Nickey line

Nickey line
Heath Park Halt in 1958
Overview
Type	Local rail
System	National Rail
Status	Dismantled, partly re-purposed as cycle track
Locale	Hertfordshire, England, UK
Termini	Boxmoor Harpenden
Stations	9
Operation
Opened	1877
Closed	1959
Owner	Midland Railway; British Rail
Rolling stock	Midland Railway Johnson 0-6-0, LMS Fowler 2-6-2T, LMS Ivatt Class 4
Technical
Line length	9 miles (14 km)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in)
Route map

The Nickey line (also known as the Harpenden to Hemel Hempstead branch railway) is a disused railway that once linked the towns of Hemel Hempstead and, initially, Luton but later Harpenden via Redbourn, in Hertfordshire, England. The course of most of the railway has been redeveloped as a cycle and walking path, and is part of the Oxford to Welwyn Garden City route of the National Cycle Network. It is approximately nine miles (14 km) long.

The origin of the nickname the "Nickey line" is shrouded in obscurity. Suggestions include being named for the parish of St. Nicholas in Harpenden, through which it runs; to Hemel's connection with Nicholas Breakspear; the knickerbockers worn by the navvies who constructed the line; or "down the nick", a slang term of engine drivers which meant "to run out of steam" and may have been applicable on the line's difficult inclines.

The local paper notes that the engines themselves were referred to as "Puffing Annies" by locals, as the climb from the town centre up through Highfield was steep and the engines created much steam and smoke ascending this grade. Older generations in Hemel still refer to the line as the "Puffing Annie", rather than the Nickey line.

The spelling of the line's name is recorded as appearing as "Nickey" on signs and tickets for special trains and in the local press; when the line was converted to a cycle path, the signs which were erected omitted the "e" in the legend "Nicky Line Footpath and Cycleway". The line is commemorated in the modern Marlowes pedestrianisation scheme by a children's playground train and a sign labelled "Nicky Line Halt", though no such named station ever existed.

Another possible origin for the nickname for the "Nickey line" is that the navvies who constructed the line gave it the nickname as the steep climb on the "Nickey line" from the old A6 road (now the A1081) in Harpenden up to the Roundwood Halt is a 1 in 37 gradient and that is the same gradient as the 3.2 km railway incline called the "Lickey Incline" which is located south of Birmingham. The “Nickey line” being a smaller version of its bigger brother.