Roudham Junction railway station

Roudham Junction railway station was a station in Norfolk, England. It was located in Roudham, where the Main Line between Norwich and Thetford intercepted the branch line from Swaffham. Today a few remnants of the former station can be glimpsed from the passing trains.

The Bill for the Norwich & Brandon Railway (N&BR) received Royal Assent on 10 May 1844. Work started on the line in 1844 and the line and its stations were opened on 30 July 1845. One month before the line opened Roudham station opened with the line and was situated east of Thetford station and west of Harling station. The line ran from Ely to Trowse, in Norwich. The link into Norwich was delayed due to the need to build a bridge over the River Wensum that kept the river navigable. One month before the N&BR opened a Bill authorising the amalgamation of the Yarmouth & Norwich Railway with the N&BR came into effect and so Roudham station became a Norfolk Railway asset.

The 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 Roudham Station on 8 May 1848.

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, Roudham 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.

6 years after the GER was formed work started on a branch line from the Ely to Norwich line towards Swaffham leaving the main line at Roudham. The line opened on 18 October 1869. Roudham station was renamed Roudham Junction.

The system settled down for the next 3 decades, until the beginning of the 20th Century. Passenger numbers at Roudham Junction began to decline. The First World War was disruptive and costly to all UK railways. The GER decided to stop main line trains calling at Roudham Junction in 1920. The 1918-1922 Government decided that the straitened economic circumstances of the early-1920s led to them to pass the Railways Act 1921 which created the Big Four. The GER was absorbed into the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER). Roudham Junction became a LNER station on 1 January 1923.

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 Roudham Junction became a BR station.

15 years later BR, as part of the Beeching rationalisation plan closed the Roudham Junction and Swaffham line including Roudham Junction station on 15 June 1964.