Dovercourt railway station is on the Mayflower Line, a branch of 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 seaside town of

Dovercourt Dovercourt is a small seaside town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Harwich, in the Tendring district, in the county of Essex, England. It is older than its smaller but better-known neighbour, the port of Harwich, and appears in th ...

, Essex. It is 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 DVC. The station is currently operated by

Abellio Greater Anglia Greater Anglia (legal name Abellio East Anglia Limited) is a train operating company in Great Britain owned as a joint venture by Abellio (transport company), Abellio, the international arm of the state-owned Dutch national rail operator Neder ...

, which also runs all trains serving the station.

History

The station was opened by the

Eastern Union Railway The Eastern Union Railway (EUR) was an English railway company, at first built from Colchester to Ipswich; it opened in 1846. It was proposed when the earlier Eastern Counties Railway failed to make its promised line from Colchester to Norwich. T ...

on 15 August 1854 and was originally named Dovercourt. Its name was changed to Dovercourt Bay on 1 May 1913, but reverted to Dovercourt on 14 December 1972. Today passenger operations are confined to a bi-directional single electrified track, using what was the "up" track in the days when services through the station were operated on both tracks by steam and diesel locomotives. The unnumbered platform has an operational length for eight-coach trains. The remains of what was the "down" platform survive. The down platform also had a rather sizeable canopy, which was of little benefit given that most use of the platform was by passengers arriving. The bridge which linked the two platforms has since been removed. The only station beyond Dovercourt on the down side is Harwich Town, which is a relatively short walking distance. The station also had a

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'' ...

which was positioned at the west (London) end of the down platform; it controlled the occasional goods movements to short sidings at both ends of the up platform, which were used for coal and other goods deliveries to the town.

Services

the typical weekday off-peak service on the line is one train per hour in each direction, although some additional services run at peak times. Trains operate between Harwich Town and calling at all stations, although some are extended to or from and/or London Liverpool Street.

References

{{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Railway stations in Essex DfT Category E stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1854 Former Great Eastern Railway stations Greater Anglia franchise railway stations Harwich