Railway in 1848, which provided a Friday service of cheap trains to London from summer 1859, with Lowestoft coaches being collected at by expresses from Yarmouth. Growth The Port of Lowestoft expanded rapidly to cover an area of in less than a century, which included over of quay dealing in commodities and nearly of quay dealing with fish traffic. This resulted in track and signal alterations between Lowestoft and Coke Ovens Junction in 1885 which were carried out by the Great Eastern Railway, which had taken over the Eastern Counties Railway in 1862. The two single lines from the junction were turned into double track, and an extra (third) platform was added at the station. Two new signalboxes were provided: one at Coke Ovens and the other on the north side of Lowestoft station. Engine sheds and a turntable were also provided. The Great Eastern introduced the first direct services to and from London in 1863, with services leaving Bishopsgate railway station at 10.00am and taking 3¼ hours to complete the journey. On 1 June 1872, a new curve between Marsh Junction on the Yarmouth to Beccles Line and Swing Bridge Junction on the Yarmouth side of Haddiscoe High Level railway station enabled direct services between Lowestoft and via . The 1883 timetable shows eight stopping trains each way between Ipswich, Lowestoft and Yarmouth, with two or three services a day from London. A Mondays only service ran from Liverpool Street with stops at Ipswich, and Beccles. The first non-stop express between London and Lowestoft ran in summer 1900 and by 1904 non-stop runs were provided on a regular basis during the summer period. The traditional access to London was however by shuttle train connection out of the Yarmouth services at Beccles or by portions split and worked forward from there. Nine or ten passenger services to Norwich operated on weekdays and four on Sundays in 1905, the frequency increasing to 12 each way on weekdays by 1921. Holiday traffic to Lowestoft prospered, particularly after 13 July 1898 when the Norfolk and Suffolk Joint Committee opened a new line from and Yarmouth South Town via , and to Lowestoft, where a second station serving the town, named , was opened. The opening of a second station in the town resulted in the main station being renamed Lowestoft Central in 1903. The Great Eastern sought to foster the holiday traffic by