; Retrieved 6 December 2013 The line was twice proposed for closure in the 1960s (in 1963 and again four years later), but was reprieved on each occasion (though the Goxhill to Immingham Line did close in June 1963). Prior to the opening of the

in June 1981, passenger services ran via where they connected with the Humber Ferry service across the

Humber The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England. It is formed at Trent Falls, Faxfleet, by the confluence of the tidal rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Trent, Trent. From there to the North Sea, it forms ...

to Corporation Pier in Hull but after the bridge was commissioned the ferry service was withdrawn and a new chord line and replacement station provided at New Holland to allow trains to run directly to and from Barton. Since then, the connection to and from Hull has been provided by Stagecoach in Lincolnshire bus over the bridge and now operates out of

Hull Paragon Interchange Hull Paragon Interchange is a transport interchange providing rail, bus and coach services located in the city centre of Kingston upon Hull, England. The G. T. Andrews-designed station was originally named ''Paragon Station'', and together ...

. The service ran hourly until the spring of 1990, but was cut to the current two-hourly pattern at that year's timetable change by

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

due to unreliability and a shortage of rolling stock. The winter Sunday service also suffered the same fate in 1999 following the abolition of

Humberside County Council Humberside County Council was the county council of the non-metropolitan county of Humberside in northern England. History Humberside was a non-metropolitan county governed by Humberside County Council and nine non-metropolitan district councils ...

and subsequent withdrawal of funding by the replacement unitary authorities.A Brief History of the Barton Line
'Friends of the Barton Line''; Retrieved 6 December 2013

References

External links

Barton Cleethorpes Community Rail Partnership website
''www.bccrp.co.uk''
Friends of The Barton Line
Rail user group for the route

{{Coord, 53.6001, -0.2384, dim:20000_region:GB, display=title Rail transport in Lincolnshire Community railway lines in England Railway lines in Yorkshire and the Humber Standard gauge railways in England