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The remote railway station that gets 54 return trains to Central London every day

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date14 August 2022
Publication titleMyLondon (England)
You'll find it on the very southern border of Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, just six stops away from St Pancras International on the fastest train -it's called Ashwell & Morden. Don't be fooled by the name though, the station is actually two miles from the village of Ashwell, down a country lane with no footpath, and 'Morden' doesn't exist. Three miles north are the villages of Steeple Morden and Guilden Morden which lend the station part of its name

In the immediate vicinity of the station, known as the hamlet of Odsey, there are 15 residential properties, a restaurant-hotel, an industrial yard and two petrol stations. There's also the Grade II-listed Odsey Grange country home which dates back to 1793. So, you might be thinking just why such a remote location gets so many trains...

Well, don't hold your breath. From September, the station will be losing around a third of its trains. Currently it gets two stopping trains which serve King's Cross, Finsbury Park, Potters Bar and all stations to Cambridge, plus a third semi-fast train between Brighton, Central London and Cambridge. One of the 'stoppers' is being cut short at Letchworth.

The station, with its 41 car parking spaces and village shuttle bus at peak hours, used to have a significant commuter passenger flow from villages a few miles away but as homeworking has reduced this demand, the village shuttle bus has been scrapped and passenger numbers are stagnating. Between 2019/20 and 2020/21, station usage figures plummeted from 159,000 per year to just below 35,000 -a whopping 78 per cent drop, more than most...

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