Gare d'Ipswich

Ipswich railway station is on the Great Eastern Main Line in the East of England, serving the town of Ipswich, Suffolk. It is down the line from London Liverpool Street and, on the main line, it is situated between to the south and to the north. Ipswich is also the terminus of the East Suffolk Line to , a branch line to and a branch line to , Cambridgeshire. Its three-letter station code is IPS. The station is operated by Greater Anglia, which also operates all trains serving it, as part of the East Anglia franchise. Transport in Ipswich The Eastern Union Railway (EUR) opened its first terminus in Ipswich, called , in 1846 on Station Road at the other end of the current tunnel, close to the old quay for the steamboats and the aptly named Steamboat Tavern. The Ipswich Steam Navigation Company had been formed in 1824/25 during a period of "steamship mania" and briefly offered services from the quay between Ipswich and London calling at . The current station is just to the north of Stoke tunnel, which was constructed by the Ipswich & Bury Railway as part of the Ipswich to Ely Line opening as far as Bury St. Edmunds in late 1846. The station was re-sited to its present location in 1860. Some sources suggest that the main building was thought to be principally the work of Peter Bruff, who had certainly started the structure. Architect Sancton Wood(1816-1886) won a competition to design the new station and it may have been his design. However the architectural series started by Nikolaus Pevsner states: “The present station opened in 1860. By Robert Sinclair, the Eastern Counties Railway’s engineer, although Gordon Biddle suggests the design may have been Peter Bruff’s. Called ‘graceful and pretty’ in the Handbook of 1864. Perhaps it struck people as that when it was new. White and red brick, with round-arched windows, low and spreading. The buildings on the island platform, added in 1883, are much more ornate, with carved keystones, terracotta roundels and ironwork by Matthew T Shaw & Co, Millwall.