providing a bus service to Southwold from 18 July 1904 to January 1913 and also one to Oulton Broad. The increased naval activity brought on by the First World War saw the number of passengers using Lowestoft Central via the Norfolk & Suffolk double from a pre-war average of 25,000 per year to a near-record of 54,506 in 1918. The record was reached in 1919 when 63,859 used the station. In Summer 1924, a long-distance restaurant car express ran from Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield to Lowestoft and Yarmouth, while an all-year round service began operating to and from York with portions for Lowestoft and Yarmouth dividing at Reedham. The journey to York took just over six hours, while Liverpool was reached in seven hours. A restaurant car was added to the York express by the early 1930s and the service remained in the timetable until the mid 1960s, although in its later years a buffet car was used instead. The Holiday Camps Express ran via Lowestoft to serve the holiday camps along the coast from 1934 to 1939 and then after the war until 1958. Another express, The Easterling, was introduced in June 1950 to run non-stop between Liverpool Street and Beccles where a portion would be detached for Lowestoft. Goods traffic had been constant for many years. The chief materials brought into Lowestoft included coal (from Leicester and Melton Mowbray), bricks (to Lowestoft North), pipes, glass, sheet metal plates, flour, beer, grain and wheel-rims to be exported to the Netherlands. Goods sent out from Lowestoft included canned foods, wood cases and fish to London and Bury St. Edmunds. Between 1899 and 1914, a travelling post office left the station at 2000 each evening, reaching Ipswich at 2340. In 1914, a sleeper depot was opened on a reclaimed mud bank in Lake Lothing. It grew to cover and had a capacity of 450,000 sleepers as well as a wharf enabling ships to unload directly. Following the closure of Melton Constable Works in 1936, the depot became a centre for the construction of many items such as fenceposts and building parts, which were sent all over the LNER and Eastern Region. The depot, which had its own narrow gauge railway, incorporated a pre-cast sleeper depot which supplied over half of the Eastern Region with two or three special trains leaving it each week. In an average year, about 328,000 sleepers were