Angel Road, London’s second quietest train station is set to close in May, the Department for Transport has announced. With just over 33,000 passengers in 2017/18, it’s beaten to the bottom spot only by South Greenford station’s 26,500 passengers.
Angel Road (c) ianVisits
The reason for the closure is not due to the lack of passengers, but in fact the exact opposite, the area is about to get considerably busier, and a replacement station is being built nearby, to be known as Meridian Water. This new station will serve a large housing estate for some 10,000 new flats that are being built nearby, and Angel Road was both too small too shabby, and too far from the housing estate to be of much use.
(c) Meridian Water
The new station, approximately 580 yards to the south will have three platforms (with space for a 4th), and is being been delivered as part of the Lee Valley Rail Programme upgrade of the railway between Stratford and the new station. This is an integrated programme of works that will provide more capacity for suburban services on the West Anglia Main Line, as well as improvements at Tottenham Hale and Northumberland Park stations.
The new Meridian Water station also includes passive provision for further capacity enhancement schemes in the future, including Crossrail 2.
At its peak, the new station is expected to handle 4 million passengers per year — a far cry from sleepy Angel Road’s 33,000 passengers last year. As the new station is nearly completed, the Department for Transport has now issued the legal notice to close Angel Road “when the new station is opened, on or after 19 May 2019”.
(c) Network Rail
That date happens to be the same as the national timetable switch, which will either be painless, or a total disaster. Passenger train services that currently stop at Angel Road station will be simply timetabled to stop at the new Meridian Water station.
Greater Anglia, who run the trains through the station have already programmed Meridian Water station into their website, although obviously, at the moment, it’s a rather empty page.
However, on the 18th May, expect loads of train geeks to make what will for many of them be their first ever visit to Angel Road for its final day as a train station. And boy is that going to skew the annual visitor statistics for the year ahead.
Wasn’t this announced last year? Has it been legally confirmed yet?
The legal confirmation has just been issued – link in the article.
Wasn’t that the legal notice opening the consultation from last August? The consultation response from January seems to suggest that it still has to be ratified by ORR?
Not that it matters at all as it’s all just a formality… Curious to see the process happen though as it’s so rare nowadays.
Farewell Angel Road railway station (formerly Edmonton railway station.
1840-2019. 179 years since it first opened on the Lea Valley Line (West Anglia Main Line).
Soon to be replaced by Meridian Water railway station on the same line. Which means the platforms, shelters and the infrastructure at Angel Rd will soon be demolished.
Whilst Meridian Water will provide better services that Greater Anglia trains will still be stopping at the new station. And in future a new extra platform and track will be built for the proposed Crossrail 2. And a new Meridian Water-Stratford service to commence when the new station opens in May. Looking forward to seeing the new station opened.
Also does that mean Stansted Express might also stop at Meridian Water when they are to introduce the new Stratford-Stansted Airport direct service aswell London Liverpool St-Stansted Airport.
Interesting. The last Angel Road service is currently timetabled for 19:52 on Friday 17 May 2019 http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/AGR/2019/05/17/0200-0159?stp=WVSC&show=all&order=wtt with the first Meridian Water service timetabled for 05:57 on Monday 20 May http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/MRW/2019/05/20/0200-0159?stp=WVSC&show=all&order=wtt (only through-platforms “3” and “4” scheduled while the existing service pattern is maintained).
It’s a pity that instead of an Meridian Water to Stratford shuttle it was not planned to extend at least 2 trains an hour of London Overground from Stratford to Meridian Water providing a through service across north London with Station transferred to TFL thus putting the new station on the tube map .
In theory, that would be a great idea, but the mainline has eight car trains vs there being 5 car trains on the North London Line.
If there can be demonstrated to be a case for 8 car trains running on the North London Line and if somebody can find the cash for rolling stock and platform extensions (with some selective door opening), then by all means link the two up and send Overground trains to Meridian Water.
However, even if you can find all that money, how do you get the North London Line’s 8 trains per hour north of Stratford? If you can’t do that, then all that investment is hardly worth it. At the moment, with a third track only, there is only space for 2tph to Meridian Water, though you could feasibly send 4tph to Enfield Town via South Tottenham but with a few hundred million pounds we can quad track to Meridian Water, Brimsdown and beyond. You can also send 4tph to Chingford if you can find a few tens of millions for reinstatement of the Hall Farm Curve.
However, even if you find money for that, the North London Line is about to be boosted to more than 8tph as soon as Electrostar trains can be cascaded from the Watford Line. This causes a further problem to linking the two lines because the Anglia Route study puts a limit on the number of trains passing Leyton Depot to 8tph due to conflict with trains entering and leaving the depot. This could conceivably be resolved with one or two new tracks between Stratford and Lea Bridge, but that requires a further few hundred million pounds.
Assuming all those things get resolved, you can have a fantastic Overground system with 4tph to Meridian Water and beyond, 4tph to Chingford via a reinstated Hall Farm Curve and also 4tph to Enfield Town via South Tottenham, all running through to Richmond and Clapham Junction. This is all technically feasible, but the small problem is that we need to find a few billion pounds.
Even if you did find all that cash, you would have to weigh up the cost benefit of connecting the two lines vs simply reinstating the second terminating platform for the Lea Valley at Stratford, with the latter costing tens of millions less.
Where that money could be found is that DfT is reviewing Crossrail 2 to assess whether places like the Lea Valley can be boosted without a Crossrail type scheme but I doubt they will be creative enough to come up with this option. In the meantime, does anybody have a couple of billion pounds of spare cash under their mattress?
I have a 1 May opening date for this?
What is a Train Station?
Try here: http://bfy.tw/MNII
Buses stop at bus stations. Fire engines nest in fire stations. I am quite content, here in the real world, to accept that trains stop at train stations.
Language evolves: get over it. And I say this as someone who helped build a preserved steam railway ( now known as “heritage lines”) back in the 1980s. I proposed to my wife when the train was stopped in one of the preserved train stations.
Train station!
Mike
First of all, Network Rail heavily value engineered the route, destroying any passive provision there would have been, see my FOI on this: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/crossrail_2_value_engineering_ex
Furthermore, even the previous planning documents prior to the value engineering conceded that track would have to be re-laid for quad tracking. This means demolition of signalling and overhead wires and a long period when Northumberland Park and Meridian Water will be closed during that period of reconstruction. Clearly a lack of joint up thinking, forward planning and accountability from Network Rail, are we surprised?
Secondly, whilst the new station is opening, Abellio Greater Anglia confirmed at the recent stakeholder meeting that the third track is not ready and will not be operational in 2019 with no information about when it will become operational or when trains and drivers will be available for the 2tph all week service. The next timetable will have no changes, with just ten trains a day in each direction (peak only) and no weekend service. Hence the reason why there is only a soft opening of the station, no grand opening.
The timetable shows the new shuttle starting in September.