14th May 2019 · Station to Station, Cambridge to London

Presenter: Terry Ward

For our final meeting of the season we welcomed Terry Ward, a photographer with a passion for architecture and history. He took us on a journey along his favourite line, the West Anglian Line from Cambridge to London Liverpool Street. Not only did we see the main route but Terry also gave us a look at some of the remaining architecture and infrastructure on closed lines along the way such as the Haverhill line, Saffron Walden line and the Bishops Stortford to Braintree line.

Starting at a much changed Cambridge station, we learnt of its origins and how it could have been much closer to the city centre but for the all powerful university. There was also a look at Coldhams Lane depot with a class 317 unit propelled inside by an 08 shunter.

Heading south, we saw views of all the stations to Bishops Stortford along with signal boxes, another of Terry’s interests. Beyond here, the station styles changed from Victorian Gothic and Edwardian to 1960s concrete at Harlow. Several of the stations were very neglected and Terry deemed them too uninteresting to show.

We saw the wetland nature reserve at Roydon and Rye House power station. Passing through the suburbs, !950s developments of flats were much in evidence along with more recent warehousing. At Tottenham Hale, the two platforms had been renumbered in somewhat hopeful anticipation of Crossrail 2. Liverpool Street was still basically the Victorian gem we remembered although outside, Crossrail development was still much in evidence.

For many of us, this was a nostalgic journey where we learnt more about some of the sights along the route thanks to Terry’s research and interests in all things architectural and historical.