Leicester Central station

On a summer’s day in the late 1950s, I made my only previous visit to Leicester Central station. We were on holiday with my uncle and aunt in rural Leicestershire when my grandmother was taken ill at her home in Winchester, and Mum decided she should go down to see her mother straight away. We piled into Uncle Bill’s car and arrived at Leicester Central in time to wave Mum off on a train bound for the south coast. I have remembered the green Southern Region carriages from that train ever since. I only wish I’d taken more notice of the locomotive.

Some 65 years later, I wandered up to Leicester Central station’s surviving buildings again yesterday. The porte cochere is preserved, as is the booking hall and the parcels office, all recently renovated and now occupied by a bowling alley, in part, as the redevelopment of the waterside area of the city takes pace. Above the main entrance that I must have used at the time, there is a tastefully added Leicester Central sign, to match the original and preserved parcels office adornment nearby.

The former extensive platform space is now a large car park and partly occupied by business units. You drive up a ramp to reach the former platform level, as access from the main booking hall to trains was gained from below track level by way of an underpass below the up lines and then stairs or lifts up to the substantial island platform, in typical GCR style. Looking at maps on our return, I noticed that we had parked up where the turntable used to be. Flying Scotsman was shedded here for a time in the early 1950s, and so must have been quite familiar with this particular location.