Page 20 - Jigsaw March 2021

Glance at the past........................................................................................
All aboard! Eric Franklin with tales of trains and stations...
The first railway station to open in Thrapston was Bridge Street on 2nd June 1845, followed 21 years later by Midland Road Railway Station which opened to goods traffic on 21st February 1866 and to passengers on 1st March the same year. Initially it was named “Thrapstone”, the
“E” being dropped by 1890. By 1925 the suffix “Midland Road” had been added to distinguish it from Bridge Street Station. The first picture is a hand-coloured Edwardian postcard from 1905 showing the station frontage with, in the distance, a blue-liveried Midland Railway Company train on the trestle bridge over the river. The ticket shown was issued by the same Company for a third class journey from London St Pancras to Thrapston via Kettering at a cost of 5s 6d (27.5p) and was used on 12th June 1895.
The second picture (below) shows the station buildings in 1957 with the main
line towards Kettering forking left, the right leading to the goods shed and sidings. Unusually the curved platforms were staggered by about half their length rather than being symmetrical each side of the lines. Thus the barrow crossing at the end of the Raunds direction platform was opposite the centre of the other platform which had the unusual feature of a dip in the centre to allow the barrows to be pushed to the main station buiding. The signal box was sited beyond the station buildings in the direction of Raunds and was photographed after closure during a rail tour of disused lines in 1962.
The track plan (opposite page) dates to just before World War 2 and shows the layout of the station site. The bridge over Midland Road is at the bottom left of the plan. The postcard shown at the beginning of this article shows the top of the track to the station which is on the plan just south of the bridge.
The station closed to passengers on 15th June 1959. The last train ran on Saturday 13th June 1959, its departure being recorded by local man Wally Jacques and made into a record for his family. A shortened version of this can be heard by searching
for “the last train from Thrapston Midland Road Station recording” and looking at the
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