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Station Approach, Station Road, LONDON, E4 6AL

Passenger trains were extended from Shernhall Street in Walthamstow to serve the Chingford terminus in Bull Lane (now King's Road) over a single track which opened on 17th November 1873. As it was intended to extend this branch to High Beech, there was just a temporary wooden structure at Chingford and locomotives were watered from an old farm pond. With the opening of the extension, the platform at Shernhall Street was closed and replaced by a permanent station at Wood Street. The permanent terminus at Chingford on the very edge of Epping Forest was opened on 2nd September 1878 at some distance north of the original. It possessed a large station house on the down side. It had been intended to extend the line via Sewardstone to High Beech but this coincided with Queen Victoria travelling in the royal train on the Chingford line on 6th May 1883 to declare Epping Forest open to the public. In the excitement, opposition to the desecration of the Forest by a railway killed the extension off once and for all. The platforms at Chingford were extended in the 1920s and four new carriage sidings provided. Chingford was a popular resort for North Londoners at summer weekends and on Bank Holidays and as many as 100,000 people would use the station on a Bank Holiday until just after the First World War. Chingford station has two platforms as well as extensive carriage sidings. This view looks in the direction of the station buildings which contain the exit. The weather was cold and wet all day and was quite as miserable as it looks.

The railway station, conveniently located near the end of Station Road.

Chingford Station was opened in 1878 and was designed as a through station. The intention was for the line to continue on to High Beech across Chingford Plain. However, Queen Victoria had no intention of letting the railway ruin her "beloved forest" and permission to build was denied.

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Twenty three years after Neil's Image the bus on the Number 97 service in the centre of the photograph is still waiting to depart for Leyton, while the single decker on the Number 313 service is bound for Potters Bar Station. Chingford railway station is immediately to the right.

This is the terminus of the line from Liverpool Street, completed in 1878. Journeys to Liverpool Street are scheduled at 26 minutes from here. Two different styles of units operated by One Railway await departure, 317660 on the left, 315860 on the right. Just out of sight to the right but on the trackbed beyond the buffers and the trellis fencing is a small garden.

Well worth a trip from London!

The Chingford line (as also those to Cheshunt and Enfield Town) has recently become part of the Overground. The Class 315 and 317 trains have been completely refurbished, with full Overground livery and smart new orange moquette, with the advantage over other Overground lines of plenty of transverse seating. The London Freedom Pass is, of course, valid here.

This is the end of the line and the end of London's urban area. The E4 postcode is one of two which extends beyond London, the other being NW7 which only covers a tiny part of Hertfordshire.