IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Bush Road, BUCKHURST HILL, IG9 6ER

These houses are typical of the Essex borders with London

Construction of the line from Ilford through Hainault and Chigwell to join the Epping and Ongar line at Woodford started in 1900, although powers had been obtained as early as 1846. The stations were built to high standards. Passenger and local freight operations started on 1st May 1903. At first the service worked from either Fenchurch Street or Liverpool Street and then back both ways round the loop. Everything was done to prepare for heavy passenger traffic, misplaced optimism being shown by the stations which all had substantial buildings and long platforms. Patronage remained very low until the building boom of the late 1920s and early 1930s when almost all the land between the eastern bank of the River Roding and the Hainault Loop was filled with small houses up to a point well north of Barkingside. In the 1900s Woodford had begun to grow northwards from the station, soon reaching and passing where the Hainault Loop diverged from the Epping line. Following local agitation and because of the distance between Woodford and Buckhurst Hill, the London North Eastern Railway opened a halt on the Loop, a short distance from the junction and named it Roding Valley. Eventually pressure from commuters in the new houses and the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board led to the proposal to extend the Central London line from its then terminus at Liverpool Street to Stratford and on to Leyton to join the Loughton line. At Leytonstone the new Tube would be made under Eastern Avenue as far as Newbury Park where the Underground would take over services on the Hainault Loop. Work was well underway from October 1936 when they stopped in 1940 because of the War. Plessey used the tunnels during the War for the manufacture of aircraft components, but after the War work began again and the first Tube trains were operated between Leytonstone and Newbury Park from Sunday 14th December 1947. LNER steam ran for the last time on Saturday 29th November 1947. Hainault was reached by Underground trains on 31st May 1948 and Woodford via Chigwell on 21st November 1948 when Roding Valley was first served by Central line trains and at this time it also lost its halt status. The connection between Newbury Park and the main line east of Ilford was disconnected on 17th March 1956. Much of the old track was filled to ground level to provide allotments. However, much of the uncovered land adjacent to the loop is in the London Green Belt which prevented large-scale building and any chance of increasing passenger numbers. To the east of the Central line there are almost no houses between Newbury Park and Hainault and to the north of the line between Hainault and Roding Valley, hence patronage of the line has never been as high as predicted. There has even been talk of closure over the years but the fact that there is the large Central line depot between Hainault and Grange Hill made this operationally impossible. A Central line train is about to set off around the last part of the Loop to Woodford.