Cambridge railway station in the context of King's Lynn railway station

The Cambridge line is a railway line in the East of England; it connects the East Coast Main Line at Hitchin to the West Anglia Main Line at Cambridge. The line is owned by Network Rail and is 23 miles 15 chains (23.19 miles, 37.32 km) in length, serving nine stations. Train services are operated by Thameslink and Great Northern.

Originally opened in 1851, the Royston and Hitchin Railway built a route between Hitchin and Shepreth. There, it met the Shepreth Branch Railway, and the two were joined in 1862 to form the modern route. A station at Letchworth was added in 1905 in conjunction with its opening as the world's first garden city. However, the line fell into decline throughout the mid 1900s, and Harston station was closed as part of the Beeching Axe in 1963.

Thameslink is a main line route on the British railway network, running from Bedford, Luton, St Albans City, Peterborough, Welwyn Garden City, London Blackfriars and Cambridge via central London to Sutton, Orpington, Sevenoaks, Rainham, Horsham, Three Bridges, Brighton and East Grinstead. The initial network opened as a through service in 1988 and, as of 2025, currently calls at 135 stations in regular service. The entire route is currently operated by Govia Thameslink Railway. A part of the route, from Bedford to Three Bridges, runs 24 hours a day, except on early Sunday mornings and during maintenance periods.

The Thameslink Programme was a major £7 billion scheme to increase capacity on the central London section by accommodating more frequent and longer trains, and providing additional routes and destinations. The programme was divided into three key phases, with the final Key Output 2 introducing world-first Automatic Train Operation (ATO) technology over European Train Control System (ETCS) Level 2, enabling 24 trains per hour through the core section. The new services began operating in 2018, though the full projected timetable of 24 trains per hour has never been achieved. In 2016, new Class 700 trains started operating on the route and replaced the Class 319, Class 377 and Class 387 trains which were withdrawn and transferred elsewhere.

Hills Road is an arterial road (part of the A1307) in southeast Cambridge, England. It runs between Regent Street at the junction with Lensfield Road and Gonville Place (the A603) to the northwest and a roundabout by the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, continuing as Babraham Road (also part of the A1307) to the southeast.

On the corner with Lensfield Road is Our Lady and the English Martyrs Church. To the west of the road is the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. At this point, near the Cambridge War Memorial, Station Road leads to Cambridge railway station to the east. Near the southeast end to the west, just north of the junction with Long Road, is The Perse School, an independent school. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus is to the southwest of the roundabout at the southeastern end, at the edge of the city and houses Addenbrooke's Hospital. The original hospital was located on the Old Addenbrooke's Site on Trumpington Street in central Cambridge.