Watford and Rickmansworth Railway

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The Watford and Rickmansworth Railway Company (WRR) was a short-lived company that ran services between Watford and Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, England. It was incorporated in 1860 and the line actually opened in 1862.

Contents 1 The original railway 2 Rickmansworth branch 3 Croxley Green branch 4 Services that never happened

[edit] The original railway

The line had three stations, Watford Junction, Watford High Street, and Rickmansworth (Church Street), and its depot was situated on Wiggenhall Road in Watford.

The railway was not financially successful, despite attempts to remedy their financial problems by opening several freight branches; the most notable being to the Croxley printers and to the Grand Union Canal at Croxley Green. The company was eventually absorbed in 1881 by the burgeoning London and North Western Railway (LNWR) whose station they shared at Watford Junction.

[edit] Rickmansworth branch

The Rickmansworth branch was also eventually electrified and was for some time worked by tube trains which had been part of a batch jointly owned by the LNWR and the London Electric Railway Company (LER); this was done to cope with the voltage drop caused by the branch being supplied only from the Watford end. Passenger services ceased in 1952 and most of the branch closed entirely in 1960 although track remained in place for a number of years afterward. The Ebury Way Cycle Path now uses part of the trackbed.

[edit] Croxley Green branch

The LNWR expanded the passenger services by opening the Croxley Green branch in 1912, eventually electrifying it in association with their New Line project. The line has now followed the Rickmansworth branch into history after services were gradually reduced to an occasional taxi after a new road severed the line. There are current proposals (with much discussion but so far little physical evidence of a practical end) to incorporate most of the branch into a diversion of the Watford branch of the London Underground (LU) Metropolitan Line to Watford Junction station. By the early 1990's just before closure, the service along the branch at first was experimented for 1 or 2 trains an hour along the branch, but the experiment was a failure and so by then, the service along the branch was just one train a day at 7:00am.

[edit] Services that never happened

As well as current plans involving extension of the LU Metropolitan line, there have been other propositions involving the WRR:-

As part of the proposals for the unbuilt Watford and Edgware Railway, the line could have been extended onwards from Rickmansworth in the direction of High Wycombe. At one point there was also a plan to create a west London bypass railway from Staines to Watford, via West Drayton and Denham.