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By Dennis Rookard It's always been a story of what could have been, rather then what actually happened. Even today those same dreams surround the old station buildings and rail track running from Epping. An ex British Rail diesel railcar, now painted black, like some latter day ghost train forlornly waits for non existent passengers. Whilst ever hopeful, three steam locomotive owners have parked their collection of coaches and locos in high hopes of one day firing them up. And on the side lines a preservation group stand ready to re-build the line, using steam during the weekend and diesel traction though-out the week to run a commuter service. For Ongar station, it's always been this way. Gambles and dreams. For example back in the hey-day of railway development in the late Eighteen Hundreds. Railway companies always on the look out for extra income came up with a bright idea. Buy up a twenty-mile corridor some unwanted farmland. Then build a railway down the centre of the land connecting it to Central London. Now at various points build a few stations. – Finally this is the really crafty part of the plan. Sell off plots of that unused farmland around the empty unused stations to developers keen to make a killing out of London's emerging middle classed young twenty something's in the late eighteens hundreds desperate to buy low costs homes. The fact that it was a spectacular successful idea can be shown today by the vast network of South London lines and the West London old Metropolitan rail routes. Well, thought the board of directors for the Great Eastern Railway If their railway rivals could use the same scheme to open up West and South London. Why not play the same game. Drive a new railway line out into a suburban Essex countryside. Where apart from a few villages and small towns was still surrounded sounded by empty countryside, and all ripe for housing development. The Company had recently taken over the Eastern Counties line that now joined their line at Stratford and already during the mid 1850s, new housing developments could be seen springing up along the route that led out towards Leytonstone and Buckhurst Hill. Now with the two companies combined was to time in 1865 for the great push forward to Epping and Ongar and these great fortunes for all. Whilst electrification and the conversion to the Central line reached Epping in 1949. Plans were again put on hold for the final laying of electrical rails down to Ongar. The mystery has always been why London Transport never ploughed a line the final few miles towards the new town of Harlow then under construction. But moves were never made, and electrical power reached Ongar 1957, but only as a single line branch, making it the last line to replace steam hauled trains on London Transport. Even then technical problems meant that only a simple shuttle service could be used. The problem was that this branch line was never successful. Indeed by the time of its closure in 1993 only 100 passengers were reported during its final weeks of operation. Woodford and land out to Epping might well have been opened up to the developers but by the time the line to Ongar was opened money and space were beginning to run out and Ongar in the eyes of many homebuyers was just one station too many. Now this could be the end of a rather unsuccessful line, killed by the car and public apathy, with only a preservation ground wanting to play trains for tourists along it's length, were it not for two facts. First was that the old Great Eastern never considered Ongar as the end of their branch. For them it was only a first stage before way leave was granted to take it cross country to join their main Anglian line at Shenfield. It was only the open countryside and concerns about levels of traffic that put paid to the idea. Again that might have been the end of the story, But the Ongar Branch has a way of surviving. Just recently the successors to Rail track in a wish list for promised Government spending on a better integrated rail network inserted a paragraph requesting funding for an extension from near Ongar to again joint the main Anglian line, but this time near Chelmsford. The aim being to take the ever increasing fright traffic from the North Sea ports away from the already busy main lines on a new London by pass route. And finally. Just a few weeks ago, came news that at long last discussions between Essex County Council and current line owners Epping to Ongar Railway Ltd are starting to look promising. If successful it could mean the line could be brought back to life as a heritage line for weekend tourists with the long-term aim of running a morning and evening commuter service during the week. So who knows maybe that empty car park will soon be full again, and Ongar will once again be back of the London Rail map.
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