Disused railway lines and closed stations in Leicestershire

200 miles of disused railway
85 closed stations
11 stations open today
47 named lost lines

Leicestershire has 200 miles of disused railway and 85 closed stations, against 11 stations still open today. More stations have closed here than remain: 7.7 lost for every one still served. The longest lost line is the Great Central Railway, with 18 miles of its route inside Leicestershire.

See Leicestershire’s lost railways on the map

The map opens on the county with the disused lines and closed stations drawn over today’s network. Tap any closed station for its history, or any grey line for its name.

What is left of it

The 200 miles of lost railway in Leicestershire break down as 163 miles with the track lifted and the trackbed still traceable, 30 miles built over or ploughed out, with little or no trace left, 4.0 miles dismantled and 3.1 miles with track still in place but no trains. These are OpenStreetMap’s own distinctions, made by the people who surveyed each stretch, so a line can appear under more than one state along its length.

Lost railway lines in Leicestershire

47 named lines with disused track in the county, longest stretch first. The mileage is the part inside Leicestershire; a line crossing the border is counted on both sides.

Line	Miles in county
Great Central Railway	18
Welham Junction to Melton Junction Line	17
Melton to Bottesford Branch	14
Rugby to Wigston Junction (Leicester) Line	11
Marefield to Leicester Line	9.1
Rugby and Stamford Railway	9.1
Ashby-de-la-Zouch to Chellaston East Junction	8.3
Charnwood Forest Line	8.3
Moira West Junction to Shackerstone	6.1
Leicester & Swannington	5.8
Rugby to Stamford Line	5.5
Holwell Branch	5.5
Shackerstone to Coalville Line	5.4
Saxby to Bourne Line	5.3
Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway	4.1
Waltham-on-the-Wolds Branch	3.8
Medbourne Branch	3.3
Eaton Branch	3.2
Stoke Golding to Hinckley Line	3.1
Cliffe Hill Mineral Railway	2.3
Enderby Warren Quarry Branch	2.3
Sproxton Branch	2.3
Coleorton Railway	2.0
Ibstock Brick Works Railway	1.7
Swannington Incline	1.7
Peldar Tor Quarry	1.6
LNWR GNR Joint Railway	1.6
Syston and Peterborough Railway	1.4
Groby Old Quarry	1.2
Nailstone Colliery Railway	1.2
St Pancras to Chesterfield Line	1.1
Bingham Branch	1.1
Northampton and Market Harborough Line	1.1
Knighton Junction Swannington and Leicester Junction Line	0.9
The Old Mineral Line	0.9
Marylebone to Claydon L&NE Junction	0.8
Coleorton Colliery Line	0.7
Ticknall Tramway	0.6
Bottesford North Curve	0.5
Coalfields Farm Colliery to Coalville Junction Branch	0.5

And 7 shorter stretches: Bottesford to Newark Line, Moira East Junction to South Junction Curve, Lounge Coal Preparation and Disposal Point, Marefield South Junction to West Junction Curve, Slathern Ironstone Sidings, Bottesford East Curve and Breedon & Cloud Hill Lime Works Siding.

Closed railway stations in Leicestershire

All 85 closed and former stations in Leicestershire, A to Z. Each name opens the map on the station; the Wikipedia link, where there is one, has its history.

Stations still open in Leicestershire

11 stations in Leicestershire still have a train service. The busiest are Leicester (5.5 million a year), Loughborough (1.4 million a year), Market Harborough (943,468 a year), Hinckley (377,764 a year) and Narborough (293,674 a year). Every one has its own page, with the stations you can reach from it directly and how often the trains run: see the A to Z of stations.

Lost railways nearby

Rutland, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Lincolnshire.

About these figures

The disused lines are the stretches OpenStreetMap records as disused, abandoned, razed or dismantled railway, measured segment by segment and given to the county each segment lies in. The closed stations are Wikidata’s record of British railway stations no longer in service, kept where they are not within a few hundred metres of a station still open. County boundaries are today’s ceremonial counties, with unitary authorities folded into the county they sit in, from the Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0; contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2024). Historic county lines were different, and a closed station a mile over the border is on the neighbouring page.

Every county · About the disused lines layer · About the closed stations