Enfield Town branch
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| Enfield branch line, 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Enfield Town branch is a suburban branch line in the England. In 2014 it is in fact the combination of the original Enfield branch which was built in 1849 by the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) and a later line built by the Great Eastern Railway (GER) from Hackney Downs to Edmonton in 1872. The line is currently a double-tracked suburban railway with services running between Liverpool Street station and Enfield Town as well as some other services running from Liverpool Street to Cheshunt Railway Station. Part of the original branch is closed and little visible remains today.
Enfield had been missed by the Northern and Eastern Railway line which had opened between Stratford and Broxbourne on 15 September 1840 and had to make do with Ponders End station some two miles away. Local pressure led to the deposit of a bill before parliament in 1844 which failed. Two years later the Enfield and Edmonton Railway Bill was passed with arrangements for the Eastern Counties Railway to take over management of the project.
Work on the 3 mile 7 chain single line branch commenced in 1848 under the direction of contractor Thomas Earle (contractor). At Enfield the line terminated at a crossroads in central Enfield. This line branched off the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) line at Angel Road railway station which was then named Edmonton. After the branch opened on 1 March 1849 the original station was renamed Water lane and the new intermediate station on the branch was named Edmonton. The ECR at that point ran between London Shoreditch (Bishopsgate) and Bishops Stortford although plans were afoot to extend northwards to Cambridge.
By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble, and most were leased to the Eastern Counties Railway. Although they wished to amalgamate formally, they could not obtain government agreement for this until 1862, when the Great Eastern Railway (GER) was formed by amalgamation.
Agitation for a more direct route to Liverpool Street led the GER to deposit the GER (Metropolitan Station & Railways) Act of 1864 before parliament. This proposed a double-track line between Hackney Downs to a junction just west of Lower Edmonton Low level station (then called Edmonton). Due to the GER's financial difficulties in the late 1860s the line was not started until 1870.
On 27 May 1872 the double-track line from Hackney Downs opened as far as Stoke Newington followed to Edmonton on 22 July and finally being linked to the existing branch at Edmonton Junction on 1 August. The line between the new junction and Enfield Town was also doubled providing a double-tracked route to Liverpool Street. This offered a quicker journey time into London Liverpool Street and this effectively became the Enfield Town branch.
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Wikipedia