Norwich railway station is the eastern terminus of the Great Eastern Main Line in the East of England, serving the city of Norwich, Norfolk. It is 114 miles 77 chains (185.0 km) down the main line from the western terminus, London Liverpool Street.
It is also the terminus of several secondary lines: the Breckland Line to Cambridge, the Bittern Line to Cromer and Sheringham, and the Wherry Lines to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. East Midlands Trains also operates a service to Liverpool Lime Street.
The station is currently managed by Abellio Greater Anglia, which also operates the majority of the trains that serve the station.
At one time there were three railway stations in Norwich: Norwich Thorpe, which is the current station still known locally as "Thorpe station"; Norwich Victoria, which was once the terminus for certain passenger services from London until 1916 as well as being a goods station until its demolition in the 1970s; and Norwich City, which was the terminus of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway line from Melton Constable, which closed in 1959.
The original station was opened by the Yarmouth & Norwich Railway (Y&NR) which was the earliest railway in Norfolk. Its Act of Parliament of 18 June 1842 authorised the issue of £200,000 worth of shares to build a line between the two towns, via Reedham and the Yare valley. The chairman was George Stephenson and the chief engineer was his son, Robert Stephenson. Construction started in April 1843 and the 20.5 miles were completed in a year, with an inspection and inaugural run on 12 April 1844, a ceremonial opening on 30 April 1844, followed the next day by the beginning of regular passenger services.
The Norwich & Brandon Railway arrived at the station in 1845 and this offered a route to Shoreditch in London via Cambridge and Bishop's Stortford. Four years later the Eastern Union Railway started services to Norwich Victoria and two years later services from Ipswich started serving the better placed station.
By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble, and most were leased to the Eastern Counties Railway, which wished to amalgamate formally but could not obtain government agreement for this until 1862, when the Great Eastern Railway (GER) was formed by the amalgamation. Thus Norwich Thorpe and Norwich Victoria became GER stations in 1862.
With traffic growing it was apparent a new station was required; this was built to the north of the original station in the 1880s and is the structure surviving today. The old terminus then became part of expanded goods facilities.
The new station was built by Messrs Youngs and Son, of Norwich, from designs by Messrs J Wilson and W. N. Ashbee, the company‘s engineer and architect respectively, at the cost of £60,000. It had a circulating area with a high ceiling and the roof was supported by ironwork supplied by contractor Barnard Bishop and Barnard. The roof extended partly down the platforms which were then covered by canopies for part of their length. There were initially five platforms and engine release roads between platforms 2 and 3 and 4 and 5. These allowed the locomotive to be detached from the train without the need for a shunting locomotive (known as a station pilot) having to shunt the carriages out of the station. The attractive station building was built around a central clock tower (the clock was supplied by Dixons and Co of London Street Norwich) with two storey matching wings either side. A portico was built onto the clock-tower section.
On 1 January 1923 the GER amalgamated with several other railways to form the London and North Eastern Railway as a result of the Railways Act 1921 which saw many of the 120 railway companies grouped into four main companies in an effort to stem their losses.
During World War II the station was bombed in June 1940 and April 1942.
The nationalisation of Britain's railways saw the operation of Norwich station pass to British Railways Eastern Region.
Platform 6 was added in 1954 and in 1955 a modern booking hall was built. During the late 1950s steam was phased out from the East Anglian network as diesels took over.
When the station closed briefly for electrification works by the Eastern Region in 1986, Trowse, a disused suburban station, was put back into service as the temporary terminus of the line. It closed again when Norwich re-opened. The signalling was also modernised at this time and the track layout simplified.
Following privatisation of the railways, Railtrack became responsible for infrastructure maintenance in 1994. Following Railtrack's financial problems Network Rail took over operation of the infrastructure in 2002.
The operation of the line was privatised in 1997 when the franchise was awarded to Anglia Railways, which operated it until April 2004 when National Express East Anglia won the replacement franchise, operating under the brand name 'one' until February 2008. From February 2012 Abellio Greater Anglia took over operating the franchise.
Ticket barriers were installed in January 2009.