Woodgrange Park railway station


Woodgrange Park railway station is a London Overground station on Romford Road in Manor Park in the London Borough of Newham, east London. It is the penultimate station on the Gospel Oak to Barking Line, down the line from ; it lies in Travelcard Zones 3 and 4. The station is managed by London Overground, which also provides all train services. It has only limited station buildings and facilities, and as of October 2019 is the 9th least-used railway station in Greater London.

Location

The station is on the Gospel Oak to Barking Line, west of. Its National Location Code is 7467. It stands on Romford Road, a short walk from station with which Woodgrange Park has an official out-of-station interchange. However, the National Rail Timetable suggests interchanging one stop to the west, from to.

History

Track was laid through the site in 1854 as part of the first section of the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway, from Forest Gate Junction on the Eastern Counties Railway to Barking. In 1894 the Tottenham and Forest Gate Railway opened a new railway to Tottenham, beginning at a junction just north of the station site. The station was opened on 9 July 1894. A short spur line to was opened in 1894, and was closed in 1958. Goods Yard closed 7 December 1964.
Unusually for the Gospel Oak to Barking Line, the section through the station is electrified—and has been since 1962, when it was so treated as part of the LT&SR modernisation & electrification scheme—because the line is used by a limited number of c2c services and by regular freight trains.

Design

It is a station with limited facilities; the ticket office was demolished in the late 1990s, and the space used for a small cycle rack. Staff operate from a container-sized portable office. Recently a number of self-service touch-screen ticket machines have been added, which accept coins, credit cards and notes. Oyster card validators have also been installed. The station was briefly equipped with APTIS equipment in 1988/89.

Services and connections

The normal London Overground passenger service is four trains per hour in each direction, dropping to half-hourly in the evenings. While a parliamentary train service also operated by London Overground runs at 07:59 on Mondays to Fridays from Woodgrange Park to . The line is also used for freight trains to and from the Port of Tilbury and the railfreight terminal at Dagenham Dock. c2c's infrequent services to Liverpool Street also pass through without stopping.
London Bus routes 25, 86 and 425, and night route N25 and N86 serve the bus stop just outside the station.

Future proposals

In common with other stations on the line, usage has greatly increased in recent years, following improvements in train services and the reintroduction of station staff, and peak-hour overcrowding of the two-car diesel trains is now a major issue. Electrification of the Gospel Oak route is now scheduled to be carried out by Network Rail over the next few years, with completion due by 2017.

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