Tuesday 28th October 2025
2025’s been a fairly quiet year for new station openings – only Newsham and Blyth Bebside on the Northumberland line have been unwrapped for passengers – but one of the biggest investments in new station infrastructure, since the arrival of Brent Cross West two years ago, opened its gateline to passengers on Sunday for the very first tine; it being the £175 million Beaulieu Park station located three miles north of Chelmsford.
It’s being hailed as “the first new station on the Great Eastern Mainline for over 100 years” and has come about thanks to a funding partnership between Homes England, Essex County Council, Chelmsford City Council, the South East Local Enterprise Partnership and housing developers Countryside (now part of the Vistry Group) and L&Q.
Whereas Sunday’s public debut was the time for young keen YouTubers to film each other taking a mandatory ride on the very first arrival or departure, Monday morning’s official opening ceremony attracted a whole host of VIPs from the local and wider Essex catchment area including two familiar local Essex MP’s …. Kemi Badenoch…
… and James Cleverley talking to a cleverly hidden Lord Hendy in the hat, who was also there.
Indeed so many local dignatories had turned up there wasn’t enough room for all the chauffeur driven cars to park immediately outside the station entrance…
… with the station car park looking distinctly full for a first morning.
Mind you, the platforms were full of people too, many drawn by a VIP appearance from Tornado 60163 steam engine…
… which proved to be quite an attraction for younger visitors on half term holiday visiting with mum and dad eager for a footplate visit and a blow of the whistle.
Sadly I missed the opening speeches – I was too tight fisted to pay for an Anytime (non-Railcard discounted) Return ticket from Hassocks – but it all looked rather splendid with a plaque on an easel associating the opening with the 200th Anniversary…
… as staff from Greater Anglia and Network Rail mingled with stakeholders, watched over by what looked like British Transport Police’s entire contingent for East Anglia as well as security staff…
… and many locals turning up to take an interest.
Construction work on the new station began in March 2023 with an initial projected opening in 2026 thus making for a very welcome change for a new station to open ahead of schedule.
Justification for the station comes from plans for 10,000 new homes in what’s called Chelmsford Garden Community made up of the Beaulieu and Channels estates. 4,350 homes have planning permission including 1,989 which have already been built. A further 6.250 will be delivered in the coming years subject to formal planning approval.
The new homes will be joined by shops, community and health services and schools as well as transport links, of which the station is a major part.
Key feature of the new station is its three platforms which include a central bi-directional section of track enabling fast trains to leapfrog past while stopping trains use the two outer platforms. It’s also handy for stabling a steam locomotive and carriage on opening day.
Off-peak, BPA (to use its official three letter station code) sees two trains an hour southbound to Liverpool Street with one having come from Ipswich and the other from Colchester Town. The morning peak sees four trains an hour originating from various stations including Braintree and Witham. The reverse arrangement plays out in the northbound direction and in the evening peak.
Journey time to Stratford is just over half an hour and around 40 minutes to Liverpool Street. Northbound trains take 25 minutes to Colchester. With connections on to the Elizabeth line at Stratford, residents moving into their new homes over the next few years will be well catered for with plenty of car parking spaces (752), cycle storage facilities (500)…
… including a secure facility for added peace of mind and cost…
… and a bus hub alongside the station to bring commuters and leisure travellers seamlessly to and from the station.
Three local bus routes operated by First Bus – C8, C9 and C11 – which look as though they’re Section 106 funded, meander half hourly through the expanding development (C9, 20 minutely in the peaks) as well as the two hourly route 73 between Chelmsford and Maldon serve the new station.
Exiting through the extensive gateline to leave the station…
… I wasn’t sure which way to turn for the bus hub and initially turned right instead of left, but then I spotted a helpful sign with diagrams supplied by Chelmsford City Council comfirming its location…
… which also set out what bus routes depart from the five (of eight) stands currently in use.
There’s also a very helpful coloured route map of the local network serving the development including neighbouring Springfield.
It’s a shame the bus stops couldn’t have been sited a bit closer to one of the two entrance/exits from the station building, it being quite a walk from the far bus bays, as you can see in the photo below, and the number of seats by each bus stand is a bit stingy too…
… although there are electronic departure signs…
… and printed departure lists for each service. And it is all under cover.
Back in the station building, as it’s 2025, there’s no ticket office, just a small unstaffed ‘Customer information and assistance’ desk…
… alongside a bank of eight – yes, eight – ticket machines. In these days of apps and e-tickets I was quite surprised by so many being installed.
I noticed a number of visitors exploring the ticket machines and wondered if they were checking how much more expensive it will be to use Beaulieu Park rather than Chelmsford’s long standing city centre station.
An Anytime Day Return from Chelmsford to Liverpool Street is £37.90 with an Off-Peak Day Return priced at £28.10. There’s also a Super Off Day Return (arrive into Liverpool Street after midday) for £23.50. Comparable prices from Beaulieu Park are Anytime Day Return £42.60 (£4.70 more expensive) with the Off-Peak Day Return at £28.20 (just 10p more). Oddly there’s no Super Off-Peak Day Return.
Heading northbound to Colchester from Chelmsford costs £18 for an Anytime Day Return and £17.60 for an Off-Peak Day Return (with a Super Off-Peak Day Return at £15). You’ll save from Beaulieu Park with the Anytime Day Return £16.90 (saving £1.10) and the Off-Peak Day Return £15.50 (saving £2.10). Interestingly there is a Super Off-Peak Day Return for northbound passengers at £13.30 (saving £1.70).
