Cambridge and St Ives branch line

v t e Cambridge and St Ives branch line
Legend
March and St Ives Railway Ely and St Ives Railway to Huntingdon East St Ives River Great Ouse Swavesey Long Stanton Oakington Histon Chesterton Fen line Cambridge

The Cambridge and St Ives branch (as it is named on New Popular Editions Ordnance Survey maps) was a railway built by the Wisbech, St Ives & Cambridge Junction Railway in the late 1840s. The railway ran from Cambridge in the south, through Fenland countryside to the market town of St Ives; more specifically, the line ran from Chesterton Junction, where it met the present-day Fen line north of the River Cam.

Passenger services along the line managed to survive the Beeching Axe, but with British Rail citing heavy losses the final passenger service ran between St Ives and Cambridge on 5 October 1970. Despite campaigns to reopen the service during the 1970s, the only subsequent rail traffic on the line was a freight service to Chivers in Histon which ran until 1983 and a contract to ferry sand from ARC at Fen Drayton which continued until May 1992.^[1]

The railway now forms the alignment of the northern section of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway: a bus rapid transit scheme.