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, both with an operational length of 12 carriages, and two eastern-facing branch linebay platforms 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 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. 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 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 was saved and remains in use.
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
, the typical weekday off-peak service is:
3 trains per hour to London Liverpool Street;
3 tph to ;
1 train every 40 minutes to.
At peak times, service frequencies may be increased and calling patterns varied.
