News from the East Anglian Branch of Railfuture, edited by Martin Thorne and Jerry Alderson.
Railfuture News Snippets 400 - 31/07/2026
- STATIONS [all issues]
- Stansted Express to trial ovenright Friday trains during summer 2026 to evaluate demand for permanent service
- Public meeting in Waterbeach hears about progress of new housing development and plans for 'relocated' station
- WEBSITES AND APPS [all issues]
To be added.
STATIONS
Stansted Express to trial ovenright Friday trains during summer 2026 to evaluate demand for permanent service
Keywords: [StanstedExpress]
Greater Anglia will be trialling overnight Friday Stansted Express trains during summer 2026 for airport passengers arriving at London Stansted Airport, and for those travelling for early Saturday morning flights. The additional services will run every Friday night into Saturday morning from Friday 3rd July until Friday 25th September 2026. The trial will see additional trains run approximately every 30 minutes between around 23:50 and 05:00, helping passengers who may otherwise have fewer public transport options late at night or in the early hours of the morning. Most trains will run between Stansted Airport and Tottenham Hale, where customers can connect with the Victoria line Night Tube for onward travel across the capital. Some early morning services will continue through to, or start from, London Liverpool Street station. The trial will help Stansted Express understand customer demand for overnight airport rail services before any decisions are made about opportunities for any overnight services operating on a long term basis.
Closer joint planning between Greater Anglia and Network Rail Anglia has enabled railway teams to review and adjust engineering plans.
Public meeting in Waterbeach hears about progress of new housing development and plans for 'relocated' station
Keywords: [WaterbeachStation]
A public meeting, chaired by Councillor Anna Bradnam, was held in a packed room in Waterbeach on Wednesday 1 July 2026 to brief the village residents about progress of the new town development, north of the village and the plans for the railway station. The meeting began with the housing and water issues, and the station was discussed last. The meeting overran.
Just like Cambridge North and Cambridge South, the station will be built down to a price. The difference with those two stations is that money was no object for operational reasons but passengers were third class, if that. With the new Waterbeach station there are no infrastructure changes required (other than signalling), just the station and its approaches/facilities.
Many would suggest that if you want to convince users of an existing station to switch to a new station (and to weaken their case for objecting at any public inquiry) then you need to make the new station far better (as the East West Rail Company appears to be doing on the Marston Vale line when it consolidates nine stations into four). The new station will not be much better, and in some ways worse.
It was already known that the platforms would only be eight carriages long. The cheapest time to extend it is when it is being constructed, but let's not go there. Because they do not want to move the signalling if it is lengthened in the future (strike-in points for the AHB level crossings are fixed) then platforms would have to be extended to the north.
Both the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) and Network Rail (NR) representatives (Charles Baker was the latter) referred to the "relocated" station (not "new" station). They are very much of the mindset that the current station will close.
Councillor Anna Bradham, who represents the area, said that she has been working hard to get facilities at the new station, such as a waiting shelter, toilets and refreshments. These had not originally been intended. There is "cover" on the southbound platform — this consists only of a canopy — no protection at all from the side (e.g. wind, rain, snow), although a glass wall might be installed (much of the station design is still to be planned). The shortish canopy will be south of the footbridge (which have fully covered stairs — that's good, and rare) but it was unclear to the audience if there would also be a canopy north of the lifts (no-one asked the speakers to confirm). A good point was made about people using the waiting room to be protected from the elements having to wait on the western (down) side and rushing to get to the western (up) side to board the train. That might be OK for the able bodied, but not many others, and imagine lots of people all dashing up the stairs, along the platform, and down the stairs at the same time. At least on the existing Waterbeach station platforms there are largely enclosed shelters, albeit unable to take more than about a dozen people. It was confirmed that there would be no ticket gates (ATGs), so people wouldn't be delayed getting into and out of the station. In fact, it would be unstaffed (although the design referred to staff welfare facilities).
Someone from the audience pointed out that the new station would have many more passengers than the current one, but it doesn't seem to have any more capacity for them.
