Manton railway station

Manton railway station or Manton Junction is a former railway station serving the villages of Manton and Wing in the county of Rutland.

The location of Manton Station, which served the town of Uppingham and the villages around Manton from 1848 to 1967.

Industry at Manton Junction

Opened in 1848 by the Syston and Peterborough Railway, it was situated off the road connecting the two villages and was just over a mile from each, or just over half a mile by the public footpaths that were soon established. It was one of only a handful of stations in the small county of Rutland; only Oakham station is still open.

It was also the railhead for Uppingham, just over three and a half miles away, and remained so for many journeys even after Uppingham gained its own station in the form of the LNWR branch line from Seaton.[2]

In 1879 Manton became a junction when the Kettering to Manton line was opened. Together with the Melton Mowbray to Nottingham line opened at the same time, this provided the Midland Railway with a new main line to Nottingham. Post-World War II, Manton was the sole calling point between Nottingham Midland and Kettering for "The Robin Hood", a named express service which operated from 1959 to 1962 between Nottingham and London St Pancras.[3]

Manton up coal train under British Railways

The station closed in 1966 and the station buildings are now used as a small industrial area.

The Oakham–Kettering line closed to passengers in 1967 but reopened in 2009 with currently two trains in each direction. The line remains important for freight and is occasionally used as a diversionary route for main-line passenger trains.

February 2014: Buildings still there, though difficult to find — dirt track off Wing to Manton road, well south of Manton. General sense of decay, though still has operating signal box. Trains every hour, Peterborough to Leicester and two a day in each direction to/from Corby.