Roding Valley tube station

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Roding Valley
Location
Place	Woodford
Local authority	London Borough of Redbridge
Operations
Managed by	London Underground
Platforms in use	2
Annual entry/exit	0.198 million
Transport for London
Zone	5
History
1936	Opened as Roding Valley Halt
Transport for London List of London stations: Underground \| National Rail

Roding Valley is a London Underground station situated directly on the border between the Epping Forest district of Essex and the London Borough of Redbridge. For the purposes of fare charging it is in Zone 5. On 19 November 2006 service at the station was extended from 8 pm to approximately midnight. ^[1]

Roding Valley is served by the Central Line with services running between Woodford and Hainault and some services continuing onwards via Newbury Park to central London. It is the first station on the Hainault branch, which was originally a Great Eastern Railway (GER) line that ran from Woodford to Ilford and which opened on 1 May 1903. The station itself was opened as Roding Valley Halt by the London & North Eastern Railway, successors to the GER, on 3 February 1936 to service new housing developments between Buckhurst Hill and Woodford, and was named after the River Roding which is close by. The post-war extension of the Central Line meant that the LNER station closed on 29 November 1947, and Roding Valley re-opened on 21 November 1948 as a London Underground station. Woodford Junction, where the Hainault branch leaves the main Central Line to Epping, is very close to the station - Roding Valley's platforms are visible on the right hand side of the train soon after leaving Woodford station when travelling northbound.

From the mid 1960s until the early 1990s the Woodford-Hainault section was largely separately operated from the rest of the Central Line, using four car (later three car) trains of 1960 Stock. These trains were adapted for Automatic Train Operation (ATO); the Woodford-Hainault section became the testing ground for ATO on the Victoria Line. Some Victoria Line (1967 Stock) trains were also used to operate this section. The separate operation has now been abolished, the 1960 Stock withdrawn and through trains to Central London now operate.

Roding Valley is one of the most lightly used stations on the Underground, and since 5 February 2006 has been one of the small number of stations on the network to have no staffed ticket office. ^[2] Before this, the ticket office was only staffed for a few hours every week to allow the sale of period Travelcards and other season tickets.

Roding Valley station is located in Station Way and Cherry Tree Rise (off Buckhurst Way) and is served regularly by bus service 549 (as of June 2003).