A persistent questioner was concerned about climate change and wanted solar power to be used at the station, as it is at Cambridge North and South stations, suggesting it be installed on the canopy. This is not intended, although it is possible that the waiting room would have solar panels. It would not generate enough power for the station. No one made the point that if the canopy was much longer and was on both platforms then it couls possibly do so.
The planning application for the eastern development requires the station to be 'open' before the first house can be occupied, along with a road from the A10 to the station.
The archaeological work for the railway (but not for Anglia Water's pumping centre) has been completed, and the access road to bring materials for the station has been built. Construction should begin around September 2026 with completion in early 2028 (a little longer then the 10 months that Soham station took). The expected opening date was May 2028 according to the first speaker but "summer/autumn 2028" on the slides about the station.
Charles Baker (NR's sponsor for the station) said what he had to say (the official line), the basis of which is that timetabling is a challenge to fit around limited capacity, referring to more than 50% of the cost of Cambridge South station being mitigations to offset the dwell time (i.e. four tracking, line speed increase at Shepreth Branch Junction and using Cambridge station's fourth track under Hills Road). As an example of the challenge he referred to the conflict of serving people wanting to travel from York to London versus commuters from Royston to London. Interestingly he said that there are around 50 stations in various stages of development. The flaw in Charles' 'not possible' argument is that he assumed every train would stop at both stations. One could argue that if the service was frequent enough then they could alternate so that no service stopped at both. In that case there would be no dwell time impact. Another flaw in his argument was that the time penalty isn't just slowing down, stopping and starting, but also passengers alighting and boarding. The latter would take less time if the passenger load was split between two stations. A decision on shutting the station solely because of timetabling (this was not stated at the meeting — cost is probably an issue) is being done within a silo — if the Ely Area Capacity Enhancement (EACE) scheme was implemented then the timetable would be more flexible — one of the three killer capacity constraints (Downham Market-Littleport single track, Ely North Junction single-lead junctions and Welwyn two-track section) would be resolved (at least partially). They had seemingly dismissed the Railfuture proposal for a turnback at the new station, which would have enabled trains to reliably start on time there without imported delay from further up the line. Suffice to say the audience was not impressed by the NR attitude.
Three would be a gap of 18 months, or so, between the new station opening and the first house being occupied. Yet, they seemingly intend to open the new station — and therefore close the current (180-year-old) one — at the earliest opportunity, rather than schedule it for the first arrivals of the eastern development, for which it is a planning requirement.
It is not known how many people from the western development would use the new station, of course, and their existence might well justify the new station opening as soon as possible, but that was not mentioned. It seems foolish to switch from the old to new station overnight so that a few people can benefit and the majority lose out. Any sane approach would surely be to slowly ramp up the services calling at the new station and slowly reduce the services calling at the existing one, monitoring how usage changes and acting accordingly.
The people at the meeting were from Waterbeach, so no-one mentioned people in Horningsea and other places, who will in future need to drive through the village. Cambridge North is an option for them (if they can fight their way through the traffic entering Cambridge from the A14 in the morning peak and vice versa in the afternoon), but the railway has no joined up thinking — what car parking capacity at Cambridge North will there be for such people? People on the western side of Waterbrach may find the time to drive a bit further along the A10 and turn right will be similar to turning right at Car Dyke Road and crawling through the village.
Final approval for a station closure comes from the Office of Rail and Road, after the Secretary of State has evaluated the consultation responses. No mention was made during the meeting of there being a public inquiry as part of the closure process.
WEBSITES AND APPS
Excellent website shows location of all trains in Britain with timings inclding lateness
The https://map.signalbox.io website provides an interactive live map of the national rail network in Britain showing where all currently running trains are, which direciton they are travelling in, and whether theyu are on time or late. You can click on each train to see full routing and live scheduling. It is useful but also addictive. Features include the ability to find the train that you are on using your location.
This website has similar functionality to https://bustimes.org/map, which covers buses.
Additional content will be added to this page.
Railfuture East Anglia Branch News Snippets 400 - 31/07/2026
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