LONDON’S LOCAL LINE: 10 YEARS ON

Think of London and railway heritage and you probably default to the Transport Museum at Covent Garden, or its subsidiary at Acton Depot, with a vast collection of Underground rolling stock dating as far back as the mid-1800s. Very few consider a sleepy branch line through rolling fields and woodlands, let alone an active steam railway.

While it may not technically be in the capital itself, the Epping Ongar Railway is famous for being the only heritage line to operate on former London Underground metals – but then, how many opportunities have ever really been presented for that claim to have had a chance at being made?

Brief History

The branch to Ongar was built as part of a proposal by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1858, which wanted to construct an extension to the line previously opened to Loughton in 1856. Under the Great Eastern Railway, which formed as a merger of various smaller companies in 1862, the full line was opened on April 24, 1865, with stations between Epping and Ongar being built at North Weald and Blake Hall. Although plans for further growth were considered, lack of capital – combined with the residents of Ongar choosing to site their graveyard on the opposite side of the road to the end of the existing track – meant nothing ever came to fruition.

Plans to electrify to Ongar were shelved during the Second World War, with power rails not being laid until 1949. However, as a cost-cutting measure, the line only received ‘light electrification’ – which resulted in a sub-station at Blake Hall not being installed. Consequently, eight-car trains could not make it further than North Weald, so a steam shuttle remained the primary source of motive power right up until November 16, 1957, when shorter 1960s Cravens units took over.

With a reported loss of £100,000 per annum, LT started formal closure proceedings in 1970. This was the