Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
The Watford and Rickmansworth Railway was a railway line from Watford Junction to Rickmansworth Church Street that operated from 1862 to 1952.
history
The Watford & Rickmansworth Railway Company (W&RR) was founded in 1860 as a company of Whig politician Lord Ebury and received approval to build a 4.5 mile single track line to Rickmansworth . This went into operation in 1862 and was nicknamed Lord Ebury's Railway after its founder . Operations management was transferred to the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), which paid W&RR half of the gross proceeds. Initially, five pairs of trains ran daily as push-pull trains, consisting of a tank locomotive and two wagons. A project to extend the line to Uxbridge and thus establish a connection via West Drayton to London Paddington was not carried out, although it was approved by Parliament in 1863 when the Great Western Railway withdrew its announced support for the project.
The route did not turn out to be profitable, just four years after opening it was placed under bankruptcy administration. An attempt was made to improve the profitability of the route by building several sidings for freight traffic. In particular, a connection to the Dickinson paper mill and the Grand Union Canal at Croxley Green and one to the warehouses of the Benskins Brewery were built. When the founding company went bankrupt in 1881, the route was taken over by the LNWR. Real watercress , which was grown along the Gade and Chess rivers, was a frequent item of transport on the route.
In 1912 the LNWR opened a branch line from Watford High Street to Croxley Green , which was closed in 1996.
On April 16, 1917, the electrical operation between Queen's Park and Watford on the tracks of the Watford and Rickmansworth Railway began, but on the entire route only in September 1927. In the 1930s, passenger traffic was handled by trains on the London Underground .
Competition from the Metropolitan Railway , buses and increasing private use of motor vehicles led to a decrease in passenger numbers. In 1952, passenger traffic between Watford High Street and Rickmansworth ceased. In 1967 the freight traffic to Rickmansworth ended and in 1983 the remaining freight traffic to connect a paper mill at Croxley. Operation of the brewery ended in 1956.
After dismantling the tracks and demolishing the platforms and station buildings, a large part of the route is now used by the Ebury Way Cycle Path, a cycle path named after the route's founder.
The section from Watford Junction to Watford High Street is still operational as part of a link to Bushey . As part of the Croxley Rail Link project , trains on the Metropolitan Line from Croxley to Watford Junction will also use it in the future .
Operating points
The route began in Watford Junction station and ran through Watford High Street station as the only stopover to Rickmansworth (Church Street) . ⊙ This terminus was in the south of the city across from the church, where sidings to the nearby Grand Union Canal were set up. He only had one platform. The freight facilities were on the north side and initially consisted of three tracks. Two of them ran parallel, one led into a goods shed, the other parallel to a loading ramp. The third led behind the platform to the head of the ramp. By 1898, four more freight tracks were laid out in a fan shape north of the freight shed. The station had a crane with a lifting capacity of 1 ton 10 cwt (a good 1.5 t). Two more tracks led to a quay on the Grand Union Canal after 1912 . The originally wooden station building was replaced by a brick building in 1921/1922.
With the nationalization of the British railways in 1948, the station, which until then was only called "Rickmansworth", was given the addition "Church Street" to distinguish it from Rickmansworth station on the London-Aylesbury railway line . After the cessation of freight traffic, a printing works moved into the station building. In 1973/1974 the station was demolished and the site cleared for new construction.
Individual evidence
- ^ R. Davies, MD Grant: Chilterns and Cotswolds (Forgotten Railways) . David St John Thomas, Newton Abbot, Devon 1984, ISBN 0-946537-07-0 , p. 35.
- ^ John Cooper: The Watford & Rickmansworth Railway . In: Rickmansworth Through Time . Amberley Publishing Limited, 2014, ISBN 9781445640839 (Retrieved January 20, 2015).
- ^ A b Rickmansworth Church Street . Retrieved July 13, 2015.
- ↑ Watercress Growers . Croxley Green Residents Association. 2012. Retrieved November 28, 2017.
- ↑ a b Welbourn, N .: Lost Lines London . Ian Allen Ltd, Shepperton, Surrey 1998, ISBN 0-7110-2623-8 .