Leamington Spa serves the Warwickshire town of Royal Leamington Spa, it is a stop on the Chiltern Main Line to London Marylebone between Warwick and Banbury. It is also a busy interchange station.
Chiltern 68 013 arrives at Leamington Spa
Information
Type:
National Rail
(Chiltern Main Line)
Station code:
LMS
Opened:
1852
Platforms:
4
The station was opened by the Great Western Railway in 1852 on its Birmingham-Oxford line. It wasn't the town's first station though, the London & North Western Railway opened a station in 1844, this was on the outskirts of the town. The LNWR built a new station right next to the GWR one in the mid-1850s. It was not until 1908 that both railway companies used the same station. Between 1950 and 1968 the station was known as Leamington Spa General [1].
The current station building dates from a rebuilding in the late 1930s [2] and is in the Art Deco style. The platforms are mostly covered by fine original canopies from the 1930s. Leamington Spa has two through platforms and two West facing bays for services to Birmingham Moor Street and Stratford-upon-Avon. There are two avoiding lines for freight services and non-stopping passenger services.
Leamington Spa is a stop on the Chiltern Main Line as well as the terminus of services to Stratford-upon-Avon, local services from Birmingham and for services which come from Coventry via the ex-LNWR line which joins the main line just ahead of the station. The station is used for stabling stock at night on the bay platforms. The station is managed by Chiltern Railways.
A Cross Country Voyager departs
View down the platform
Station frontage
Chiltern 168 005 prepares to depart
Artwork on the underpass underneath the station
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Banbury to Birmingham (Middleton Press, 2004) Fig. 38 [2] Ibid. Fig. 37
