North Weald railway station

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North Weald

Location
Place	North Weald
Local authority	Epping Forest (district)
History
Opened by	Eastern Counties Railway
Platforms	1 (formerly 2)
Key dates	Opened 1865 (Central Line) Closed 1994 (Central Line) Reopened 2004 (EOR) Closed every winter
Replaced by	none
London Transport Portal

North Weald tube station is a closed London Underground station in Essex, England. It was located between Epping and Blake Hall on the Central Line, serving North Weald Bassett.

It was first opened by the Eastern Counties Railway on 1 April 1865, serving principally as a goods station taking agricultural produce from the nearby farms into central London. During World War II, it was frequently used by airmen travelling to and from the nearby North Weald Aerodrome. Steam locomotives operated by British Rail for the Underground ran a shuttle service from Epping to Ongar (stopping at North Weald) from 1949 to 1957, when the line was electrified and taken over by the Underground's Central Line.

Although the Epping to Ongar branch was normally operated as an isolated branch of the Central Line, for two days every year, through trains were run from London, terminating at North Weald. These trains served the North Weald airshow on the Saturday and Sunday of its opening at the aerodrome almost adjacent to the station. The normal Epping to Ongar shuttle dovetailed with this service passing the terminating train on the adjacent line during its southbound journey. The through train was operated as an extra train on the normal Central Line timetable, but had to be restricted to four cars long because of limitations on the available traction current on the branch.

The line from Epping to Ongar is a single track line with the exception of North Weald station which functioned as the only available passing place for trains travelling in opposite directions. The station's two platforms were both used from 1949 until 1976 when the westbound track was lifted. Until this time, access to the two platforms was controlled from the original Eastern Counties Railway signal box still sited on the southbound platform to this day. Until this occurred, North Weald was the only section of the London Underground network to be signalled using mechanical semaphore signals. Although disused, the illuminated track diagram in the signal box continued to show the progress of trains until the line's closure.

The Epping to Ongar branch was not heavily used and was never profitable. However many people believe that LU purposely over staffed stations and services to make it look on paper that the line would never be profitable, however it was. LU did plan at one point to make the stations unstaffed and put ticket barriers up to reduce the cost of running the stations and re introduce an all day service to encourage more people to use the line, this was however dropped as LU were not committed to the line, surprisingly the Government was and they wanted LU to kepp the branch open. The service was further undermined when the Greater London Council removed the running subsidy for the line because the line was not within the boundaries of Greater London, and no comparable subsidy was forthcoming from the local government agencies in Essex. Fare levels were therefore much higher than on the rest of the Underground network, and the operators were being no more than truthful when they cited diminishing passenger numbers as a reason for running down the service. Initially, the Sunday service was dropped, and then the Saturday service. Subsequently, the service was restricted to a rush hour service only of just 7 trains in each direction per day (3 in the morning and 4 in the evening). The Epping to Ongar line, including North Weald station, was finally closed on 30 September 1994. The station and the line are now in the ownership of a private company who, at time of purchase, publicly stated their intentions to run commuter services once again: to date this stated ambition has been thwarted by the absence of available platform space at the Epping end of the line and the fierce objections from residents for proposals for a third platform beyond the roadbridge to the North of the station. The current owners are the Epping Ongar Railway, a heritage railway company who run heritage trains on Sundays over most of the line, stopping short of Epping.

Disused Railways
	Heritage railways
Coopersale		Epping Ongar Railway	Ongar
Preceding station		London Underground	Following station
Epping Terminus		Central line	Ongar Terminus
Epping Terminus		Central line	Blake Hall towards Ongar