Happy Birthday Shoeburyness station!

The Mayor and Mayoress of Southend paid a visit to Shoeburyness this morning to help the station celebrate its 135th birthday.  Staff decorated the ticket hall with happy birthday banners and we gave out chocolates to our customers.

We also launched an exciting competition for local children to design the ‘Shoeburyness Station of the future’, details of which are available at the surrounding primary and secondary schools.

The station, was opened on 1 February 1884 by the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway and it was built primarily to serve the military establishment whose presence at Shoebury started in 1849 with a School of Gunnary followed by Barracks being built in 1863.

Previous attempts to build this three mile, 32 chain extension had failed and the Act authorising the line required that it be kept 132 yards away from the ‘powder magazine’ located on the Ness.

By 1884 the military already had an extensive rail system which included the current lines to the East of the High Street. There were also many lines to the south which joined the LT&SR via exchange sidings approximately where the current depot entrance road crosses the MOD lines and ran along what is today the new houses of Chestnut Court.

The current station is pretty much as it was built with three platforms and wooden building, which is the original.

The locomotive and carriage facilities originally built at Southend were moved to Shoeburyness at this time with carriage sidings to the south and a two road locomotive shed immediately to the north of the station.

There were originally no intermediate stations on the line. Thorpe Bay wasn’t opened until 1910 (as Southchurch-on-Sea) and Southend East in 1932.