Spalding railway station serves the town of Spalding, Lincolnshire, England. It lies on the Peterborough–Lincoln line. History Spalding gained its first rail links to Peterborough, Boston and Lincoln in 1848, courtesy of the Great Northern Railway (GNR) who built their main line from London to Doncaster through the town; Spalding railway station opened on 17 October 1848. This route was superseded by the direct line via Grantham within four years, but it remained well used by traffic heading towards Louth and Grimsby over the former East Lincolnshire Railway. The GNR subsequently added a line eastwards to Sutton Bridge via Holbeach (the Norwich & Spalding Railway) in stages between 1858 and 1862, a westward route to Bourne in 1866 and another to the following year in an attempt to thwart the ambitions of the competing Great Eastern Railway (GER). These efforts did not succeed however and the company eventually agreed to work these routes jointly with the Midland Railway (the former pair forming the backbone of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway system) and the GER (March line) by the beginning of the 1870s. The collaboration between GNR and GER also led to the construction of the last route out of the town, the GE&GN Joint line to Sleaford which opened to traffic on 1 August 1882. By the end of the nineteenth century the town had become a major rail crossroads and the station had grown to reflect this, having more than doubled in size from its opening half a century earlier. It would also later become a popular destination in its own right, with the annual Tulip Festival bringing excursion trains into the town from all over the country from the late 1950s onwards. British Railways was formed on 1 January 1948, and Spalding station was renamed Spalding Town on 1 December 1948. The Midland & Great Northern routes into the town were heavily used, particularly in the summer months, well into the 1950s, but they were the first to suffer from the BR economy drive of the time, closing to passengers on 28 February 1959. The East Lincolnshire line to Boston was to suffer a similar fate a decade later, with the last trains to Grimsby and Peterborough running on 3 October 1970. This left the Joint Line as the only surviving route through the town; typically just three trains per day each way between Lincoln and