Barrow upon Soar railway station

Overview

Barrow-upon-Soar station serves the large village of Barrow upon Soar in Leicestershire, on the Midland Main Line nine miles north of Leicester (Rail Engineer). It is a small, unstaffed station with two platforms, no ticket office and no Sunday service: East Midlands Railway operates stopping trains between Leicester and Nottingham and Lincoln via Loughborough and Newark, Monday to Saturday, while fast services from Leeds and Sheffield to London pass through without stopping (East Midlands Railway; Trainline). The station’s story is one of loss and return — an 1840 Midland Counties Railway station demolished after its 1968 closure, then rebuilt a few hundred metres away in 1994 — and of two bridge disasters, in 2008 and 2016, that put a quiet village halt into national railway history (Rail Engineer; RAIB).

The station stands at Grove Lane, Barrow-upon-Soar, postcode LE12 8US, in the United Kingdom’s England (East Midlands Railway). Its station code is BWS. Passengers buy tickets from a self-service machine, collect pre-purchased tickets, and top up or validate smartcards (East Midlands Railway). There are no toilets, no waiting room, no seated area and no wifi, but there are telephones, an induction loop, tactile paving at the platform edges, and twelve unsheltered cycle stands (East Midlands Railway). Step-free access is partial — Category B, meaning some step-free access to the platform that may be limited to one direction only — and assistance is provided by on-train staff rather than station staff (East Midlands Railway).

From Midland Counties to demolition to rebirth

The first station at Barrow was opened in 1840 by the Midland Counties Railway, and it changed its name twice: from Barrow in 1840 to Barrow-upon-Soar in 1871 and then to Barrow-upon-Soar and Quorn in 1899 (Rail Engineer). It was the only station on the line to retain much of its original Midland Counties Railway architecture — and yet, after its closure in 1968, it was completely demolished (Rail Engineer). A new station, a simple couple of platforms, opened in 1994, a few hundred metres from the original location and accessed down steps from the bridge approach at Grove Lane (Rail Engineer). That bridge consists of two arch spans over four tracks, one arch for the two Fast lines and the other over the two Slow lines (Rail Engineer).

The station sits on a line with a larger unfinished story. The Ivanhoe Line, a 50-kilometre route connecting Burton-upon-Trent with Leicester, was closed to passengers in the 1960s when British Railways chair Richard Beeching axed it, and later won development funding under the government’s 500-million-pound Restoring Your Railway programme (New Civil Engineer). Network Rail’s later plans would reinstate the line only between Burton-upon-Trent and Coalville, via Ashby-de-la-Zouch, with three proposed new stations at Castle Gresley, Ashby and Coalville, and the section to Leicester dropped because of the significant infrastructure investment the freight-used single track would need (New Civil Engineer). If that scheme proceeds, its towns would reconnect to the wider network at Derby or Burton (New Civil Engineer).

Two bridge disasters

On 1 February 2008 the station became the scene of a derailment. Early that morning, at Barrow upon Soar, the 06:13 Nottingham to Norwich train collided with debris from the Barrow Old Station footbridge, which had been knocked down by the raised body of a tipper lorry a short time earlier; the train derailed and continued for 170 metres (RAIB). The footbridge stood about 450 metres north of the station (Barrow upon Soar rail crash). The driver, the guard and one passenger were taken to hospital, the guard and passenger released later that day and the driver early the next morning, while the lorry driver escaped injury (RAIB). The train was a two-car Class 158 unit, 158856, owned by Angel Trains and operated by East Midlands Trains. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch investigated, and following an Office of Rail Regulation investigation Network Rail Infrastructure Limited pleaded guilty at Leicester Crown Court and was fined 80,000 pounds with 32,000 pounds in costs, after the collision at 104 km/h (New Civil Engineer). The injured driver was taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary.

