A new station opened yesterday, possibly the most significant since Crossrail.
It's CAMBRIDGE SOUTH and I have taken far too many photos of it. [42 photos]
(I actually took 255 but managed to narrow it down)
The station's two miles south of Cambridge city centre, a location formerly best reached by bike or guided busway. It serves the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, a cluster of scientific excellence, and also the lucky suburb of Trumpington. It balances out the new station at Cambridge North which opened in 2017, bringing much better connectivity to the city. It's in a really good place network-wise so is served by as many as four different train companies (Greater Anglia, Great Northern, Thameslink and Cross Country). It gets up to 20 trains an hour whereas previously they all sped straight through. It's a few months late because a contractor went bust. And it's also the very first station to be specifically Great-British-Railways-branded, not that I could entirely tell.
What we have here are four platforms - one central island and two either side. They're long because some trains go as far as the south coast, and they're covered at one end and not at the other because it'd be too expensive to do the lot. Architecturally the most interesting thing is that the canopy swooshes up at the northern end, which is both pretty and allows a blanket of solar panels to be placed on the downward slope. A green roof has also been created, a tad anaemic at present but some less stifling weather might boost the station's eco-credentials even further.
The platforms are well lit, repeatedly loudspeakered and heavily surveilled. They have signage using Rail Alphabet 2, the official GBR font, also pushbutton customer interfaces including disruptions and times of next trains. The platforms are spacious enough that even if 50 rail enthusiasts turn up on opening day to make a fuss of being here, everyone can reasonably spread out. And they're liberally scattered with a variety of yellow-edged quadrilaterals, these the ramps that staff bring into play if step-free access is required. The challenge here is the wide variety of different rolling stock stopping here, a consequence of four operators serving the station, hence the choice of ramp has to match whatever's arriving next.
The best place for an overview is the open footbridge at the south end of the station, provided to prevent very long walks if a train suddenly has to arrive on an unscheduled platform. Fromup there you get a fine view of the boxy Biomedical Campus on one side and a large undeveloped meadow on the other, because this is very much the edge of the developed city. Intriguingly the footbridge only links platforms 2 and 3 to platform 4, either for reasons of cost or for some other operational reason involving headroom. Having listened in on a few excitable adolescents talking at their phones, I expect every single YouTube video churned out yesterday will mention the fact that "the footbridge doesn't connect to platform 1".
The station has two entrances, one facing the Biomedical Campus and the other facing a lot of grass, which is less busy. Connecting the two is a covered overbridge with the biggest 'oooh' quotient, required if your train's not departing from the closest platform. Twisty metalstaircases connect top to bottom, also pairs of lifts because just one wouldn't be sufficient to cope with future demand. The stairs are bold orange and wind round beneath a gridlike wooden canopy so are impressively photogenic, from all sorts of angles. They also host what I presume is Cambridge South's main artwork, a long poetic phrase (AND RISE AND FORM AND BOND AND HOLD... and 44 more ANDs) which because it's on the outside of the staircase is only visible on the way into the station and easily missed on the way out.
Great British Railways branding seems to be mostly restricted to pairs of adverts on the sides of stairs and platforms. No ticket office has been provided, only several blue ticket machines, also these dispense bogroll barcodes rather than card because GBR isn't here to bring back the good old days. Demand for caffeinated beverages was met yesterday by a gourmet coffee truck, which may or may not be permanent, but there are also free GBR-branded water dispensers inside the gateline. And if you arrived early enough yesterday they were dishing out attractively designed Cambridge South tote bags and double-arrowed pin badges. I note that the date on the badge was 'June 2026' rather than a specific day because openings only ever get 100% confirmed at the last minute.
That's the station, but what's eminently more interesting is the location it serves. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus is an extraordinary collection of very modern-looking buildings inside which near miracles are carried out daily. The vibrant blue oval is Papworth Hospital, the acclaimed cardiovascular hub whose staff and patients relocated here in 2019. Some of them can be found taking a break outside by a small pond near the helipad. The spikyglass fortress, from above resembling a triangular doughnut, is the global research and development facility for pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Behind all this is Addenbrookes Hospital - equally important but far less attractive - and beyond a mix of building sites, multi-storey car parks and empty plots awaiting a reason for development. It's not yet clear if the slew of buses that feed in to keep 23,000 jobs ticking over will still be needed now the station's open.
The other side of the station is incredibly different, it's all meadow. Cambridge City Council bought these arable fields over a decade ago and have rewilded them, thus you can wander almost freely across 80 acres of grassland (bar the drainage pond that's fenced off as a bird reserve). Amazingly none of this is pencilled in for development, the jagged roofs of Trumpington's new Clay Farm estate stopping dead at the far edge. I'm not sure how attractive it'd be in winter but at midsummer the long grass was alive with colourful flowers and a skylark shot up into the sky to offer season's greetings in warbling song. I explored the other local sights (Byron's Pool, Grantchester Meadows, Jeffrey Archer!) on a visit in 2019, and can confirm that yes it is hugely easier to get here now they've built an excellent new station in the vicinity. Whether you're in Birmingham, Brighton or Broxbourne you now have direct rail services to Cambridge South, and one day you may be glad of that connection.
