Bus passing under the bridge at Grange Park station

Image: © Marathon Taken: 15 Mar 2017

The Alexandra Palace-Hertford-Stevenage loop was built mainly as a by-pass for the approaches to King's Cross on the main line from Hatfield and was built to main line standards for much of its length. However, it has never carried regular long-distance passenger services and has always primarily been a suburban branch, apart from when there is engineering work or other disruption on the East Coast Main Line through Hatfield. The line was opened as far as Enfield, which was then the terminus, on 1st April 1871. The line was extended to Cuffley from 4th April 1910 and on to Stevenage for freight on 4th March 1918, but passenger trains only started beyond Cuffley on 2nd June 1924. When Grange Park station opened it was 'perched on a wind-swept embankment with a view east to cuckoo-haunted woods'. Suburban activity started here in 1909 with the erection of three shopping parades and the first villas to the east of the line. Building went on steadily through the 1920s and 1930s until Grange Park, Winchmore Hill and Southgate were just a continuous mass of small, red-roofed houses. The Piccadilly line extension to Cockfosters took much of the traffic from the line between Bowes Park and Gordon Hill and the late 1940s and 1950s were described by Alan A Jackson in 'London's Local Railways' as "doldrum years for a line which smelt of decay and declines as grotty 'quad-arts' were trundled to and from Hertford North by filthy and now wheezing N2 tanks." The line was electrified in the 1970s. A bus passes along Vera Avenue under the railway bridge. Grange Park station is accessed on the other side of the bridge up a slope to the right.

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0