Woodgrange Park

 

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 9 July 1894. The area, popularly referred to as Manor Park Village, was originally developed in the 1880s on farmland that formed part of the Gurney estate. It was built by one builder to an overall plan, with a limited range of house styles giving the area a distinctive character and unity. The developers, the Corbett family, built several suburban estates including the adjacent Woodgrange Estate in Forest Gate. The Earl of Essex is a Grade II listed public house at 616 Romford Road.

 

Unusually for the Gospel Oak to Barking Line, the section through the station was electrified (and has been since 1962, when it was so treated as part of the LT&SR modernisation & electrification scheme) as the line is used by a limited number of c2c services (which did not stop at Woodgrange Park) and regular freight trains. It is a station with limited facilities as the station ticket office was demolished in the late 1990s and made into a small cycle rack. Staff operate from a container-sized portable office. There have recently been added a number of self-service touch-screen ticket machines which accept coins, credit cards and notes. Oyster card validators have also been installed. The weekday London Overground passenger service is four trains per hour in each direction, dropping to half-hourly in the evenings and on Sundays. The line is also used for freight trains to and from the Port of Tilbury. c2c's infrequent services to Liverpool Street also pass through without stopping. 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 (at a cost of some £115 million) over the next few years, with completion due by 2017. The station is in Travelcard Zone 3 and has wi-fi, help points and a waiting room but no toilets.

 

Connections: London Bus routes 25 and 86, and night route N86 serve the bus stop just outside the station. Additionally, bus route 25 has a 24-hour bus service.

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