Place Reedham Station code REE DfT category F1 Number of platforms 2 Original company Eastern Counties Railway | Grid reference TG413022 Managed by Abellio Greater Anglia 2011/12 43,870 | |
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Address Reedham, Norwich NR13 3EZ, United Kingdom Similar Cantley railway station, Acle railway station, Lowestoft railway station, Great Yarmouth Beach, Joyland | ||
Reedham (Norfolk) railway station is a railway station serving the village of Reedham in the English county of Norfolk. The station is located on the Norwich-Lowestoft and Norwich-Great Yarmouth Wherry Lines.
The station is served by Abellio Greater Anglia, with majority of services operating between Norwich and Lowestoft. A few services operate to Great Yarmouth via the remote Berney Arms station. This line diverges from the Lowestoft route just east of the station at Reedham Junction. Services are mainly operated by diesel multiple units of Classes 153, 156, or 170 with some hauled trains pulled by class 68 and class 37 locomotives.
The station is referred to as Reedham (Norfolk) by National Rail to distinguish it from Reedham (Surrey) railway station in Purley, London.
History
The Bill for the Yarmouth & Norwich Railway (Y&NR) received Royal Assent on 18 June 1842. Work started on the line in April 1843 and the line and its stations were opened on 1 May 1844. Reedham station opened with the line and was, as it is now, situated east of Cantley station and west of Berney Arms station. The Y&NR was the first public railway line in Norfolk. On 30 June 1845 a Bill authorising the amalgamation of the Y&NR with the Norwich & Brandon Railway came into effect and Reedham station became a Norfolk Railway asset.
In 1845 an Act incorporated the Lowestoft Railway & Harbour Company (LR&HC). In 1846 the LR&HC was leased to the Norfolk Railway (NR) and work started on building a line from Lowestoft, in Suffolk to join the Yarmouth & Norwich line South-East of Reedham. On 1 July 1847 the NR opens the Lowestoft to Reedham line. The station south-east of Reedham on the line to Lowestoft was Haddiscoe.
A couple of months after the Lowestoft line opened the next station west, Cantley Station was closed by the Norfolk Railway.
The Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) and its rival the Eastern Union Railway (EUR) were both sizing up the NR to acquire and expand their railway empire. The ECR trumped the EUR by taking over the NR, including Reedham Station on 8 May 1848.
Three years after the ECR took over, during January 1851, the ECR reopened Cantley Station.
By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble, and most were leased to the Eastern Counties Railway, which wished to amalgamate formally but could not obtain government agreement for this until an Act of Parliament on 7 August 1862, when the Great Eastern Railway (GER) was formed by the amalgamation. Actually, Reedham became a GER station on 1 July 1862 when the GER took over the ECR and the EUR before the Bill received the Royal Assent.
By the 1st decade of the last Century the GER started building new stations at Reedham and at Haddiscoe. On 9 May 1904 Haddiscoe Station was closed and replaced by Haddiscoe Low Level on a new site. On 1 June 1904 the GER opened today's Reedham Station and closed the Y&NR station which was 300 metres East of the new station.
The system settled down for the next 17 years, apart from the disruption of First World War. The difficult economic circumstances that existed after World War 1 led the Government to pass the Railways Act 1921 which led to the creation of the Big Four. The GER was absorbed into the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER). Reedham became a LNER station on 1 January 1923.
In 1928 the LNER renamed Reedham as Reedham-Norfolk to distinguish it from the Southern Railway station of Reedham-Surrey.
A generation later, in 1947, the Government of the day passed the Transport Act which nationalised the Big Four and created British Railways (BR). On 1 January 1948 Reedham-Norfolk became a BR station.
Following privatisation of the railways, Railtrack became responsible for infrastructure maintenance in 1994. Following Railtrack's financial problems Network Rail took over operation of the infrastructure in 2002.
The operation of the line was privatised in 1997 when the franchise was awarded to Anglia Railways, which operated it until April 2004 when National Express East Anglia won the replacement franchise, operating under the brand name 'one' until February 2008. From February 2012 Abellio Greater Anglia took over operating the franchise.