Walton-on-the-Naze, The former railway station building - geograph

Walton-on-the-Naze railway station is one of the two eastern termini of the

Sunshine Coast Line The Sunshine Coast Line is the current marketing name of what originally was the Tendring Hundred Railway Line, a branch off the Great Eastern Main Line in the East of England. It links to the seaside resorts of and, via a branch, . The 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 ...

. It serves the seaside town of

Walton-on-the-Naze Walton-on-the-Naze is a seaside town on the North Sea coast and (as Walton le Soken) a former civil parish, now in the parish of Frinton and Walton, in the Tendring district in Essex, England. It is north of Clacton and south of the port of Ha ...

, 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 ...

. Its three-letter station code is WON. The preceding station on the line is . The station was opened by the Tendring Hundred Railway, a subsidiary of 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 ...

, in 1867. It is currently managed by Greater Anglia, which also operates all trains serving the station.

History

The station was opened as Walton-on-Naze on 17 May 1867 by the Tendring Hundred Railway, then worked by the

(GER). The GER acquired the Tendring Hundred Railway and the adjacent Clacton-on-Sea Railway on 1 July 1883. The Wivenhoe & Brightlingsea line was also absorbed by the GER on 9 June 1893. The line later became part of 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 ...

(LNER) in 1923 and then part of 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 ( ...

, following nationalisation in 1948. The station is the terminus of the short single-track branch off the

at ; only what was the "down" (coast-bound) platform remains in use, following the electrification of the line. There was a small locomotive shed at the station and, on 1 January 1922, this had an allocation of two GER Class Y65 2-4-2T engines. The shed was later converted into a coach-park. In 1929, the LNER introduced luxurious Pullman day excursion trips from Liverpool Street to various seaside resorts. The service, known as the ''Eastern Belle'', served on Mondays, Frinton and Walton on Tuesdays, Clacton on Wednesdays, and and on Thursdays and Fridays. The service ended in September 1939, due to the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The station was renamed Walton-on-the-Naze in May 2007 to reflect properly the name of the town that it serves.

Accidents and incidents

On 12 August 1987 a passenger train over-ran the

buffer stop A buffer stop, bumper, bumping post, bumper block or stopblock (US), is a device to prevent railway vehicles from going past the end of a physical section of track. The design of the buffer stop is dependent, in part, on the kind of couplings ...

s at Walton-on-Naze and became embedded in the station building. Six people and the train's driver were injured in the incident. The 1:05 pm service from , formed of a single unit, was severely damaged and an investigation blamed failure of its brakes as the primary cause of the accident. The driver was also deemed to have been at fault for not applying the emergency brake in addition to the normal brakes.http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/HSE_WaltonOnTheNaze1987.pdf

Services

The typical current service pattern is: Passengers for must change at Thorpe-le-Soken for a connecting service. There are some additional services to and from

during peak hours.

References

External links

Walton-on-the-Naze station in 1960
{{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Railway stations in Essex DfT Category E stations Former Great Eastern Railway stations Greater Anglia franchise railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1867

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 ...