Trains At York, ECML, 20/05/23

York railway station is on the East Coast Main Line serving the city of York, North Yorkshire, England. It is 188 miles 40 chains (303.4 km) north of London King's Cross and on the main line it is situated between Doncaster to the south and Thirsk to the north. As of June 2018, the station is operated by London North Eastern Railway.

York station is a key junction approximately halfway between London and Edinburgh. It is approximately five miles (eight kilometres) north of the point where the Cross Country and TransPennine Express routes via Leeds join the main line, connecting Scotland and the North East, North West, Midlands and southern England. The junction was historically a major site for rolling stock manufacture, maintenance and repair.

In Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations by Simon Jenkins, the station was one of only ten to be awarded five stars.

The first York railway station was a temporary wooden building on Queen Street outside the walls of the city, opened in 1839 by the York and North Midland Railway. It was succeeded in 1841, inside the walls, by what is now York old railway station. In due course, the requirement that through trains between London and Newcastle needed to reverse out of the old York station to continue their journey necessitated the construction of a new through station outside the walls.

The present station, designed by the North Eastern Railway architects Thomas Prosser and William Peachey and built by Lucas Brothers, opened on 25 June 1877. It had 13 platforms and was at that time the largest in the world. As part of the new station project, the Royal Station Hotel (now The Principal York), designed by Peachey, opened in 1878.

The track layout through and around the station was remodelled again in 1988 as part of the resignalling scheme that was carried out prior to the electrification of the ECML shortly afterwards by British Rail. This resulted in several bay platforms (mainly on the eastern side) being taken out of service and the track to them removed. Consequently, the number of platforms was reduced from 15 to 11. At the same time a new signalling centre (York IECC) was commissioned on the western side of the station to control the new layout and also take over the function of several other signal boxes on the main line. The IECC here now supervises the main line from Temple Hirst (near Doncaster) through to Northallerton, along with sections of the various routes branching from it. It has also (since 2001–2) taken over responsibility for the control area of the former power box at Leeds and thus signals trains as far away as Gargrave and Morley.

In 2006–7, to improve facilities for bus, taxi and car users as well as pedestrians and cyclists, the approaches to the station were reorganised. The former motive power depot and goods station now house the National Railway Museum.

The station was renovated in 2009. Platform 9 has been reconstructed and extensive lighting alterations were put in place. New automated ticket gates (similar to those in Leeds) were planned, but the City of York Council wished to avoid spoiling the historic nature of the station. The then operator National Express East Coast planned to appeal the decision but the plans were scrapped altogether upon handover to East Coast.

The southern side of the station has been given new track and signalling systems. An additional line and new junction was completed in early 2011. This work has helped take away one of the bottlenecks on the East Coast Main Line.

Duration of the video: 12:35 - 14:02

We’ll be seeing services by London North Eastern Railway, Grand Central, Cross Country, Northern, TransPennine Express, Lumo and hopefully some freight as well in the duration of the time that was spent in this video.

Joining me was Jack Allen Trainspotter please like and subscribe to his channel as he does amazing content on YouTube.

I hope you enjoy this video if you did smash that like button and don’t forget to subscribe for more upcoming content that’ll be featured on the channel and feel free to leave any comments or recommendations of stations you want me to do in the comments below as I’ll try get back to them as soon as possible.

I really enjoyed my time that was spent at York managed to get a good amount of good variety that was spent in a few hours and was a good station to visit and was another station I haven’t visited before but I definitely recommend revisiting the station again at some point.

My next station will be Newark Northgate which is a few stops up the line from York and I haven’t visited there before but I’m sure when I visit that station it’ll be good to visit so until then thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.