Ashwell & Morden railway station is a wayside

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...

, England. Close to the border with the county of

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

, it is in the

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

Odsey Odsey is a hamlet in Cambridgeshire close to the border with Hertfordshire and near the town of Baldock. It contains a hotel and has a main-line railway station ( Ashwell and Morden) which services the three closest villages: Ashwell, Steeple ...

, slightly north of the

Icknield Way The Icknield Way is an ancient trackway in southern and eastern England that runs from Norfolk to Wiltshire. It follows the chalk escarpment that includes the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills. Background It is generally said to be, within ...

, a

Roman Road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

that is now the

A505 The A505 is an A-class road in England. It follows part of the route of the Icknield Way and the corresponding Icknield Way Path and runs from Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire to the A11 Abington Interchange North in Cambridgeshire. Route ...

. It is down the line from . Train services are currently operated by

Thameslink Thameslink is a 24-hour main-line route in the British railway system, running from , , , and via central London to Sutton, , , Rainham, , , , and . The network opened as a through service in 1988, with severe overcrowding by 1998, carrying m ...

. The villages it serves, as well as Odsey, are

Ashwell Ashwell may refer to: Places *Ashwell, Devon *Ashwell, Hertfordshire *Ashwell, Rutland *Ashwell, Somerset *Ashwell, Queensland, a suburb of Ipswich, in Australia People *Gilbert Ashwell (1916–2014) *Lena Ashwell (1872–1957) *Richard Ashwel ...

, Guilden Morden and

Steeple Morden Steeple Morden is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, about south west of Cambridge and west of Royston, Hertfordshire, Royston. It is part of the South Cambridgeshire local government non-metropoli ...

, although it is located a couple of miles from each of them and linked to them only by minor roads.

History

Opened as Ashwell station by the

Royston and Hitchin Railway The Royston and Hitchin Railway was an English railway company; it built a line from the Great Northern Railway at Hitchin to Shepreth. A Shepreth branch line was built by the Eastern Counties Railway from Shelford Junction (later called Shepr ...

(R&HR) on 21 October 1850, the R&HR was later absorbed by the Great Northern Railway (GNR). The name was changed to Ashwell and Morden on 1 April 1920 three years before the GNR amalgamated with several other railways to form the

London and North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

during the

Grouping Grouping may refer to: * Muenchian grouping * Principles of grouping * Railways Act 1921, also known as Grouping Act, a reorganisation of the British railway system * Grouping (firearms), the pattern of multiple shots from a sidearm See also ...

of 1923. The station then passed on to the

Eastern Region of British Railways The Eastern Region was a region of British Railways from 1948, whose operating area could be identified from the dark blue signs and colour schemes that adorned its station and other railway buildings. Together with the North Eastern Region ( ...

nationalisation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

in 1948. When Sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s, the station was served by Network SouthEast until the

Privatisation of British Rail The privatisation of British Rail was the process by which ownership and operation of the railways of Great Britain passed from government control into private hands. Begun in 1994, it had been completed by 1997. The deregulation of the industr ...

ways.

Services

All services at Ashwell & Morden are operated by

using

EMUs Emus may refer to: * Emu The emu () (''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is the second-tallest living bird after its ratite relative the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird and the only extant member of the g ...

. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: * 2 tph to (stopping) * 1 tph to via and (semi-fast) * 3 tph to (1 of these runs non-stop from and 2 call at all stations) On weekends, one of the hourly services between London and Cambridge terminates at Royston.

References

External links

Railway stations in Cambridgeshire DfT Category E stations Former Great Northern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1850 Railway stations served by Govia Thameslink Railway {{DEFAULTSORT:Ashwell and Morden railway station