History
See also: Witham-Maldon branch lineOriginally constructed from Maldon to Braintree via Witham, only the line from Witham to Braintree remains open. The line was proposed by the Maldon, Witham & Braintree Railway Co and given Royal Assent in June 1846. The company was purchased by Eastern Counties Railway and the line opened in 1848.
The section from Maldon to Witham was constructed as dual track however one track was lifted during the period of the Crimean War (1854-6) and sold to the War Office.
The Bishop's Stortford-Braintree Branch Line, also built by the Great Eastern Railway, was opened in 1869 creating a route from Maldon through to the West Anglia Main Line.
The line was extended from Maldon to South Woodham Ferrers in 1889. In 1923, both lines became part of the London and North Eastern Railway.
During the Second World war the passenger services on the section between Maldon East and Woodham Ferrers line were withdrawn and never reinstated and the .
The Bishop's Stortford-Braintree Branch Line closed for passenger traffic in 1952 and then to freight traffic in 1971. The Maldon East to Witham section was closed for passenger traffic with the Beeching axe in 1964 although goods service on that section continued until 1966.
National Express East Anglia replaced the previous operator, First Great Eastern, on 1 April 2004, when all the operators in East Anglia were merged into one new franchise.
Read more about this topic: Braintree Branch Line
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)