Wickford railway station is on the Shenfield to Southend Line and is also the western terminus of the Crouch Valley Line in the east of England, serving the town of

Wickford Wickford is a town and civil parish in the south of the English county of Essex, with a population of 33,486. Located approximately 30 miles (50 km) east of London, it is within the Borough of Basildon along with the original town of Basil ...

in the Basildon district of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

. 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 to the west and, to the east, on the Southend Line and on the Crouch Valley Line. The

Engineer's Line Reference {{Use British English, date=April 2020 An Engineer's Line Reference (ELR) is a three alpha, or four alpha-numeric, code used to uniquely identify a railway line on the main-line railway of Britain owned, or maintained, by Network Rail but officia ...

for the line is SSV, the station's three-letter station code is WIC. The vast majority of services on both lines connect to the Great Eastern Main Line at for Liverpool Street. Wickford station and all trains serving it are currently operated by Greater Anglia. The station was previously called Wickford Junction when the Crouch Valley route to also included a branch to and more agricultural traffic passed through the station.

Description

The line from Shenfield to Wickford and the station were opened for goods on 19 November 1888 and for passengers on 1 January 1889 by the Great Eastern Railway. Wickford station comprises two main line platforms (platform 2 for eastbound services and 3 for westbound services towards London), both with an operational length of 12 carriages, and two eastern-facing

branch line A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industr ...

bay platforms (number 1 is used for trains from Southminster and number 4, which is very rarely used) at the eastern end of the station, each with an operational length of 5 carriages. At the London end of the station there once was a goods yard and

turntable A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

for steam locomotives, closed in 1954; a couple of sidings remain here for storing engineering vehicles or failed trains, but much of the railway land here is now in use as a car park for passengers. The line from Wickford to Southend Victoria was converted from semaphore signalling to 3-aspect, automatic and semi-automatic, colour light signals on 26 June 1938.Notice: Colour light signalling between Wickford and Southend. London and North Eastern Railway (1938). Published by Great Eastern Railways Society (2003) At the same time the signal boxes at Fanton, Rayleigh, Hockley and Rochford were decommissioned. The Shenfield to Southend Victoria line was electrified using 1.5 kV DC overhead line electrification (OLE) on 31 December 1956. This was changed to 6.25 kV AC in November 1960 and to 25 kV AC on 25 January 1979. Platforms 1 and 4 were electrified when the Southminster branch was electrified on 12 May 1986. The signal box that was formerly located at the end of platforms 3 and 4, before the bridge crossing Wickford High Street, was demolished in the early 1990s following the introduction of new signalling controlled from Liverpool Street. The upper floor of the original Great Eastern Railway station buildings on platforms 1 and 2 were destroyed by fire in the late 1990s, however, the ground floor (including the ticket office, waiting room and staff accommodation) was saved and remained in use until 2021. In 2020, Greater Anglia submitted plans to demolish the station building so platform 1 can be extended for the new longer trains. It was demolished in 2021. The extended platform was opened on 26 June 2021.

Accidents and incidents

*On 24 February 1965, the 10:18 departure from for derailed upon departure from Wickford when a set of points was moved while the train passed over them, causing the rear coaches to be diverted onto the branch line and be derailed. The incident caused damage to the infrastructure and carriages, and minor injury to two passengers on board the train. *On 31 January 1971, a collision occurred between a newspaper delivery train and the 04:04 passenger service from Southend Victoria, bound for Liverpool Street. Nobody was injured, however two carriages of the passenger train were extensively damaged and some minor damage was caused to the newspaper train. The newspaper train's driver had left his cab to check signals without having applied the brakes, leading to the train slipping back down the gradient of the Southminster branch line, into the Southend train which was stopped on the main line at Wickford.

Services

All services at Wickford are operated by Greater Anglia. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: * 3 tph to

* 3 tph to * 1 train every 40 minutes to Additional services operate during the peak hours. On Sundays, services between London and Southend are reduced to 2 tph and services to Southminster reduced to hourly.

References

Branch Line to Southminster by Denis L Swindale .

External links

History of the Crouch Valley Line
{{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Transport in the Borough of Basildon Railway stations in Essex DfT Category C2 stations Former Great Eastern Railway stations Greater Anglia franchise railway stations William Neville Ashbee railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1889 Wickford