Last week, the necessary final paperwork was signed for a large housing development, that will also include a new railway station on the c2c line out of Fenchurch Street.
The site is to be known as Beam Park, and is the former Ford manufacturing plant in Dagenham, now owned by the GLA, and has received the final consents for a 3,000 home development by L&Q and Countryside, with around half classed as “affordable”. The formal consent was granted last week, following the signing of the Section 106 Agreement.
Construction will commence this spring and sales of the new homes are due to launch later this year, with the first homes ready in 2020. Phase one of the development, providing 640 new homes, is due to be completed by 2022.
As part of the development, a new railway station will also be added, half-way between Dagenham Dock and Rainham stations, and right next to the new housing development.
The Development Agreement includes the obligation for Countryside to provide a station building to a shell and core specification.
A total of £9.6 million has been allocated to the initial phase of the development of the station, with the fit out being provided by Network Rail. There is a funding gap at the moment between the costs and the amount available, but the GLA has put in a request to the government’s Housing Infrastructure Funding for the rest, with a decision due in May 2019.
Construction works are currently expected to start in the Autumn, and the core of the station is due to be completed by next Summer.
The new railway station, provisionally called Beam Park Station is projected to open in May 2022, and the main building has been designed by JSA Architects.
Cumulatively, delivery of the station is expected to unlock housing sites with the capacity to deliver between 4,000 and 6,000 additional homes on the the former Somerfield development site, and other adjacent sites situated within the Housing Zone.
Has there been any suggestion as to the service pattern for the new Beam Park station? It will be sited very close to both the existing Rainham and Dagenham Dock stations, which will presumably then have a knock on effect on the timetabling as trains will not be able to accelerate to anywhere near line speed? Then, thanks to the requirement of slotting in Barking Riverside LO services, there is unlikely to be any prospect of increased frequency along this stretch, so are there any plans for the procurement of additional rolling stock to increase capacity, since the peak trains along this route are already are capacity (and often at crush from Barking – West Ham)?
From the outside it appears very much that it has just been a case of “build a new station and we’ll let you build the houses”, without much thought of the actual practicalities of doing so.
Would both Overground and Crossrail be able to stop here as well?
Neither will – it’s on the wrong line.
Around half will be “affordable” ( what ever the definition of affordable is these days)
Rather vague and you can bet your bottom dollar it will be far less than half
Another high density ghetto in the making
What of the plans to (? idea of) make/-ing it possible for trains to come off the LT&S at Dagenham and go to St Pancras via the HS1 (CTRL) tunnel (and vise versa of course)? I’m told there is spare capacity at St P, and it seems that making a junction at the tunnel portal shouldn’t be that difficult.
It is not possible. Two entirely incompatible signalling systems plus the c2c trains run at 75 mph which would impractically hold up services into St Pancras. And restructuring an entire junction is very, very difficult indeed. Not least as you would have to realign all the tracks in the freight exchange sidings and create a new flying junction which would require new approach tracks at least a mile back and cause untold disruption. What with the need to install new signalling system and trains capable of 0-140 mph in next to no time, it is an idea that never even reached a planning table I am afraid.
It did not say it will be covered by c2c train, hopefully not. We hope Beam station railway we be covered by district or Hammersmith and City lines. Only then can we really sit and relax because of a higher frequency of services and organisation.
It’s the mainline railway into Fenchurch Street – not possible for the London Underground to run the service.
The site of Beam Park isn’t even that close to the District Line (let alone the H&C which terminates at Barking) – it’s in the Southern part of Dagenham near Dagenham Dock on the c2c