Hatfield railway station

Not to be confused with Hatfield Peverel railway station or Hadfield railway station.

Hatfield
The entrance at Hatfield station
Location
Place	Hatfield
Local authority	Borough of Welwyn Hatfield
Grid reference	TL232087
Operations
Station code	HAT
Managed by	Great Northern
Number of platforms	3
DfT category	C2
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2002/03	1.130 million
2004/05	1.407 million
2005/06	1.430 million
2006/07	1.642 million
2007/08	1.768 million
2008/09	1.905 million
2009/10	1.837 million
2010/11	1.928 million
2011/12	2.094 million
2012/13	2.095 million
2013/14	2.085 million
2014/15	2.134 million
History
Original company	Great Northern Railway
Pre-grouping	Great Northern Railway
Post-grouping	London and North Eastern Railway
7 August 1850 (1850-08-07)	Station opened
September 2013 (2013-09)	Station redevelopment began
17 November 2014 (2014-11-17)	Multi-storey Car Park opened
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Hatfield from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

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Hatfield railway station serves the town of Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England. The station is managed by Great Northern. It is located approximately 18 miles (29 km) north of London Kings Cross on the East Coast Main Line.

History

Hatfield was the junction for a now-closed branch line to Dunstable Town. It was also the junction of a second railway that ran to St Albans Abbey. The former was closed in 1965 under the Beeching Axe, and the latter succumbed some 14 years earlier (in 1951) as part of postwar economies brought in by the British Transport Commission. The route of the St Albans Abbey line is now a public footpath, the Alban Way, while the closure of the Dunstable Town line has left Dunstable as one of the largest towns in England without a direct rail connection.

Facilities

Hatfield has waiting rooms on all platforms, with extra shelters provided at various points along the platforms, as well as a canopy on Platform 1. There is a small café-shop style business, "Chuggs" on Platform 1, and three new retail units are scheduled to open in the new station building in the second half of 2015. There are three platform faces in total - platform 1 is a side platform facing the Up Slow line & used by London-bound trains (there is no platform on the Up Fast line), whilst platforms 2 & 3 face the Down Fast and Down Slow lies respectively; the latter is used by the majority of northbound trains.

The station has a "Fast-Ticket" machine, as well as a standard touchscreen machine on either side of the building. Hatfield also has many vending machines throughout the station and a photo booth inside the booking hall, which also contains toilets for both genders and a separate disabled toilet. Ticket barriers are in operation.

Services

During the daytime there is generally a half-hourly fast service to London Kings Cross southbound and also every 20 minutes a stopping service to Moorgate Monday to Fridays and half-hourly on weekends.

Northbound there is an hourly service to both Cambridge and Peterborough, leaving at an alternate half hourly frequency. There is also a stopping service to Welwyn Garden City on the same pattern as that to Moorgate (every 20 minutes weekdays, half-hourly evenings & weekends).

The station is also served by various buses operated by Arriva, Centrebus and Uno (bus company).

Redevelopment

Hatfield Station is currently being redeveloped to include a new bus interchange and taxi rank, multi-storey car park, refurbished ticket office, three new retail units and step-free access to all platforms.

Work on the project, which is to cost £9 million, began in 2013 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2015.

The new multi-storey car park opened on 17 November 2014

Routes

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Potters Bar or Finsbury Park		Great Northern London-Cambridge semi-fast		Welwyn Garden City
Potters Bar		Great Northern London-Peterborough semi-fast
Welham Green		Great Northern Great Northern stopping
Disused railways
Lemsford Road Halt Line and station closed		London and North Eastern Railway Hatfield and St Albans Railway		Terminus

Accidents

Three fatal rail crashes have occurred near Hatfield:

• December 1870 accident, when a disintegrated wheel resulted in the deaths of six passengers and two bystanders.
• Two accidents occurred on 26 January 1939. In the first, an empty fish train was involved in a rear-end collision with a passenger train. The second involved a passenger train which ran into the rear of another. Two people were killed and seven were injured.
• October 2000 accident, when a GNER InterCity 225 train de-railed, killing four people and injuring 70.

Gallery

• 

  Hatfield railway station viewed from the public footbridge.

• 

  A Grand Central train speeds through Hatfield en route from Sunderland.

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