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The Midland Main Line is a main railway line in the United Kingdom and is part of the British railway system.
The line links London ( St Pancras) to Sheffield ( Midland Station) in northern England, but also links other important population centres including Luton, Bedford, Wellingborough, Kettering, Market Harborough, Leicester ( London Road), Loughboroughcarillon Loughborough (pronounced 'luffbura' or 'luffbruh') is a town in Leicestershire, England. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. In 1995 the population of the town was estimated at 55,300, and it is the administrative centre for the Charnw, Long EatonLong Eaton is a town in Derbyshire, England, effectively a suburb of Nottingham. The town grew around the lace-making and railway wagon industries in the nineteenth century (the town lying on the London to Nottingham railway line). A notable building in t, DerbyThis article is about the city of Derby in England. For other meanings, see Derby (disambiguation Derby (pronounced 'Darby') is a city in the East Midlands of England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent and is surrounded by the county of Derbyshire, BeestonBeeston is a town in the county of Nottinghamshire, England, It lies within the Borough of Broxtowe, which is between the border with Derbyshire and with the unitary authority of City of Nottingham. Prior to 1974 Beeston was paired with the town of Staple, NottinghamThis article is about the English city. For others, see Nottingham (disambiguation). Nottingham is a city located in the East Midlands of England. Nottingham lies on the River Trent, which flows from Stoke-on-Trent to the Humber the only English river to and ChesterfieldChesterfield is the name of a town in Derbyshire, England It is also a placename in the United States of America: Chesterfield, Idaho Chesterfield, Massachusetts Chesterfield, Michigan Chesterfield, Missouri Chesterfield, New Hampshire Chesterfield, New Y. The line is electrified between London and Bedford. There are plans to build a station on the line to service East Midlands Airport.
Towards the London end the lines are also used for Thameslinkclass 319 dual voltage Unit, East Croydon railway station, April 2004 Thameslink is a fifty-station franchise in the British railway system running 225 km north to south across London from Bedford to Brighton through the Snow Hill tunnel. It is a signific services.
The express services on the line are operated by a company called Midland Mainline.
The Midland Main line was built in stages between the 1830s and the 1860s. The first part of the line was built by the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway and its subsidiary the Stonebridge Railway from Hampton-in-Arden, Warwickshire, on the London and Birmingham Railway, to Derby. This section opened on 12th August, 1839. This was followed on 1st July, 1840, by the North Midland Railway which ran from Derby to Leeds Hunslet Lane Station via Chesterfield, Swinton , Rotherham Masborough Station (from where the Sheffield and Rotherham Railway ran a branch to Sheffield Wicker Station), and Normanton. This avoided Sheffield, Barnsley, and Wakefield in order to reduce gradients.
On the same day in 1840, the Midland Counties Railway, which ran from Derby to Leicester, was extended from Leicester (its previous Campbell Street Station being replaced by the current London Road Station ) to a temporary station on the northern outskirts of Rugby. A few months later, the Rugby viaduct was finished and the Midland Counties Railway reached the London and Birmingham's Rugby Station. This cut 11 miles off the former route via Hampton-in-Arden. Resultantly, the Stonebridge Railway lost all importance, was soon singled, and closed in 1917 as a wartime economy, thus becoming the first main line in Britain to close. Its parent company, the Birmingham and Derby Junction, survived, reached Birmingham Lawley Street Station in 1842, and is now part of the Cross-Country InterCity route from Birmingham to the North-East.
When these three companies merged to form the Midland Railway on 10th May 1844, the Midland did not have its own route to London, and instead, relied upon a junction at Rugby with the London and Birmingham's line (the London and Birmingham became part of the London and North Western Railway on 1st January, 1846) to London Euston for passage to the capital.
By the 1850s the junction at Rugby had become severely congested, and so the Midland Railway constructed a route from Leicester to Hitchin on the Great Northern Railway via Bedford. The route of the line avoids Northampton, a major town south of Leicester, instead going via Kettering and Wellingborough in the east of Northamptonshire. This line met with similar problems as the former alignment had at Rugby, so in 1868 a line was opened from Bedford via Luton to London St Pancras.
The final stretch of what is considered to be the modern Midland Main Line was a short cut-off from Chesterfield to Sheffield, which opened in 1870.