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Until the railway came to March the river had been the main means of transporting goods in and out of the town. By 1847 this method was in decline as the new railway network offered a much quicker and more reliable service.

The Eastern Counties Railway was incorporated in 1836 and authorised to construct a railway between London, Norwich and Yarmouth via Ipswich. At the same time the Northern and Eastern started to build a line from London to Cambridge. Due to economic depression, little progress was made initially and the lines only reached Colchester and Bishop’s Stortford by 1843. Then recovery followed the depression and railways expanded quickly in East Anglia with the Eastern Counties Railway gradually absorbing the smaller companies.

The first Act, approved by Parliament, for a railway across the Fens required it to be built by the Eastern Counties Railway from Ely to Peterborough via Doddington. George Hudson, however, Chairman of the Eastern Counties Railway asked for a deviation northwards via March. Here it was intended to have a junction for a line to Yorkshire so that Hudson could unify his railway interests. The deviation was approved but permission for the line to Yorkshire was denied. The Ely - Peterborough line was built in 10 months by the contractor, despite problems with the soft fen soils and opened to goods traffic on 10th December 1846 and to passengers on 14th January 1847. A scheme to build a line from the port of Wisbech to the market town of St. Ives (The Wisbech, St. Ives and Cambridge Junction Railway) was swallowed up by the Eastern Counties Railway during its construction. This line crossed the Ely - Peterborough line at March and opened in two sections in 1847/8. Thus March quickly became a four-way country junction. As traffic developed a small engine shed was built in the fork of the Peterborough and Wisbech lines at the end of the two-platform station.

By 1862, the Eastern Counties Railway had absorbed most of the other railways in East Anglia and adopted the more grandiose name of the Great Eastern Railway. It sought to improve its finances by promoting a line north, initially from March to Spalding via Thorney and Crowland, but this was rejected by Parliament in favour of an alternative route promoted by the Great Eastern Railway’s archrival, the Great Northern. This line, via Murrow and Guyhirne, was built and opened in 1867. It was at this point that sidings began to be laid on Norwood Common, later to be known as Whitemoor. The Great Northern Railway tried to consolidate its position by proposing to extend south from March to join their existing Hitchin to Cambridge route at Shepreth. This would have given them an alternative to their main line route to London, via Peterborough; but it was denied by Parliament. The Great Eastern Railway was undeterred and after immensely expensive and protracted legal battles in 1882 pressured the Great Northern Railway into joint ownership of the lines from Huntingdon via March and Lincoln to Doncaster giving the Great Eastern Railway access to the coal fields of the north.

Thus March came to prominence as a railway town and during the 1880’s a large increase in the town’s population occurred to provide a workforce for the ever-expanding railway. A huge programme of development then took place. A new seven-platform passenger station was opened in 1885 to the west of the original station. The original station was retained, as the Station Master’s house until its demolition more recently. The construction of the new station meant the removal of the earlier engine shed and new facilities for locomotives were built to the north of Norwood Road, alongside the marshalling yards. As part of these reorganisations, the branch line to Wisbech had to be realigned further to the west, the level crossing in Norwood Road was replaced by a new bridge and the West Curve from Whitemoor Junction to March West Junction constructed; a new public goods yard was built to the east of Station Road together with a goods shed.

The railway grouping of 1923 saw both the G.E.R. and the Great Northern Railway absorbed into the new London and North Eastern Railway, which then controlled all the lines at March. The new company embarked on a massive expansion and modernisation of the facilities. A new locomotive running shed was built in Hundred Road with a mechanical coaling plant for the engines. The former engine shed now undertook heavy repairs. Whitemoor Yard was mechanised and enlarged to employ gravity shunting. Firstly a new Up Yard was constructed, using German expertise and equipment, which was opened in 1929. The Down Yard was then reconstructed to a similar standard in 1931. The older Norwood Yard was retained for fruit and other traffic, which required fast transit. This ambitious programme gave a further boost to the town’s growth.

The zenith of railway activity was during the 1939-45 conflict.

As well as the normal railway traffic, an enormous extra quantity of fuel and munitions were carried for the military forces despite declining maintenance. After the war came nationalisation in 1948 and a gradual decline in the traffic that inevitably led to the closure of facilities and routes. The first withdrawal was of local passenger trains on the route to Spalding in 1961. Total closure of the line to St. Ives, of passenger trains to Wisbech and finally total closure of the route to Spalding followed. Whitemoor Yard also gradually contracted. First to go were the trans-shipment sheds, followed by the whole of the Down Yard, with concentration of all traffic into the Up Yard. Closure here was firstly of Hump shunting with all shunting being carried out on the flat. All traffic was concentrated into ‘Speedlink’ freight services. These ceased nationally, at a stroke in 1991 and this was the final nail in the Whitemoor coffin. All that remained were passenger services on the Ely - Peterborough route and a few bulk freight services on the same line with a dedicated freight train to and from Wisbech.

But all was not lost. A new route from the Channel Tunnel to central London was proposed and this meant the relocation of Network Rail's depot at Temple Mills. After a thorough search, Network Rail concluded that the former Whitemoor site, then up for sale, was the only suitable place where a new large supply depot could be built. Plans were put forward to Cambridgeshire County Council in June 2003 and, after lengthy consultations and surveys, the Government in November 2003 approved the plans. The depot was officially opened in May 2004, a truly remarkable achievement and March was once again a railway town."