The first Romford station, located to the west of Waterloo Road, opened on 20 June 1839 as the eastern terminus of the Eastern Counties Railway from Mile End. Both stations acted as temporary termini, with the line extending east to and west to Shoreditch in 1840. In 1844, the station was relocated to its current position, some 400m east of the original and at about this time, the gauge of the ECR was changed from 5' to standard gauge of 4 ft 8 1⁄2. On 7 June 1893 the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway opened a second station in Romford, on a branch line to. The two stations were combined in 1934. In May 2015 the Upminster branch Iine transferred from Abellio Greater Anglia to London Overground and the regular Shenfield "metro" service transferred to TfL Rail.
Accidents and incidents
On 29 December 1944, one person was killed and three were injured when, in darkness and heavy fog, a -London service passed two signals at danger on the approach to Romford and ran into the rear of a stationary freight train. The passenger train's speed at the moment of impact was about 15 mph. One crew member on the goods train was killed instantly. The Chelmsford train driver was held responsible for the collision in a Ministry of War Transport report.
On 4 February 2010, two people standing on the platforms at Romford were injured when a quantity of stone ballast was shed from a freight train passing through the station. Subsequent examination found that the train wagon's doors had not been properly closed when it departed from the goods yard at Acton, west London, bound for.
Services
The majority of services are currently operated by TfL Rail which runs the stopping "metro" route between Liverpool Street and. Greater Anglia also operates medium-distance services between Liverpool Street and destinations in the East of England, while London Overground runs the half-hourly "push and pull" service between Romford and. The typical off-peak Monday to Saturday service from Romford is:
8 trains per hour to London Liverpool Street, of which:
*6 call at all stations,
*2 call at Stratford and Liverpool Street ;
6 tph to Shenfield, calling at all stations ;
2 tph to Upminster, calling at all stations ;
1 tph to calling at Shenfield then all stations ;
1 tph to calling at Shenfield,,, then all stations.
In 2017 new trains began entering service as Crossrail partially opened. Platforms 2 to 5 will be extended from their current length of between and to accommodate the Crossrail trains which will be over long once extended to nine carriages. New lifts, signage, help points, customer information screens and CCTV will also be installed.
