Long Stanton railway station was opened on 17 August 1847 as a station of the Wisbech, St Ives & Cambridge Junction Railway. Unlike the village (Longstanton) the name of the station used two words (Long Stanton), as you can see in one of the images below.
A view of the station in about 1910 :
Later it was a station on the Great Eastern Railway, between Cambridge and Huntingdon serving the villages of Longstanton and Willingham (being roughly midway between them), until it was closed to passengers on 5 October 1970. This is how the station looked in the 1950's:
The station was immortalised in 1964 in the song 'Slow Train' by Flanders and Swann.
click here for the song
Millers Dale for Tideswell, Kirby Muxloe, Mow Cop & Scholar Green
No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street
We won't be meeting again On the Slow Train
I'll travel no more from Littleton Badsey to Openshaw
At Long Stanton I'll stand well clear of the doors no more
No whitewashed pebbles, no Up and no Down
From Formby Four Crosses to Dunstable Town
I won't be going again On the Slow Train
On the Main Line and the Goods Siding The grass grows high
At Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside And Trouble House Halt
The Sleepers sleep at Audlem and Ambergate
No passenger waits on Chittening platform or Cheslyn Hay
No one departs, no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives
They've all passed out of our lives
On the Slow Train, on the Slow Train
Cockermouth for Buttermere, Armley Moor, Arram, Pye Hill & Somercotes, Windmill End
Although the station had closed for goods on 18 April 1966, the railway line through Long Stanton station remained open for freight trains from Cambridge to St Ives until 1992.
The track was removed and the north platform demolished in 2007, ready for the construction of the Cambridge Guided Busway which follows the track of the old railway. The station building can still be seen where the guided busway crosses the main north-south road but is now a private house.
Although photos show that the platform (albeit reduced in width) still survives down the side of the house, it has no shaped edge stones and these may well have been some of the parts from the platforms which are known to have been preserved and re-used on the Mid Norfolk Railway.
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