Tring railway station

History

Tring station was opened by the London and Birmingham Railway on 16th October 1837 when the L&BR extended its line out of London beyond Boxmoor to Tring. The first train to Tring ran from Primrose Hill at 9:00 am on 16 October 1837, reaching Tring at 10:10 am. On 15 November 1844, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made their first train journey north from Euston, reaching Tring in 52 minutes where the train stopped to take on water. Despite rain, the appearance of the royal train attracted crowds of farm labourers and local children, to the Queen's delight. It is reported the after this stop, Victoria asked that the speed of her train be reduced.

The L&BR was constructed by the railway engineer Robert Stephenson. He originally planned a route which would have taken the new railway to the east of Tring, but vociferous opposition from influential local landowners such as the Earl of Essex, Earl of Clarendon, Lord Brownlow and Sir Astley Cooper delayed the project and forced the route to be changed before parliamentary approval could be obtained, with the result that Tring railway station had to be sited some distance from the town. The remote location of Tring station is sometimes wrongly attributed to objections which were said to have been made by Lord Rothschild to protect his land in Tring; in fact, Lord Rothschild was not born until 1840, three years after the railway had opened and the Tring lands were only acquired by his father Lionel in 1872. He did, however, object to a much later plan to build a steam tramway between Tring Station and Aylesbury. Tring station's distance from the town would have been greater had the L&BR placed the station at Pitstone Green, some 3 miles further north, as it originally planned to do. The preferred location at Pendley required purchasing land from the Comte d’Harcourt, another landowner reluctant to admit the railways to his estate, and he demanded such an exorbitant price that the L&BR selected a cheaper but less convenient plot of land. The townspeople of Tring were so enthusiastic for a railway that in 1837 they raised funds to bridge the difference in price between what the Company was prepared to pay and the price demanded by the Harcourt estate. They also supported the construction of a new road to the station and according to the 1839 issue of the Railway Times, "As soon as the Company had determined upon making it a first class station (where every train stops), the inhabitants came forward in a very spirited manner, and at their own expense formed a new road direct to the town".

Tring station originally intended as a destination of a branch of the Metropolitan Railway (MR). A short section of the branch from Chalfont and Latimer to Chesham was built in 1887-89 before the MR chose to construct an alternative route across the Chilterns via Aylesbury instead. Although the MR continued to buy land between Chesham and Tring for some years after Chesham station opened, the route was never extended further and today Chesham remains as a branch line terminus of Transport for London's Metropolitan line.

Services

Tring lies on a major commuter route into central London and most West Coast Main Line train services run directly into London Euston. It is the terminus of many slower London Midland trains out of Euston and platform 4 provides a turnaround for these trains. Tring is served by a few evening trains to and from Birmingham, and one early morning train to Crewe on weekdays and Saturdays, but most of the trains which serve the station go no further than Milton Keynes Central. It is also served by an hourly cross-London service which runs via the West London Line to serve stations in South London.

The typical off-peak services in each direction are:

Mondays-Saturdays

Sundays

Future services

In the London & South East Rail Utilisation Strategy document published by Network Rail in 2011, Tring was identified as a terminus of a possible northern extension of the Crossrail lines now under construction in central London. The report recommends the addition of a tunnel in the vicinity of the proposed station at Old Oak Common connecting the Crossrail route to the West Coast Mainline. The diversion of rail services through central London would enable a direct link from stations such as Tring to West End stations such as Tottenham Court Road and would alleviate congestion at Euston station; Crossrail services currently planned to terminate at Paddington due to capacity constraints would also be able to continue further west, allowing for a more efficient use of the line. This proposal has not been officially confirmed or funded, although an announcement made in August 2014 by the transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin indicated that the government was actively evaluating the possibility of extending Crossrail as far as Tring and Milton Keynes Central.