Romford to Upminster Line

The Romford to Upminster Line or Upminster Branch Line is a 3.4 mi branch line between Romford and Upminster in the London Borough of Havering. The line is part of the Network Rail Strategic Route 7, SRS 07.09, and is classified as a rural line. The line is single track throughout, electrified at 25 kV AC, has a loading gauge of W6, and a line speed of 30 mph.

History
The line was originally built as a branch of the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LT&SR) and opened on 7 June 1893 providing the LT&SR with an inroad into Great Eastern Railway territory at Romford and a small goods yard where the branch joins the Great Eastern Main Line. At Romford the branch had a separate station entrance in a three-storey building opposite the Great Eastern station entrance and a cast-iron footbridge was also constructed over South Street opened when a LT&SR train was due. When in April 1934 the LT&SR building ceased use as a station and the ground floor rented as a shop the then LNER took control of the whole station.

Emerson Park Halt opened 1 October 1909. A run round loop was constructed 500 yards to the west to enable extra trains to run between Emerson Park and Upminster. When push-pull working began in 1934 the loop was not needed and taken out c. 1936.

From 17 September 1956 DMUs from Stratford replaced the steam service and from 20 April 1957 a new bay (dead end) platform six opened at Upminster effectively making it part of the Great Eastern Railway.

After attempts to close the line in the 1960s failed, the line continued until it was electrified and EMU services began on 17 April 1986.

Infrastructure
The branch is known colloquially as the Romford Push and Pull as it is single-track throughout. It is electrified at 25 kV AC. Electrification of the line saw an end to years of speculation about its future. There is only one intermediate station, at Emerson Park. At Upminster the connection west of the station to the LT&amp;S line was severed in 1968.

The branch is not signalled. There were plans to link the line from platform six at Upminster to the reception tracks of the underground depot. This would have allowed the transfer of London Underground D78 Stock units onto the main line to be hauled away by diesel locomotive for refurbishment by Bombardier at Ilford Depot. These plans were scrapped when the refurbishment work was transferred to Wakefield in Yorkshire and the transfer was done by road. The point-work which was half installed is still visible from the eastern end of platform 5 of Upminster.

Services
The line is entirely within Travelcard Zone 6. Passenger services are currently operated by Greater Anglia, who replaced the previous operator, on 5 February 2012. Trains are normally formed by a Class 315. The current service pattern on the route (as of 2006) is one train every 30 minutes on Mondays to Saturdays between approximately 06:00 and 20:00 with no service on Sundays. There is a slightly increased service during peak hours where the line runs at full capacity. The journey time from one end of the line to the other is eight minutes.

Geology
During the construction of the railway in 1892, the geologist T. V. Holmes discovered a 5 metre layer of boulder clay underlying the gravel and sand in a section just north of St Andrews Park. This is now the Hornchurch Cutting Site of Special Scientific Interest, which exhibits the southernmost limit of the Anglian ice sheet 450,000 years ago, the furthest south that any ice sheet reached.