The

Saffron Walden Saffron Walden is a market town and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England, north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and north of London. It retains a rural appearance and some buildings of the medieval period. Th ...

Railway was a branch of 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 ...

between

Audley End Audley End House is a largely early 17th-century country house outside Saffron Walden, Essex, England. It is a prodigy house, known as one of the finest Jacobean houses in England. Audley End is now one-third of its original size, but is st ...

and

Bartlow Bartlow is a small village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district of Cambridgeshire, England, about south-east of Cambridge and west of Haverhill, Suffolk, Haverhill in Suffolk. The River Granta run ...

on the

Stour Valley Railway The Stour Valley Railway is a partially closed railway line that ran between , near Cambridge, and in Essex, England. The line opened in sections between 1849 and 1865. The route from Shelford to Sudbury closed on 6 March 1967 leaving only ...

between Shelford to Haverhill, a distance of .

Branch information

Opening

The line was opened between Audley End and Saffron Walden on 21 November 1865 and to Bartlow in 1866.

Operation and services

The line was the initiative of the local Gibson family whose bank helped to finance the railway. It remained independent until 1 January 1877 when the Great Eastern Railway purchased the line. The

Engineer's Line Reference An Engineer's Line Reference (ELR) is a three alpha, or four alpha-numeric, code used to uniquely identify a railway line on the main-line railway of Britain owned, or maintained, by Network Rail but official railway records retain the ELR code ...

for the line is AEB. Initially, there were six return trains a day and, between 1877 and 1894, trains operated between Saffron Walden and London. Coaches dating from the 1890s operated on the line until the 1950s. From July 1958, the line was operated by

railbuses A railbus is a lightweight passenger railcar with an automotive engine. It shares many aspects of its construction with a bus, typically having a bus (original or modified) body and four wheels (2 axles) on a fixed base instead of on bogies. O ...

until closure.

Closure

The line closed to passengers on 7 September 1964 and to freight three months later. At Audley End, services used a separate platform, the building of which still remains, in the current car park ().

References

External links

Slideshow of station photographs including some on Saffron Walden Railway
* {{subbrit, a/audley_end/index.shtml

Rail transport in Essex Rail transport in Cambridgeshire Railway lines opened in 1865 Railway companies disestablished in 1877 Closed railway lines in the East of England Saffron Walden British companies disestablished in 1877