Tring railway station

Tring railway station is outside the small town of Tring, close to the Grand Union Canal but actually nearer to the village of Aldbury in Hertfordshire, England. Situated on the West Coast Main Line, the station is now an important marshalling point for commuter trains from here for most stations to .

There are five full length (12-car) platforms, with one side platform and two islands. To the east of the station are some south facing sidings connecting to the slow lines. Platforms 1 & 2 are the fast-line platforms, platforms 3 & 5 are the slow-line platforms and platform 4 is used by starting and terminating services to/from Euston and additional through trains southbound.

History

Tring station was opened by the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) on 16 October 1837 when the L&BR extended its line out of London beyond to Tring. The first train to Tring ran from Primrose Hill at 9:00 am on 16 October 1837, reaching Tring at 10:10 am. On 15 November 1844, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made their first train journey north from Euston, reaching Tring in 52 minutes where the train stopped to take on water. Despite rain, the appearance of the royal train attracted crowds of farm labourers and local children, to the Queen's delight. It is reported that after this stop, Victoria asked that the speed of her train be reduced.

The L&BR was constructed by the railway engineer Robert Stephenson. He originally planned a route which would have taken the new railway to the east of Tring, but vociferous opposition from influential local landowners such as the Earl of Essex, Earl of Clarendon, Lord Brownlow and Sir Astley Cooper delayed the project and forced the route to be changed before parliamentary approval could be obtained, with the result that Tring railway station had to be sited some distance from the town. The remote location of Tring station is sometimes wrongly attributed to objections which were said to have been made by Lord Rothschild to protect his land in Tring; in fact, Lord Rothschild was not born until 1840, three years after the railway had opened and the Tring lands were only acquired by his father Lionel in 1872. He did, however, object to a much later plan to build a steam tramway between Tring Station and . Tring station's distance from the town would have been greater had the L&BR placed the station at Pitstone Green, some three miles further north, as it originally planned to do. The preferred location at Pendley required purchasing land from the Comte d'Harcourt, another landowner reluctant to admit the railways to his estate, and he demanded such an exorbitant price that the L&BR selected a cheaper but less convenient plot of land. The townspeople of Tring were so enthusiastic for a railway that in 1837 they raised funds to bridge the difference in price between what the Company was prepared to pay and the price demanded by the Harcourt estate. They also supported the construction of a new road to the station and according to the 1839 issue of the ''Railway Times'', "As soon as the Company had determined upon making it a first class station (where every train stops), the inhabitants came forward in a very spirited manner, and at their own expense formed a new road direct to the town".

Tring station was originally intended as a destination of a branch of the Metropolitan Railway (MR). A short section of the branch from to was built in 1887–89 before the MR chose to construct an alternative route across the Chilterns via instead. Although the MR continued to buy land between Chesham and Tring for some years after Chesham station opened, the route was never extended further and today Chesham remains as a branch line terminus of Transport for London's Metropolitan line.

Services

Current services

Tring lies on a major commuter route into central London and most West Coast Main Line train services run directly into London Euston. It is the terminus of many slower London Northwestern trains out of Euston and platform 4 provides a turnaround for these trains. Tring is served by a few evening trains to and from Birmingham, and one early morning train to Crewe on weekdays and Saturdays, but most of the trains which serve the station go no further than Milton Keynes Central.

The typical off-peak services in each direction are:

Mondays-Saturdays

*3 trains per hour to London Euston, of which:
**1 is fast, calling at , and only.
**2 are semi-fast calling at Berkhamsted, Hemel Hempstead, , , Watford Junction, and .
*1 train per hour to , calling at and .

Sundays

*2 trains per hour to Euston, one calls at Berkhamsted, Hemel Hempstead, Watford Junction and Harrow & Wealdstone, whilst the other service calls at Berkhamstead, Hemel Hempstead, Apsley, Kings Langley, Watford Junction, Bushey and Harrow & Wealdstone.
*1 train per hour to Milton Keynes Central, calling at Cheddington, Leighton Buzzard and Bletchley.

Former services

Connex South Central

In June 1997, Connex South Central began operating services between Gatwick Airport and Rugby via the Brighton and West London Lines that called at Tring with Class 319s. It was cut back to terminate at Milton Keynes in December 2000 before being withdrawn in May 2002 due to capacity constraints on the West Coast Main Line while it was upgraded.

Southern

Southern reintroduced the service in February 2009 with Class 377s operating initially operating from Brighton to Milton Keynes before being curtailed at its southern end at South Croydon and later Clapham Junction. In May 2022, Southern cut the service back to terminate at Watford Junction, thus ceasing to serve Tring.Changes to National Rail Timetable
National Rail 15 May 2022

Future services

In the ''London & South East Rail Utilisation Strategy'' document published by Network Rail in 2011, Tring was identified as a terminus of a possible northern extension of the Crossrail lines now under construction in central London. The report recommends the addition of a tunnel in the vicinity of the proposed station at connecting the Crossrail route to the West Coast Mainline. The diversion of rail services through central London would enable a direct link from stations such as Tring to West End stations such as and would alleviate congestion at Euston station; Crossrail services currently planned to terminate at due to capacity constraints would also be able to continue further west, allowing for a more efficient use of the line. This proposal has not been officially confirmed or funded, although an announcement made in August 2014 by the transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin indicated that the government was actively evaluating the possibility of extending Crossrail as far as Tring and Milton Keynes Central.

References

External links

*
The Building of the London to Birmingham Railway
– Hertfordshire Genealogy

{{Hertfordshire railway stations

Railway stations in Hertfordshire
DfT Category C2 stations
Former London and Birmingham Railway stations
Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1837
Railway stations served by West Midlands Trains
Stations on the West Coast Main Line
Tring