A short lived interchange station at Victoria Park & Bow was built at the junction but saw little traffic which led to a temporary closure of the line in September 1850.

[3] The first section, built by Peto and Grissell, was opened between Forest Gate Junction on the Eastern Counties Railway main line and Tilbury, via Barking and Grays on 13 April 1854.

LT&SR Services initially ran from Fenchurch Street and Bishopsgate stations over existing lines to Stratford where they were coupled together and then via Forest Gate Junction to Tilbury for ferry connections to Gravesend.

The GER ran a short-lived Palace Gates to Blackwall service via Stratford but this only lasted a year and there were some Backwall – Southend excursion trains run in 1890.

[7] There were three new stations opened in the years before sale to the Midland Railway which were Dagenham Dock (1908) Thorpe Bay (1910) and for military use only Purfleet Rifle Range Halt in 1911.

[8] In parallel with this the GER was proposing improvements to Fenchurch Street and a plan was agreed that saw: This agreement was the end of the Merz & Mclellan scheme, although the Midland Railway still wanted to quadruple Bromley to Stepney and this was presented in a parliamentary bill passed on 7 August 1914.

Records show that LT&SR locomotives worked as far as Wood Green (Alexandra Palace) on the Great Northern line from London Kings Cross.

[15] Quadrupling and Electrifying the line was first considered in the Midland Railway Act of 1914 and the LMS presented plans in 1928/1929 to extend the four track section to Upminster.

The stations were staffed by the LMS and from west to east were:- The London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) was founded in 1932 and bought the management of the different underground lines under one roof.

Discussions between the LMS and LPTB resulted in a decision to route Metropolitan Hammersmith & City trains away from the East London line and to terminate at Barking instead.

To ensure total separation the Grays to Romford service would need to be split into distinct halves at Upminster, although a flyover was briefly considered.

The railway executive division of the British Transport Commission were initially opposed to the idea but on 17 July 1952 the Eastern Region was instructed to engage with the LTE on this issue.

This meant the closure of the Bow to Bromley curve was feasible with traffic being routed via Forest Gate Junction of the T&FG line and this happened on 11 September 1959.

In addition to re-signalling and electrification changes and the desire to separate the District Line services from British Railways the decision was made to provide a flyover that meant freight trains no longer had to cross the layout.

The direct passenger services from Bromley, Plaistow, Upton Park, East Ham, Becontree, Dagenham and Hornchurch to Fenchurch Street were withdrawn although the stations retained District Line platforms.

Day-to-day operation, staffing and timetabling continued to be delivered by the Regions – and the sector came into existence with barely thirty staff based at Waterloo.

[40][42][43] The relaunch was intended to be more than a superficial rebranding and was underpinned by considerable investment in the presentation of stations and trains, as well as efforts to improve service standards.

During the early 1990s proposals were put forward to convert the whole route into a guided busway, however these plans were quickly dismissed when British Rail announced a complete re-signalling of the line.

For many years prior to closure, the station was served only by certain trains on the local service from Upminster via Grays, because the nearby Dartford Crossing and increased car ownership had caused a decline in its importance as a passenger ferry terminal.

Of note were two late evening Ealing Broadway to Southend departures that acted as theatre trains for London West End traffic.

This increased in later years and in the August 1913 timetable there were four through trains from St Pancras to Southend as well as a number of summer specials emanating at intermediate stations along the route.

[55] The published May 2020 working timetable had nine services in the off peak hour from Fenchurch Street and all trains called at Limehouse (formerly Stepney) and West Ham.

During the Second World War, as a result of the risk to coastal shipping from German naval action, block coal trains started running to the LTS line to feed the industrial centres there.

In the 1949/1950 a plan was drawn up to develop a marshalling yard at Ripple Lane between Barking and Dagenham Dock, itself a significant railhead for Fords car factory.

Firstly the increase in car ownership led to an oil boom and the Thames Haven branch and West Thurrock areas both had refineries for this traffic.

During World War II many of the 3-cylindered 2-6-4Ts were transferred away from the area and haulage reverted to older LT&SR locomotives, but the 3-cylindered tanks were back before the end of 1945.

[71] After the war ended, and shortly before nationalisation, 20 new LMS Fairburn Class 4 2-6-4Ts were allocated to the line which led to the withdrawal of some of the older LT&SR locomotives.

Of the original LTSR locomotive fleet, only 79 class 4-4-2T number 80 named Thundersley survives as a stationary exhibit at Bressingham Steam Museum in Norfolk.

Two locomotives that worked later steam services in the area are preserved – 2500 is the sole remaining member of the 37 3 cylinder 2-6-4 tank engines built by the LMS in the 1930s for the LTS line.

The line was re-signalled over the Easter weekend of 1996 when all the signal boxes from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness (via Basildon) were switched out and control was transferred to Upminster IECC.