Ware Online Community Forum

The current Rail Strategy Cosultation being undertaken by the County Council includes a proposal to double-track the line at Ware Station and build a second platform.

http://www.hertsdirect.org/docs/doc/r/railstratdraftdoc

What would be the point of that? The money could be better spent on real improvements!

They actually intend to 'reinstate'. the second platform at Ware. As far as I am aware
there never was a second platform here, the station was built as it is now ie one
platform. Then to state that this is responsible for the currant timetabling restrictions ..
Surely it can't be beyond the wit of man to run more than 2 trains per hour each way as
they do now. The whole branch is not single line after all, just a 1/2 mile or so.

I bet the person responsible for the report has never been to Ware station. How on earth do you put a second platform there? Knock the station itself down? I remember the first time I came to Ware on the train and going back into London I asked which platform the train stopped at! That was 43 years ago! There is a scrap of land the other side of the railway but not enough room for a platform surely? The residents of the flats now being built there wouldn't like a train that close to them.

There used to be another track but I think it was just a siding, and it went long ago. as others have said the new builds across from the station now make such an extension almost impossible.

I can remember years ago when I used to commute and we had the new platform indicator boards installed at Ware. One of the station staff told me that they had cost nearly £12.000 and wondered what idiot had ordered them for the whole line without realising that Ware only had one platform for the one line it had always had.

I think the other track was for a siding - didn't it originally go to the building (engine shed?) which was then Waggers and now redeveloped to flats?

Ware used to have a goods siding for traffic that went down to Buntingford would be sorted, the goods siding at Broxbourne is still there (or was before I headed south) and the Ware shunting engine would go there from Ware now and again. The apartments next to the station on the north side were goods sheds and no doubt someone out there has pictures of them I can vaguely recall them when I first moved to Ware. There's a book, the name evades me, which recalls the working life of the Hertford and Ware stations back in the days of steam and is an interesting historical read.

Once again we see the total lack of an overall planning strategy.

The land where they could have expanded the station is now built on - maybe they will compulsorily purchase the new houses and knock them down.

Planning Dept must be the biggest oxymoron around.

Direct trains from Hertford/Ware to Harlow, B Stort and the airport would be great and, I wouldn't have thought, too difficult to set up.

it's easy to do that now anyway, just go to Broxbourne and change to get a train to Harlow, Airport etc, why spend millions laying a new track (which would be needed) to get direct trains plus where would the additional track go, whole new points and track junction would be needed at Hoddy. passenger numbers would be low and unsustainable. With regards to Ware station, Ware would not be able to have another platform due to what others have already said no where to put it and having read that report a lot of stuff in there is dreaming and wishful thinking...