Image of A steam train on railway tracks
Ben Brooksbank via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0

Cambridge Railway lecture features College archive material

Nineteenth Century plans from the College archives are just some of the never before published images that formed part of an illustrated lecture about the history of Cambridge Railway Station.

The reception, lecture and discussion on the evening of 11 January 2018 launched a new book, Cambridge Station- Its Development and Operation as a Rail Centre, written by Rob Shorland-Ball - formerly Deputy Head and Project Development Director at the National Railway Museum,York and a British Rail employee at Cambridge Station in the 1950s and 1960s.

Much of the land developed by Eastern County Railways for development in and around Cambridge was previously owned by Jesus College, and the plans included in the book were retrieved from our archives during Rob's research.

Both the book and lecture explored the opening of the station in 1845; the four principal railway companies which worked to and from the station in a 'tangle of mutual inconvenience’; the extensive goods traffic and the way the Station operated from early beginnings to what Abellio Greater Anglia and Network Rail have achieved today. 

The book tells the stories of the people involved in the station over the years, drawing on the author's exprience of working at the station and his knowledge of Cambridge and East Anglia.