Market Harborough station before the line is straightened

The project has been slipping ever since the contractors Carillion went under, but it is likely that the new car park at Market Harborough station will open next month and the old one on the other side of the tracks will close.

Then work on straightening the S-bend those tracks take through the station will begin. This will enable the line speed to be increased.

When the work is complete, the train in the first photograph below will continue straight towards the camera rather than taking the curve you see there now.

I was at the station today and took some pictures of the way it has been for the last 40 years. The track that will be used on the new alignment through and beyond the old car park is already stacked ready for use.

The platform face where trains used to call on the way to Rugby or Northampton is still in evidence, and there may even be the remains of the bay platform that was squeezed in beside the station house to serve those LNWR lines.

A mile or more north of the station the Midland main line climbs over a flyover that was put in to avoid crossing the vanished LNWR lines (going north to Peterborough or Melton Mowbray) on the level.

There has been talk over the years of taking that flyover out to increase speeds through Harborough still further, but as this discussion on Rail UK suggests, that does not form part of the current programme of work.