Edmonton Green station

Edmonton Green station runs to the west of The Broadway with the main entrance and ticket office being on the corner with Church Street and a secondary entrance just beyond the bridge in Church Street (used when the ticket office is closed). The station opened in 1872 as Edmonton and was renamed in 1883 to Lower Edmonton. After 110 years of being called Lower Edmonton, which always seemed quite reasonable for a station slap bang in the middle of Lower Edmonton, the train station was renamed in 1992 to Edmonton Green. At the time it was seriously suggested that this would encourage people to come from far and wide to visit the shopping centre. The real problem of course is that the shopping centre just doesn't have the sort of shops and facilities that will entice people to visit it from any great distance.

The photos above are intended to show the location of the station on The Broadway and mainly focus on the entrance hall. The photos on the left show the new signage in WAGN corporate colours that appeared in mid-2002. It was felt necessary to suggest that this was to improve the visibility of the station so I also show how the station looked before for comparison. Since anyone going to the station would have a pretty good idea of its rough location I can't see that they would have had any problems detecting it as it was and I think I preferred the old roof line.

The view on the right hand photo would not be familiar to those who haven't seen the station since the early 1970s as there would have been shops lining the the road all the length of the station where there is now green space.

The station seems to have survived the years remarkably well. Some rooms and things may be locked or boarded up but the structure is still there, unlike so many others on the line. Even the booking office grafted on the front seems to fit well, and indeed I'd forgotten it must be a relatively modern addition or when it was added. The canopy has been relatively sympathetically treated as well and although not the 1872 original it has a similar look to it. Don't believe what you might read in the Edmonton Heritage Trail leaflet, I remember watching the decorative wooden bits at the edge being replaced many, many years ago (though at least they tried to copy the originals) and the roof itself is clearly a modern sheet material which to be fair might date from after the leaflet was published in 1996. I understand that there used to be a signal cabin at the country end of the up platform.

A little more effort on the platform paint jobs would have been nice. At one stage the station was given the full 'Network South-East' treatment and lots of red 'furniture' appeared. The most recent paint job when the photos below were taken was the (then) blue, white and yellow of 'West Anglia Great Northern' (they had a triangular navy, gold, white and black logo). Unfortunately though they painted the lamp posts and the bottom of the station signs (where the paint flaked off) they seemingly didn't dare paint over the red of the camera and monitor boxes or the clocks or indicator boards. Also look closely at the ornamental work at the top of the columns and you may be able to spot that on the trackside of the pillar it only ever got undercoated and even then they didn't get too close to the track. In other words they couldn't be bothered to finish the job properly.

The above pictures were taken on a sunday morning in August 2000 when resurfacing work was ongoing. It wasn't quite that much of a mess normally. They basically replaced all the paving slabs with tarmac. The end result is much better than the uneven surface it had before. The first two are taken from the north end of the up platform to London Liverpool Street looking south. The third is taken from the end of the main part of the platform (before the wooden decked part) looking the other way. The railway bridge over Church Street can just be seen in the background. This is a new one dropped in over the weekend in the last few years (can't remember when exactly). In fact there are four spans as the two track beds and the two sides and walkways are separate.

The station received a new paint job during early 2001. It was painted grey, of all colours, and again the job wasn't what I would call finished, though at least the cameras and monitors etc were painted this time. I was thinking it might be undercoat the first time I saw it but other stations on the line also received the same paint job and one or two had new station signs. The new WAGN look is purple and a dark blue (towards the purple side of the spectrum) with the logo being 'wagn' in lower case. I think the change may be related to the take over of WAGN by National Express.

In 2002 the station received a lot more attention, indeed no less than a £200,000 revamp. A small cafe opened on the up platform in the old waiting room, new platform cameras and monitors were installed, WAGN signage appeared and there were more bench seats on the platform walls. It is said the toilets have been refurbished and reopened (I have never looked) and platform staff have been reinstated. The grey paintwork that was already deteriorating looks like it may have been touched up (it is still not finished in my opinion) but the most incredible thing is that despite there being a new dot matrix train indicator board in the booking hall (where the large flat screen monitor was clear and effective and normally working fine), the semi-knackered platform train indicators that often just display a message about a communication fault were still there (see later).

The exterior has been repaved and has new seats, bicycle lockers are available in the roofless part of the passageway (which now has steel railings instead of solid brick walls), there is a new sign with WAGN colours under the old white on red inter-city logo, the wall out the front has been rebuilt and has an opening with steps again (great if you are running for the train from the Church Street side) and 'Edmonton Green Station' displayed on it and the stairwells and passageways are better lit and brighter. Even the Church Street entrance has been improved. In early July 2002 the most striking change was that outside the roof line now has 'wagn Edmonton Green' signage in the corporate colours.

Earlier I mentioned the hopeless train indicators on the platforms. These remained until May 2003 at least but when I passed through in July I noticed they had at last been replaced. Instead of the two lines of large text favoured for the dot matrix displays installed on other stations on the line, they have gone for a compact display featuring four lines and a double height clock (this type is now in use at Silver Street too).This is good in that information about the next and second train is presented neatly without needing to alternate between different information. The disadvantage is that you can't read it from any great distance at all. This wasn't an issue for the first couple of months as the two large digital clocks hadn't been removed and obscured them anyway.

In late 2004 a new room was being constructed in the booking hall and lots of new electrical trunking was being installed all over the place. This is presumably for CCTV. There are also supposed to be new toilets being installed. This could be what the new room in the booking hall is as those on the up platform are probably beyond help.

Some may wonder about the structure in the photo above which sits on the down platform and appeared after the resignalling of the line c. 2002. Older readers might remember that there used to be a simpler structure in roughly the same location that disappeared a few years previously. It is actually called a "banner repeater" and it indicates the aspect of the next signal. It displays a horizontal black bar on a white background for stop (next signal red), or a diagonal one for proceed (next signal yellow , double yellow, or green).  For many years there were two sets of signals side by side the platform end but after the resignalling the signal was moved about thirty yards or so down the line. As the platforms are slightly curved and the line bends away even further this signal is not visible from a distance so the banner repeater is there to indicate what it is showing.

It is also worth noting that, following the resignalling, it is usually the case that automatic route selection is being used. To cut a long story short this means that on the down line the signal clears to a single yellow and stays there as Bury Street Junction remains protected by a red. When a train is approaching the route ahead is set automatically and the single then clears to green. This seems to happen when a train enters Silver Street. On the up line the exit signal at Silver Street stays red and this leaves the signal at Edmonton Green on double yellow. An approaching train triggers the clearing of the route and the signal turns green. So it works out that if the signal turns green a train is likely to appear in about fifteen seconds.  I find knowing this is very useful.