Kettering railway station

Kettering railway station serves the town of Kettering in Northamptonshire, England. It lies south-west of the town centre, on the Midland Main Line, 115km north of London St. Pancras.HistoryThe station was opened in May 1857 by the Midland Railway on a line linking the Midland to the Great Northern Railway at Hitchin. Later, the Midland gained its own London terminus at St Pancras railway station. In 1857 the leather trade being in recession, over half its population was on poor relief. The railway enabled the town to sell its products over a much wider area and restored it to prosperity. The original station with a single platform was designed by Charles Henry Driver, with particularly fine "pierced grill" cast ironwork on the platform.From 1866 the station was also the terminus of the Midland cross country branch line from via St Ives & Huntingdon until closure in June 1959.In 1879 the line was quadrupled. New fast lines were built to the west of the original slow lines. Three new platforms were built: numbers 2 and 3 on an island between the fast and slow lines, and number 4, to the west of the fast lines. The Midland Railway commissioned single-storey weather-boarded waiting rooms and canopies with cast-iron columns and spandrels for the island platforms 2 and 3 and platform 4 to match those designed in 1857 by Charles Henry Driver.