text: The town's decline from the late 17th century was reversed by the arrival of the railways in 1847, mainly by the Great Eastern Railway, later the London and North Eastern Railway, running to Hunstanton, Dereham and Cambridge. The town was also served by the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway (M&GN), with offices at Austin Street and a station at South Lynn (now dismantled), which was also its operational control centre. It relocated to Melton Constable. The M&GN lines across Norfolk closed to passengers in February 1959.
  The town's amenities continued to improve in the 20th century. A museum opened in 1904 and a public library in 1905. The first cinema, the Majestic, officially opened on 23 May 1928. (The year is marked in a stained-glass window on the front of the building.) The town council began a programme of regeneration in the 1930s.
  During the First World War, King's Lynn was one of the UK's first towns to suffer aerial bombing, on the night of 19 January 1915 by a naval Zeppelin, L4 (LZ 27), commanded by Captain Lieutenant Magnus von Platen-Hallermund. Eleven bombs were dropped, both incendiary and high explosive, doing much damage, killing two people in Bentinck Street and injuring several more. When the Second World War began in 1939, it was assumed that King's Lynn would be safe from bombing and many evacuees were sent from London, but the town suffered several raids.