Chelmsford railway station is on the

Great Eastern Main Line The Great Eastern Main Line (GEML, sometimes referred to as the East Anglia Main Line) is a major railway line on the British railway system which connects Liverpool Street station in central London with destinations in east London and t ...

in the

East of England The East of England is one of the nine official regions of England. This region was created in 1994 and was adopted for statistics purposes from 1999. It includes the ceremonial counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire ...

, serving the city of

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...

, Essex. It is down the line from

London Liverpool Street Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, in the ward of Bishopsgate Without. It is the t ...

and is situated between to the west and to the east. Its three-letter station code is CHM. The station is currently operated by Greater Anglia, who also operate all trains serving it, as part of the

East Anglia franchise The East Anglia franchise is a railway franchise for passenger trains on the Great Eastern Main Line and West Anglia Main Lines in England. It commenced operating in April 2004 when the Anglia and Great Eastern franchises, together with the W ...

. Westbound trains terminate at Liverpool Street and eastbound trains run to a number of destinations including , , , and .

History

Chelmsford station entrance, geograph-3302574-by-Ben-Brooksbank

When the

Eastern Counties Railway The Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) was an English Rail transport, railway company incorporated in 1836 intended to link London with Ipswich via Colchester, and then extend to Norwich and Great Yarmouth, Yarmouth. Construction began in 1837 on t ...

(ECR) opened the line between Brentwood and

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

in 1843, the geography of Chelmsford meant that an 18-arch viaduct had to be built across what is now the city's Central Park. The first Chelmsford station was built slightly to the north of its current site. A three-storey building on today's site was constructed in 1885 by the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

(GER), into which the ECR had been merged. The present station building dates from a rebuild in 1985 and a further rebuild, completed in 2016, which saw the main concourse and ticket office rebuilt and a new staircase added to serve the London-bound platform, to replace the original flying staircases installed as part of the 1985 rebuild. Since the railway is elevated on a

viaduct A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide v ...

, the platforms are above street-level. On 2 March 1907, there was a collision between an up passenger express and a wagon left on the running line during shunting operations. There were no injuries and although the wagon was destroyed the locomotive stayed on the tracks, suffering minor damage. In 1923, 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 ...

took over operation of Chelmsford station, and following

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 ...

of the railways in 1948 Chelmsford station came under the management of British Railways Eastern Region. Upon railway sectorisation in the 1980s, the station and its operations came under the

Network SouthEast Network SouthEast (NSE) was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982. NSE mainly operated commuter rail trains within Greater London and inter-urban services in densely populated South East England, although the netwo ...

brand 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 ...

. There were originally three lines through the station: two platform lines and an avoiding line between them. An unusual

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

(being some five storeys high at the rear) on the London-bound platform controlled the station including, at the eastern end, a set of sidings that served the goods yard and Hoffman

ball bearing A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races. The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. It achieves this ...

factory. The signal box ceased to be used in 1994, but the structure has remained in situ since. The avoiding line has been removed and the sidings were reduced to serve only a mail sorting office and building materials yard. The mail platform has been out of use for many years but the sidings saw some intermittent use until 2014, when they were closed for relaying. Lines to the north of the station are used by limited early-morning services that start from Chelmsford running to London and limited late-evening trains from London that terminate at Chelmsford. The station was extensively refurbished between 2014 and 2016 and included a new larger ticket hall, a new ticket office, new ticket barriers, modernised seating and two waiting rooms. The forecourt was also repaved and new bus shelters were added with real-time information boards.

Services

In 2016 the typical Monday-Saturday off-peak service consists of: *5 trains per hour (tph) to

*1 tph to *1 tph to *1 tph to *1 tph to *1 tph to The Sunday service consists of : *2 Trains per hour (tph) to

*1 tph to *1 tph to

References

External links

Trainspots - Chelmsford
{{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Railway stations in Essex DfT Category C1 stations Transport in the City of Chelmsford Former Great Eastern Railway stations Greater Anglia franchise railway stations Buildings and structures in Chelmsford (city) Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1843 1843 establishments in England