Coventry railway station

Coventry
View from Warwick Road bridge (from the west)
Location
Place	Coventry
Local authority	City of Coventry
Coordinates	52°24′03″N 1°30′51″W / 52.400874°N 1.514053°W / 52.400874; -1.514053Coordinates: 52°24′03″N 1°30′51″W / 52.400874°N 1.514053°W / 52.400874; -1.514053
Grid reference	SP33057822
Operations
Station code	COV
Managed by	Virgin Trains
Number of platforms	4
Live arrivals/departures and station information from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage
2004/05 *	2.360 million
2005/06 *	2.719 million
2006/07 *	2.875 million
2007/08 *	3.040 million
2008/09 *	4.751 million
2009/10 *	4.807 million
Passenger Transport Executive
PTE	West Midlands
Zone	5
History
1838 1960	Opened Rebuilt
National Rail - UK railway stations
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
* Annual passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Coventry from Office of Rail Regulation statistics. Please note: methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Coventry railway station is situated about 250 yards to the south of junction 6 of the inner ring road in the city of Coventry, West Midlands, England.^[1] The rail track is on the Birmingham loop of the West Coast Main Line (WCML), and is at the centre of a junction where the lines to Nuneaton, and to Leamington converge.

Coventry station has regular services between Birmingham New Street and London Euston on the WCML. And also has long distance CrossCountry services to Manchester to the north, and Oxford and Reading and the south coast to the south. There are also local services to Nuneaton and Northampton.

The station has the PlusBus scheme where train and bus tickets can be bought together at a saving.

History

The original station was built in 1838 as part of the London and Birmingham Railway and could be entered from Warwick road, where two flights of stairs took the passengers down to the platform. Within two years it had been replaced, with a new larger station, a few hundred feet nearer to Rugby, this time, accessed via Eaton road. In the late 19th century the Coventry Tram network extended to the station at Eaton Road. The original station remained in service as the station masters offices, until the station was redeveloped in the early 1960s.

The new 1840 station saw a significant number of modifications and extensions over the years, there was an engine shed, water column and turntable, in its later days an inclined walkway from the platform directly to Warwick road for summer excursions, and a parcel depot formed from old carriages. However, The station was constrained by bridges at either end of the station, Stoney Road Bridge to the south, and Warwick road bridge to the north. The bridges effectively restricted the station to two lines, and prevented the platforms from being extended.

In the early 1960s both bridges were widened, and the old station finally demolished and re-built, this time with room for four platforms instead of two. At the time it was demolished in 1960, some parts of the old station were 120 years old. The present station with its four platforms was completed in 1962 and is now a Grade-II listed building.

The new station featured a new parcel depot, used to manage the large number of mail order catalogue packages coming in to Coventry at the time. The depot was serviced by its own platforms from the rugby end. The Depot has now been replaced by a multi-story car park, although some of the platforms and an electrification gantry remain.

Coventry Station is of note in that it once had automatic ticket barriers but Virgin Trains removed them in 2008.

Services

Coventry signalbox in the early 2000s.

A Central Trains Class 156 DMU at Coventry in 2000. The direct service from Coventry to Skegness ended in 2004.

The station is served by CrossCountry, London Midland and Virgin Trains. In the past, it has also been served by Silverlink, but these routes were transferred to Central Trains in 2004. Central Trains and Virgin Cross Country services were respectively transferred to London Midland and CrossCountry in 2007.

There is a small yard at the Birmingham end of the station, in front of the shopping centre that was once part of Coventry's yard, that is used by London Midland for the stabling of electric traction units, no heavy work is carried out at Coventry as that is done at either Soho in Smethwick (for Class 323 EMU) or Northampton Siemens depot (Class 350 & 321 EMU's), previously the 321 EMU's were maintained at Bletchley TMD in Buckinghamshire. All none electric units are stabled at Tyeseley in Birmingham where they are cleaned, maintained and refueled. These units are only used on the local service to Nuneaton.

Until 2004, Coventry had a direct service to Nottingham via Leicester, but this was discontinued because Network Rail took away the ability for trains coming from Coventry to cross to the Leicester line at Nuneaton. Before Central Trains was broken up, there was talk of restoring the service, but since services are on the line to Leicester are now part of Cross Country, it is unlikely.

Also, when Cross Country was handed over to Arriva, the route via Wigan and Preston was excluded from the franchise and was included in the West Coast Franchise. Subsequently, CrossCountry now uses the route via York to get to Scotland so Coventry lost its few direct trains to places in the North West besides Manchester.

The Current day time service:

• 4 trains per hour to London Euston – three express and one semi-fast via Northampton
• 7 trains per hour to Birmingham New Street – some trains continue onwards
• 2 trains per hour to Northampton (one continues onto London Euston)
• 1 Cross Country train per hour to the North (Manchester Piccadilly) via Birmingham New Street
• 1 train per hour to Nuneaton
• 1 train per hour to Leamington Spa and the south, usually Bournemouth (Cross Country)

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Leamington Spa		CrossCountry Bournemouth-Manchester via Coventry to Leamington line		Birmingham International
		CrossCountry Bournemouth-Edinburgh Sundays Only
		CrossCountry Didcot-Manchester Sundays Only
Rugby		London Midland Rugby - Birmingham - Stafford		Canley
Terminus		London Midland Coventry to Nuneaton Line		Bedworth
Rugby or Milton Keynes Central or Watford Junction		Virgin Trains West Coast Main Line		Birmingham International

References

1. ^ AA Street by Street. Coventry Rugby (2nd edition (May 2003) ed.). AA Publishing. p. 2. ISBN 0749539739. 

• An Historical Survey Of Selected LMS Stations Vol. One Dr R Preston and R Powell Hendry. Oxford Pub. Co. (1982, Reprinted in 2001) ISBN 0860931684

External links

• Coventry Old Station at warwickshirerailways.com
• Train times and station information for Coventry railway station from National Rail
• Photographs of Coventry station at warwickshirerailways.com