Between the Norwich and Cambridge main lines and where Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex meet, Stanley C Jenkins offers an historical overview of the railway network that evolved from the Colchester, Stour Valley, Halstead & Sudbury Railway.
A glance at current maps reveal the 11¾ mile-long Sudbury branch as a lone railway west of the Liverpool Street to Norwich main line at Marks Tey, albeit a closer look reveals the East Anglian Railway Museum and its short demonstration line at Chapel & Wakes Colne and the mile-long Colne Valley Railway at Castle Hedingham arouses interest that there was once much, much more in terms of railway infrastructure hereabouts. In fact, three main lines bordered and connected with the secondary routes at the heart of this article and, as such, for a greater understanding of how the local network evolved, our story begins on 4 July 1836 when the Northern & Eastern Railway (N&ER) and the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) were both authorised by Act of Parliament.
The N&ER established a main line between Stratford and Bishops Stortford by 16 May 1842, while from 15 September 1840 the Eastern Counties Railway had offered the N&ER (at that time running only from Broxbourne) access through to its new Shoreditch terminus (later to be known as Bishopsgate). The ECR was now linking London and Brentwood, and it would extend from there to Colchester in 1843, with opening to goods on 7 March and to passengers on 29 March. The ECR station of Marks Tey was opened on this day and it is one of four main line junction stations that will be embraced within our wider Stour Valley story.
As for the Northern & Eastern Railway, it was initially 5ft gauge but in terms of operating its own lines – includin