Eight years later the station’s other bridge failed. On 1 August 2016, the southern parapet wall and spandrel of the Down Fast line arch of the Grove Lane bridge collapsed, together with the adjacent wing wall, dropping a significant quantity of debris onto the embankment and Fast Lines below — but rail traffic was stopped in time to prevent a train running into it (Rail Engineer). A depression had appeared in the footway above the Fast line arch shortly before and investigatory works were already under way, so nobody was hurt and rail and road traffic were protected (Rail Engineer). The Slow lines reopened the following day and the Fast lines at restricted speed, after the debris had been collected and removed; pedestrian traffic across the bridge resumed three weeks after the incident (Rail Engineer). The repair also took the opportunity to raise and modify the bridge parapets to comply with electrification requirements, avoiding further works on Grove Lane bridge for Midland Main Line electrification (Rail Engineer). That 2016 collapse is a separate incident from the 2008 footbridge collision (2016 Barrow upon Soar bridge collapse).

Services, facilities and performance

All services at the station are operated by East Midlands Railway. Monday through Saturday, local services run from Leicester to Nottingham and Lincoln via Loughborough and Newark, with no Sunday services at all; fast trains on the Midland Main Line pass by but do not stop, so passengers for high-speed services to London and the North change at Leicester or Loughborough (Trainline). Rail replacement buses pick up and drop off on South Street, outside the Hunting Lodge Hotel towards Quorn and Loughborough, and opposite the hotel towards Sileby; the local taxi operator is ACE ABC on 01509 215500 (East Midlands Railway). There is no left luggage, no baby-changing facilities and no accessible toilets; the station has no ticket gates (East Midlands Railway).

East Midlands Railway says it will keep delivering joint performance plans with Network Rail, with current work aimed at reducing the impact of trespass and suicide and at summer hot-weather readiness to protect fleet and infrastructure reliability (East Midlands Railway). Over the next year it plans performance-improvement actions on timetable reliability, staff availability, infrastructure resilience and control of the railway, and in the longer term it expects to complete the introduction of new Intercity trains and refurbished Regional and Connect fleets, alongside better condition monitoring for track and trains to predict and prevent failures (East Midlands Railway).

Measure, 23 August to 19 September 2026	East Midlands Railway at this station	East Midlands Route
Trains on time (within 3 minutes)	85.2%	72.8%
Trains cancelled	8%	5%

Source: East Midlands Railway station page. These are a dated snapshot, not a long-run average.

Frequently asked questions

Where is Barrow-upon-Soar station? At Grove Lane, Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire, LE12 8US, on the Midland Main Line nine miles north of Leicester, between Leicester and Loughborough. Its station code is BWS. Rail replacement buses use South Street, outside the Hunting Lodge Hotel, and passengers for high-speed services change at Leicester or Loughborough.

Who runs trains at Barrow-upon-Soar? East Midlands Railway. It operates stopping services between Leicester and Nottingham and Lincoln via Loughborough and Newark, Monday to Saturday. Fast services from Leeds and Sheffield to London pass through without stopping, so passengers change at Leicester or Loughborough. All services at the station are stopping services on two platforms, with no ticket office.

Is there a Sunday service? No. No Sunday services operate at Barrow-upon-Soar station at all. The station is also unstaffed, with no ticket office; tickets come from a self-service machine, and assistance is provided by on-train staff rather than station staff for passengers who need it.

Is the station step-free? Only partly. East Midlands Railway describes step-free access as partial, Category B, meaning there is some step-free access to the platform that may be limited to one direction only, and passengers are advised to check in advance. The station has tactile paving at the edge of each platform and an induction loop, but no ramp for train access.

What happened at the station in 2008 and 2016? In 2008 a tipper lorry demolished the Barrow Old Station footbridge 450 metres north of the station and the Nottingham to Norwich train derailed; Network Rail was later fined 80,000 pounds. In 2016 part of the Grove Lane road bridge by the station collapsed during maintenance work; nobody was hurt, the railway lines were reopened in stages over the following weeks, and pedestrian access across the bridge resumed after three weeks.

What this profile does not claim

• It does not assert the exact reopening date of 27 May 1994 or that the reopening was phase one of the Ivanhoe Line; neither was verified from a fully-read source, and both are flagged in openItems.
• It does not give passenger usage figures for the station, which no fully-read source provided.
• It does not claim the 15:51 Lincoln-to-Sleaford continuation is current; Trainline still uses the old East Midlands Trains name, so that detail may be stale.
• It does not resolve the differing injury counts for the 2008 crash; it follows the RAIB hospital record, as the crash profile does.
• It does not treat the 2016 Grove Lane bridge collapse as connected to the 2008 footbridge collision; they are separate incidents eight years apart.