Poacher Line

The Grantham to Skegness Line is a fifty five mile railway line linking Grantham and Skegness in Lincolnshire, England.

It used to diverge from the East Coast Main Line north of Grantham. Many trains on this route originate from the East Midlands via the Nottingham to Grantham Line. It follows the A52 road, offering a quicker alternative.

The service was chosen as one of the seven pilot schemes under the Department for Transport's Community Rail Development Strategy in 2005 but was not formally designated as a community rail service until July 2006.

The line is operated by British Rail Class 156 "Super-Sprinter" 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

* Heckinton
* Swineshead Bridge
* Hubbert's Bridge
* Boston
* Thorpe Culvert
* Wainfleet
* Havenhouse
* Skegness

The route is a [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lincolnshire/4061119.stm community rail line] .

According to a news report from November 2005, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lincolnshire/4395616.stm] , the section between Boston and Skegness is currently unable to take heavy trains. The line is not electrified.

Grantham to Skegness takes about 1 hour 30 minutes and as of 2007 costs £16.10 Day Return and £17.50 Saver Return. It is also known as the " [http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/section.asp?docId=54255 Poacher Line] ", with reference to the 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 accesed by a second route (Peterborough to Lincoln Line), however this suffers from being at the heart of infrequant and unreliable services which do not run late at night nor on Sundays. In 2007, Central Trains announced that longer trains would be used on the line as overcrowding at weekends has become a severe problem.

East Midlands Trains will take over the operation of all routes in the East Midlands in November 2007 and have expressed an interest in running London - Skegness trains on summer Saturdays.

History

The East Lincolnshire Railway Line 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 [http://130.209.236.149/ewan/chronology/range.asp?start=1850&end=1859 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 GNR in the late 1890s). GNR became LNER in 1923. When other nearby lines were still open, it was a less important line, although the section from Boston to Little Steeping was shared with the more important Peterborough to Grimsby line (via Louth) until November 1961, hence the unusual kink in the track near Little Steeping, where it reverts to the Skegness line. This also had a [http://www.leytransport.i12.com/railmapb.htm section] from here to Woodhall Spa and on to Lincoln. There has never been a line from Skegness to Mablethorpe; travellers to Mablethorpe went via a section 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 [http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?txtkeys1=Skegness poster] , designed in 1908 for GNR.

Allington Chord

Due the line being formerly shared with the East Coast Main Line, on a bottleneck up to three miles north of Grantham to the Barkston South junction, which held up valuable time on a much 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

* [http://www.carillionrail.com/experience_allington.html Allington Chord]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/4337682.stm Opening of Allington Chord]
* [http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/strategyfinance/strategy/community/pilot/granthamtoskegness Information at the DfT]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lincolnshire/5353958.stm Musical trains]
* [http://www.leytransport.i12.com/selta.htm South East Lincolnshire Traveller's Association]
* [http://train.spottingworld.com/Grantham_to_Skegness_Line Train Spotting World]