Its Act of 21 July 1845 authorised capital of £400,000 and it shared many shareholders and directors with the Eastern Union Railway (EUR), who were in the process of building their line from Colchester to Ipswich.

The proposed line was 26.5 miles (42.6 km) long, with intermediate stations at Bramford, Claydon, Needham, Stowmarket, Haughley Road, Elmswell and Thurston.

[2] Building the line was challenging, with problems at Ipswich with tunnel construction and at Stowmarket where the local marsh swallowed up a lot of material with test probes finding the bog was 80 feet deep!

The official opening followed on 7 December 1846, when a special train ran from Shoreditch (later Bishopsgate railway station) to Bury.

[citation needed] In 1948, Bury St Edmunds became part of British Railways Eastern Region.

[citation needed] According to the Official Handbook of Stations the following classes of traffic were being handled at this station in 1956: G (Goods), P (Passenger, Parcels & Miscellaneous), F (Furniture Vans, Carriages, Motor Cars, Portable Engines and Machines on Wheels), L (Livestock), H (Horse Boxes and Prize Cattle Vans) and C (Carriages and Motor Cars by Passenger or Parcels Train); there was a 9-ton crane.

[14] The following services currently call at Bury St Edmunds:[15] Through trains to and from London Liverpool Street via the Great Eastern Mainline were withdrawn at the December 2010 timetable change.

Designed by Sancton Wood, the station was inaugurated formally in November 1847, eleven months after the opening of the Eastern Union Railway's line from Ipswich.

The most noteworthy feature of the station, which is constructed of red brick with stone dressings, is a pair of towers on either side of the tracks at the eastern end of the layout; these were linked originally by an overall roof, removed in 1893.

Interestingly, the tall decorative upper chimneys are also shown as having been removed down to the basic rectangular stacks and conventional pots installed.

The raised smoke hood was removed from the roof later that year, but the remainder survived for some time thereafter - until April 1961 at least (dated photographs).

[18] In the early 1970s, to release land for the new by-pass, the down goods loop was realigned to run adjacent to the down line on the site of the former engine shed.