Watton-at-Stone railway station serves the village of

Watton-at-Stone Watton-at-Stone is a village in the English county of Hertfordshire, situated midway between the towns of Stevenage and Hertford in the valley of the River Beane. The 2011 census showed a population of 2,272 living in 946 households. Watton-at-St ...

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 ...

, England. It is down the line from on the Hertford Loop Line between Hertford North and

Stevenage Stevenage ( ) is a large town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, about north of London. Stevenage is east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), between Letchworth Garden City to the north and Welwyn Garden City to the south. In 1946, Stevena ...

and is served by trains operated by

Great Northern Great Northern may refer to: Transport * One of a number of railways; see Great Northern Railway (disambiguation). * Great Northern Railway (U.S.), a defunct American transcontinental railroad and major predecessor of the BNSF Railway. * Great ...

History

According to the Watton-at-Stone Parish Council, a proposal for a rail route between London and Stevenage was approved by Parliament in 1898, though construction did not begin until 1906. A single-track section through Watton-at-Stone opened on 4 March 1918, with the track later being dualled. The station saw its first passenger train run through on 6 February 1920, but did so only when a train was diverted from the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

as the result of an accident. Scheduled passenger services of four trains per day started on 2 June 1924, stopping on request at Watton-at-Stone. The station's life as a passenger service was short-lived however, and it closed just 15 years later on 10 September 1939, despite the famed locomotive engineer

Nigel Gresley Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley (19 June 1876 – 5 April 1941) was a British railway engineer. He was one of Britain's most famous steam locomotive engineers, who rose to become Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the London and North Eastern Rai ...

's residency in the village. The nationalised

British Railways British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

considered reopening the station in the 1960s, but it was not until 1981 that a campaign to reopen the station gathered momentum. The bulk of the £120,000 costs were paid for by

Hertfordshire County Council Hertfordshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Hertfordshire, in England, the United Kingdom. After the 2021 election, it consists of 78 councillors, and is controlled by the Conservative Party, ...

and British Rail, but villagers and the parish council responded to a public appeal for funds, and together contributed £8,000. On 17 May 1982, a small crowd gathered to board the 06:23 service from Watton-at-Stone to

Moorgate Moorgate was one of the City of London's northern gates in its defensive wall, the last to be built. The gate took its name from the Moorfields, an area of marshy land that lay immediately north of the wall. The gate was demolished in 1762, b ...

, the first passenger train to serve the village in almost 43 years.

Services

All services at Watton-at-Stone 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 via * 2 tph to

Cultural references

In 1977, track in the vicinity of the then closed station was used by

British Transport Films British Transport Films was an organisation set up in 1949 to make documentary films on the general subject of British transport. Its work included internal training films, travelogues (extolling the virtues of places that could be visited via th ...

as a set to film the notorious

public information film Public information films (PIFs) are a series of government-commissioned short films, shown during television advertising breaks in the United Kingdom. The name is sometimes also applied, ''faute de mieux'', to similar films from other countries, ...

The Finishing Line ''The Finishing Line'' is a short film produced in 1977 by British Transport Films, warning about the dangers children face on railway lines. Although it is not strictly a public information film, it is often considered to be so by fans of the ...

''.British Transport Films:
The Finishing Line
' Using shock tactics to deter children from playing near railway lines, the film was staged as a

dream sequence A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other ...

of a parody school

sports day Sports days (British English) or field days (American English) are events staged by many schools and offices in which people participate in competitive sporting activities, often with the aim of winning trophies or prizes. Though they are often h ...

with 'events' on and around the track. Local schoolchildren were drafted as actors. The film was broadcast on the nightly '' Nationwide'' TV show, and the liberal quantities of stage blood and graphic depiction of injuries became a matter of some controversy.

References

External links

* Other map sources for (

coordinates In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is sig ...

)
Movie
of steam train ''Duke of Gloucester'' passing through Watton-at-Stone {{TSGN and SE Stations, Northern City=y, SE None=y, SN None=y Railway stations in Hertfordshire DfT Category E stations Former London and North Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1924 Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1939 Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1982 Reopened railway stations in Great Britain Railway stations served by Govia Thameslink Railway 1924 establishments in England Watton-at-Stone