Gerrards Cross railway station

Infobox UK station
name = Gerrards Cross


manager = Chiltern Railways
locale = Gerrards Cross
borough = South Bucks
usage0405 = 0.953
usage0506 = 0.829
usage0607 = 1.000
platforms = 2
code = GER
start = 1906

Gerrards Cross railway station serves the villages of Gerrards Cross and Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire. It is sited in a cutting, on the Chiltern Main Line between Denham Golf Club and Seer Green and Jordans.

It provides fast rail access to London Marylebone and to High Wycombe and Birmingham Snow Hill. Although its name has long been merely "Gerrards Cross", its original name was "Gerrards Cross for the Chalfonts". A single weekday service to London Paddington starts at the station, arriving in London at 1043 hrs (as of July 2008), running non-stop from West Ruislip. It traverses the rarely used former main line between Northolt Park Junction and Old Oak Common Junction, in many places reduced to a single track. This section is used more frequently by freight and waste trains, and also diversions during engineering works. There is an equivalent service from Paddington departing there at 1112 hrs, which runs non-stop to Gerrards Cross, but this train terminates some way to the north at Princes Risborough.

History

The station was built as part of the construction of the GWR/GCR joint line in the first years of the 20th century, and opened in April 1906, along with many other stations on the line. The cutting is particularly deep in order for the railway to meet the gradient profile requirements of the line, which defined a very shallow maximum gradient to allow for fast running with steam-hauled trains. The original station layout was four track, with two through roads and two platform roads. A small goods yard lay to the north of the line. This has now gone, but services from Marylebone which terminate at Gerrards Cross use the siding there.

The new line and station virtually created the present Gerrards Cross; the original settlement lay for the most part along the Oxford Road.

Tunnel works

A development by the Tesco supermarket chain is turning the cutting on the London side of the station into a tunnel by the use of large concrete ring segments to form the tunnel profile. The space on top of these segments is to be filled in to form a ground surface on which the new supermarket can be constructed. Many of the town's residents do not view this development with favour.

Service Interruption

At 19:35 on 30 June 2005 20 m of the tunnel roof near its eastern end collapsed, depositing failed tunnel segment fragments and many tonnes of infill material on the track. News pictures showed that the concrete segments adjoining the hole which were still in place appeared to have an unhealthy downwards bow at the point where two segments met.

A Marylebone-bound train was standing at the eastbound platform at the moment of collapse; its driver saw the collapse and raised the alarm, thereby having all traffic stopped. No-one was injured. A westbound train which had left Denham had to make an emergency stop between stations, and reversed back to Denham Golf Club to allow its passengers to alight. Again, no-one was injured.

Service Restoration

Following work on removing infill material and various concrete segments, both those which actually failed and those which were judged to be unsafe but which did not actually collapse, the trackwork and signalling system were restored. Train services resumed from start of normal timetable on Saturday 20 August 2005.

Gerrards Cross railway station celebrated its centenary year in 2006.

External links

* BBC News Online - [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/4639671.stm Tunnel collapses onto rail line]
* [http://tescotunnel.co.uk Information and news on the Gerrards Cross Tunnel]
* [http://www.blitzandblight.com/england/southeast/tescotunnel/ blitzandblight.com / Tesco tunnel]

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