Gidea Park 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 ...

, serving the neighbourhood of

Gidea Park Gidea Park () is a neighbourhood in the east of Romford in the London Borough of Havering, south-east England. Predominantly affluent and residential, it was historically within the county of Essex and saw significant expansion in the early 20t ...

in the

London Borough of Havering The London Borough of Havering () in East London, England, forms part of Outer London. It has a population of 259,552 inhabitants; the principal town is Romford, while other communities are Hornchurch, Upminster, Collier Row and Rainham. The ...

, east London. 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

Romford Romford is a large town in east London and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Havering. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Historically, Romford ...

and

Harold Wood Harold Wood is a suburban neighbourhood of Romford in the London Borough of Havering. It is situated east-northeast of Charing Cross and near to the Greater London boundary with Essex. History Toponymy The name Harold Wood was recorded in ...

. Its three-letter station code is GDP and it is in

Travelcard zone 6 Fare zone 6 is an outer zone of Transport for London's zonal fare system used for calculating the price of tickets for travel on the London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway, National Rail services (since 2007), and the El ...

. The station is currently managed by Transport for London and is on the

Elizabeth line The Elizabeth line is a high-frequency hybrid Urban rail, urban–suburban rail service in London and its suburbs. It runs services on dedicated infrastructure in central London from the Great Western Main Line west of London Paddington statio ...

between and

London Paddington Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a London station group, Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services pro ...

History

The station, constructed in a cutting, was opened as Squirrels Heath & Gidea Park on 1 December 1910 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 ...

on that company's main line out of

. The station consisted of two island platforms with access via a footbridge, giving four platform faces despite the line being of two tracks beyond the station environs. The station

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'' ...

was elevated on a set of girders spanning the two central tracks, and there was a

goods shed A goods shed is a railway building designed for storing goods before or after carriage in a train. A typical goods shed will have a track running through it to allow goods wagons to be unloaded under cover, although sometimes they were built ...

and coal staithes at the country end of the station on the south side of the line controlled by an additional signal box. Immediately beyond the goods facilities was the building known as the "Romford Factory" which had been the original locomotive works for 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 ...

from 1843 until the opening of

Stratford Works Stratford Works was the locomotive-building works of the Great Eastern Railway situated at Stratford, London, England. The original site of the works was located in the 'V' between the Great Eastern Main Line and the Stratford to Lea Bridge rou ...

in 1847, and remained in use by the railway working on the manufacture and repair of

canvas Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, shelters, as a support for oil painting and for other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handbags ...

wagon sheets. The line through Romford and Gidea Park as far as

Shenfield Shenfield is a commuter suburb of Brentwood, in the borough of Brentwood, Essex, England. In 2020, the suburb was estimated to have a population of 5,396. History The old village (now town), by the church and Green Dragon pub, lies along the ...

was quadrupled in 1930 to provide increased capacity and additional carriage sidings were added on the north side of the line opposite the goods facilities as part of these works. The order of words in the station name was switched to Gidea Park & Squirrels Heath in late 1913 and the "Squirrels Heath" suffix was dropped by British Rail in February 1969.

Accidents and incidents

On 2 January 1947, in darkness and dense fog, an express train from London to

passed a signal at danger A signal passed at danger (SPAD), known in the United States as a stop signal overrun and in Canada as passing a stop signal, is an event on a railway where a train passes a stop signal without authority. In the United States and Canada, this ...

and collided with a stopping service bound for as it started to depart from Gidea Park on the country-bound main line. The Peterborough train was travelling at an estimated 30 to 35 mph on impact, which destroyed the rear three coaches of the Southend train. Seven people were killed in the crash and 45 were hospitalised. Two of the four lines through the station were reopened within two hours, and the other two followed the next day.

Design

The station has step-free access to all platforms and is accessibility classification category A.

Services

The following services typically call at Gidea Park during off-peak hours. Frequency is increased during peak times. In 2017, new trains began entering service as

Crossrail Crossrail is a railway construction project mainly in central London. Its aim is to provide a high-frequency hybrid commuter rail and rapid transit system crossing the capital from suburbs on the west to east, by connecting two major railway ...

partially opened under the TfL Rail brand. The platforms at Gidea Park were extended from their current length of to accommodate the new Crossrail trains which are over long once extended to nine carriages. New lifts, signage, help points, customer information screens and CCTV were installed and the footbridge and carriage-sidings refurbished. Elizabeth line services began on 24 May 2022 and through services to Paddington commenced on 6 November 2022.

Connections

London Buses London Buses is the subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL) that manages most bus services in London, England. It was formed following the Greater London Authority Act 1999 that transferred control of London Regional Transport (LRT) bus se ...

routes 294, 496 and school routes 649,

650 __NOTOC__ Year 650 ( DCL) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 650 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era bec ...

and

674 __NOTOC__ Year 674 (Roman numerals, DCLXXIV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 674 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domi ...

serve the station.

References

External links

{{Crossrail navbox Railway stations in the London Borough of Havering Former Great Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1910 Railway stations served by the Elizabeth line