Wickford railway station

Wickford
Station entrance
Location
Place	Wickford
Local authority	Basildon
Grid reference	TQ745936
Operations
Station code	WIC
Managed by	Abellio Greater Anglia
Number of platforms	4
DfT category	C2
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2004/05	2.014 million
2005/06	1.940 million
2006/07	1.848 million
2007/08	2.145 million
2008/09	2.148 million
2009/10	1.995 million
2010/11	2.022 million
2011/12	2.070 million
– Interchange	0.553 million
2012/13	2.163 million
– Interchange	0.561 million
2013/14	2.237 million
– Interchange	0.583 million
History
Key dates	Opened 1889
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Wickford from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

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 in the Basildon district of Essex. It is 29 miles 2 chains (46.7 km) down-line from London Liverpool Street and is situated between Billericay to the west and, to the east Rayleigh on the Southend Line and Battlesbridge on the Crouch Valley Line. Its three-letter station code is WIC.

The vast majority of services on both lines connect to the Great Eastern Main Line at Shenfield for Liverpool Street. Wickford station and all trains serving it are currently operated by Abellio Greater Anglia.

The station was previously called Wickford Junction when the Crouch Valley route to Southminster also included a branch to Maldon West and more agricultural traffic passed through the station.

Description

Wickford station comprises two main line platforms (platform 2 for eastbound services and 3 for westbound services towards London), and two branch line bay platforms (numbers 1, which is used for trains from Southminster and 4, which is very rarely used) at the eastern end of the station. At the London end of the station there once was a goods yard and turntable for steam locomotives; 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 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 remains in use.

Accidents and incidents

• On 24 February 1965, a passenger train for Southend Victoria derailed upon departure from Wickford when a set of points was moved while the train passed over them. The incident caused damage to the infrastructure and carriages, and minor injury to two passengers on board the train.^[1]
• On 31 January 1971, a collision occurred between a newspaper delivery train and a passenger service from Southend Victoria. 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 branch line, into the Southend train which was stopped on the main line at Wickford.^[2]

Services

As of December 2015 the typical weekday off-peak service is:

• 3 trains per hour (tph) to London Liverpool Street;
• 3 tph to Southend Victoria;
• 1 train every 40 minutes to Southminster.

At peak times, service frequencies may be increased and calling patterns varied.

References

1. http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Wickford1965.pdf
2. http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoE_Wickford1970.pdf

Branch Line to Southminster by Denis L Swindale ISBN 0-9506473-8-1.

External links

• Train times and station information for Wickford railway station from National Rail
• History of the Crouch Valley Line
• Local information about Crouch Valley Line

Coordinates: 51°36′54″N 0°31′08″E / 51.615°N 0.519°E