Gainsborough Central railway station is one of two railway stations in the town of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England. The station is on the Brigg branch of the Sheffield–Lincoln line. Services are currently operated by Northern Trains. The town's other station is the busier Gainsborough Lea Road. History The station was opened by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) on 2 April 1849. The opening day was a gala occasion, shops were closed and the town was full of visitors. The station, off Spring Gardens, was crowded with onlookers, and at noon the train whistle was heard in the distance. Some hundreds of people saw 'a veritable locomotive on a line of railway at Gainsborough' for the first time. It came over the track by a wooden trestle bridge across the Humble Carr and backed into the station. The directors of the line and the chief engineer were greeted by leading inhabitants and then went in procession to the old coaching inn, the White Hart, for a champagne lunch. The station buildings were designed by architects Weightman and Hadfield. A substantial stone frontage with full-height portico with four attached Roman Ionic columns and triple arcade with moulded round arches. The MS&LR became the Great Central Railway (GCR) on 1 August 1897, which in turn amalgamated with other railways to form the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) at the end of 1922. The LNER inherited two stations in Gainsborough, and to distinguish them, the ex-GCR station was renamed Gainsborough Central in September 1923. The station buildings were demolished in 1975, leaving just the two platforms and a footbridge over the two railway lines. Weekday passenger services (which had been thrice-daily each way between Sheffield and since the early 1980s) were withdrawn by British Rail in October 1993 leaving only three trains in each direction running on Saturdays. In the Strategic Rail Authority's 2002/3 financial year, only five fare-paying passengers (excluding season ticket holders) boarded trains at Gainsborough Central station, and three disembarked, making it the least busy station in Great Britain, alongside Barry Links. The 2004/05 figures suggested 21 passengers used the station that year, putting it slightly above Watford West, a station which closed in 1996. The line through the station was upgraded and refurbished in 2008 by contractors Arup and Carillon to allow it to carry increased levels of freight traffic from the port complex at Immingham to South