Cressing railway station is on the Braintree Branch Line in the

East of England East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise, Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact ...

, serving the villages of

Cressing Cressing is a village and civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex, England. Within the parish is the village of Tye Green and the hamlet of Hawbush Green. Cressing Temple is south from Cressing village, and less than 1 mile east fro ...

and

Black Notley Black Notley is a village and civil parish in Essex, England. It is located approximately south of Braintree, Essex, Braintree and is north-northeast from the county town of Chelmsford. According to the 2011 census including Young's End it ha ...

, Essex. It is down the line from

London Liverpool Street Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street, is a major central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London, in the ward of Bishopsgate Without. It is ...

via and it is situated between to the south and to the north. Its three-letter station code is CES. The platform has an operational length for nine-coach trains. The station is currently managed by

Greater Anglia Greater Anglia (legal name Transport UK East Anglia Limited) is a British train operating company owned as a joint venture by Transport UK Group and Mitsui & Co. It operates the East Anglia franchise, providing the commuter and inter-city se ...

, which also operates all trains serving it.

History

The Maldon, Witham & Braintree Railway (MWBR) was authorised in 1846 but prior to its opening the company was absorbed by the

Eastern Counties Railway The Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) was an English railway company incorporated in 1836 intended to link London with Ipswich via Colchester, and then extend to Norwich and Yarmouth. Construction began in 1837 on the first at the London end. Co ...

(ECR). The line opened for goods traffic on 15 August 1848, and for passenger services on 2 October 1848; it was double-tracked throughout until the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

. The station, originally named Bulford, was also opened on 2 October 1848. It was renamed Cressing on 1 February 1911. It is suggested that the large crossing gates were present because Cressing had a

passing loop A passing loop (UK usage) or passing siding (North America) (also called a crossing loop, crossing place, refuge loop or, colloquially, a hole) is a place on a single line railway or tramway, often located at or near a station, where trains o ...

until after

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, and retained the loop for freight purposes until goods traffic ceased on the line in 1964. The station was owned by the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

(GER) from 1862 to 1923, but as the building does not show typical GER architectural canopy support features, it is likely that it pre-dates the GER. Although there does not appear to be any obvious evidence (as in the case of Maldon East & Heybridge which displays "MWB" on the gulleys at the top of its downpipes) that it was built when the line first opened, that is a possibility and if so would make it the only surviving MWBR structure on this railway. There was originally a

signal box A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

on the platform, next to the

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line or the road etc. crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, o ...

. This was removed and relocated to the preserved

Colne Valley Railway The Colne Valley Railway is a heritage railway based at Castle Hedingham Station, near Halstead in Essex, England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island ...

Castle Hedingham Castle Hedingham is a village in northern Essex, England, located four miles west of Halstead and 3 miles southeast of Great Yeldham in the River Colne, Essex, Colne Valley on the ancient road from Colchester, Essex, to Cambridge. It develope ...

in the 1970s. Cressing Station Signal Box Derby DMU

Services

All services at Cressing are operated by

using

EMUs Emus may refer to: * Emu The emu (; ''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is a species of flightless bird endemism, endemic to Australia, where it is the Tallest extant birds, tallest native bird. It is the only extant taxon, extant member of the ...

. The typical off-peak service is one train per hour in each direction between and

via with additional services calling at the station during the peak hours. On Sundays, southbound services at the station run only as far as Witham.

References

External links

More pictures on Flickr
{{Railway stations served by Abellio Greater Anglia Railway stations in Essex DfT Category F2 stations Former Great Eastern Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1848 Railway stations served by Greater Anglia