Croxley Green railway station

Croxley Green
Croxley Green Location of Croxley Green in Hertfordshire
Location	Croxley Green
Local authority	District of Three Rivers
Number of platforms	1
Railway companies
Pre-grouping	LNWR
Post-grouping	London Midland and Scottish Railway British Railways
Key dates
1912	Opened
1996	Closed
Replaced by	Cassiobridge (proposed)
Other information
Lists of stations	DLR Underground National Rail Tramlink
WGS84	51°39′04″N 0°25′43″W / 51.651046°N 0.428553°WCoordinates: 51°39′04″N 0°25′43″W / 51.651046°N 0.428553°W
London Transport portal UK Railways portal

Station approach in 1984

Croxley Green is a disused railway station near Watford, outside London, England. It is located between Watford and Croxley Green to the west of Watford, at the end of a short branch line.

History

The station was opened in 1912 by the LNWR and formed the terminus of a branch line off the Watford-Rickmansworth line. British Rail continued to run services until 1996 although the station was scaled down seven years before closure with the original platform removed in favour of a wooden platform on the other side of the track.^[1]

In March 1996 the line and station were closed, supposedly temporarily, so the station furniture, including the lampposts and wooden platform, was left in situ. In around 2005, the wooden platform was removed as by then the platform was in a serious state of decay ^[2] but more than fifteen years after abandonment the lampposts and the street-level signage remains in place.^[3][4]

A section of the embankment just east of the Grand Union Canal Bridge was removed to make way for a new Ascot Road to improve traffic flow to the nearby business park. It was considered uneconomical to bridge the road, and the station remains breached from the rest of the line.

The station and the line were permanently closed on 29 September 2003.

Croxley Rail Link

On 14 December 2011 the Government approved the Croxley Rail Link.^[5] A key part of the Croxley Rail Link project will be the construction of the "missing link", a short line of track connecting the existing Metropolitan line to the former British Rail Croxley Green branch line at their closest point. This will involve installing a new junction near Baldwins Lane, about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) north-east of Croxley station, and building a new viaduct and bridge to carry the Metropolitan line over the A412 Watford Road dual carriageway and the Grand Union Canal^[6] to the former BR line and some distance to the east of the old Croxley Green station. New double track will be laid along the disused trackbed, reinstating the line as far as Watford High Street; from this point, Underground trains will share track with London Overground trains along the Watford DC Line to the Watford Junction terminus.^[7]

The old Croxley Green station is therefore redundant and plays no part in the new line. It will be replaced by the new Cassiobridge station nearby.

References

1. Disused Stations - Croxley Green
2. http://underground-history.co.uk/croxley.php
3. Pictures of Croxley Green railway station
4. Pictures of Croxley Green railway station, taken in 1998 and 2004
5. "Croxley Rail Link plan approved by Government". The Watford Observer. Retrieved 2011-12-13.
6. "Web Brochure" (PDF). Croxley Rail Link. 2011-06-02. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2012-03-23.
7. "Map of the Croxley Rail Link". Transport for London. Archived from the original on 2011-05-28.

External links

• London's Abandoned Stations - Croxley Green branch
• Disused Stations - Croxley Green
• Pictures taken by the West Watford History Group showing the line, including Croxley Green station, shortly before and shortly after closure
• Pictures of the Croxley line, including Croxley Green station, taken in 2009

Preceding station	Disused railways			Following station
Terminus		Network SouthEast Croxley Green Branch		Watford West