The new station is obviously expecting significant numbers as the surrounding area becomes populated with wide staircases to access the fully enclosed footbridge for Platforms 1/2 from the station’s entrance/exit on Platform 3…
… together with lifts.
There’s also a secondary open footbridge at the north end of the platforms.
There are toilets just inside the gateline…
… as well as on Platforms 2/3…
… although the sign reminds my of the one I found at Epsom recently – attached to a handy girder rather than pointing to the actual toilets which are a bit further along as you can just see in the above photograph.
Also, on Platform 2/3 is a small enclosed waiting room…
… and a retail unit yet to be let.
Further retail opportunities are available by the gateline.
The platforms have a good supply of wooden slatted seating which break up the otherwise overall greyness of the station and incorporate a new design of individual seats alongside a “cosy pair” without a divider.
Some of them are also placed at right angles to the platform edges rather than in parallel.
There are more seats immediately outside the entrance/exit for passengers who just want to sit and watch all the comings and goings.
A number of electronic information screens/help points to a new design incorporating departure information as well as a whole host of other details are also strategically placed on the platforms.
The one thing I was surprised by its absence is the recently announced roll out of a new Great British Railways inspired digital clock for the network as seen below at London Bridge.
I was assuming that would be a requirement for all new station openings following its high profile launch last week.
Like Brent Cross West, Beaulieu Park has had the benefit of significant funding from both the public and private sectors and it’s once again good to see infrastructure going in before residential development has all been completed and travel habits established.
I’m sure Beaulieu Park will soon make its presence felt.
Roger French
Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS
BusAndTrainUser 
Am I alone in finding the continued gobbling up of the countryside with huge numbers of houses and new “infrastructure” totally depressing?
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Unfortunately there are many reasons , people with money, and families, like / need the 3bed+ houses , they like to live in the (relatively) warm and prosperous South East , and some inward migration (from Ireland , EU or elsewhere is needed , to provide health and social care for a lot of those people as they age. Maybe a different planning system which takes a lot more overview of age demographics looking forward could create better housing (schools, community facilities etc) on a smaller footprint. Perhaps more unnecessary are things like Data Centres on the urban green belt of Havering ( I think the “growth” is an illusion , – perhaps such things should be in urban centres with the heat keeping shopping centres warm on winters day – There is basically a conflict between National Planning and Local “Needs”/Competitiveness which we have had for years.
The Car Park here could be 2/3rds the size simply by building an upper deck ( fire risk from bad problems in some electric vehicles notes) and a low rise mansion block of 1 / 2 bed flats put on the land freed up.
JBC Prestatyn
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No I feel the same way
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“Beaulieu Park”! Roger.
Beaulieu Road, typo at end at 7.25 a.m. not corrected yet Leicester, is it, might appreciate the advertising but …! not Beaulieu Road in this case.
Thank for the Post. Interesting! And much to be appreciated it seems
Yes!! Taxis should be demoted and bus stops right outside every Station … national move for real easy Interchange. And to encourage buses use
You could do a series to compliment the nearest two Stations idea to the furthest and least seamless Interchanges.**
Plus the ones which could be better and why not, as Beaulieu Park ! BPA
Sheffield would be in that** top league. Hardly a simple interchange and for the less able and those with heavy baggage. It doesn’t encourage hopping on the bus to one’s destination on arrival. And the good city and smartly developed town city centre as I find it to be, could also do with the coloured route maps for bus routes, for visitors to indicate, eg where the free buses inner circulars SC1 and SC2. But which are a good step up the hill with heavy bags and no stop on the main road directly outside the Station.
Many thanks. David (Moore)
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And I just knew I was going to make that Park/Road slip up!! Now corrected.
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Beaulieu Road still beckons Roger but probably better to wait to next summer when you can reach it by the open top MoreBus Green route. A suggestion would be to travel by train to Brockenhurst & catch the bus from there. Apart from that, the station compared to Beaulieu Park is isolated with no regular all round bus service.
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But a very pleasant walk from Ashurst (New Forest) station if you have a map.
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Blackpool North is another example where taxis aces car parking take preference over the recently extended tram that “almost” reaches the station.
Jim Davies
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The tram interchange at Sheffield is fairly seamless as long as you stay on the station footbridge and don’t descend to the ticket hall.
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No you’re not, Anonymous.
But having walked round the Beaulieu Park estate, and also seen the scrappy countryside that’s about to be gobbled up next, it feels perfectly appropriate here. And long overdue.
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Whatever the merits of the countryside immediately around this new station (Diamond Geezer) I think many people are concerned about the loss of land to development.
The wider question is of course the unsustainable growth in population and the demands that makes. My locality is blighted by development – new houses without shops, hospitals etc which makes everyday life that bit less pleasant.
Funny choice of name – when I saw the blog I expected a station in Hampshire!
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No dates officially confirmed yet, but one to keep on the radar for “early next year” is the opening of three new stations in south Birmingham: Moseley, Kings Heath and Pineapple Road on the revived Camp Hill line.
What will be interesting to observe is how this impacts on passenger loadings on the very frequent and busy 50 bus service, currently operated by both National Express WM and Diamond Bus.
As the new railway service will be half-hourly, I can’t see huge swathes of passengers switching from bus to train, not while a bus comes every 4-5 minutes!
Stu – West Midlands Bus Users
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Probably student and some sporting event flows will take the rail option. While a temptation to go to opening day or even first weekend open , for best comparison the 2nd week in October is normally the fairest for passenger number sampling
JBC Prestatyn
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Well, that makes a change for me to get to try a new transport feature before RF. My claim to fame is that I purchased the very first ticket to be issued from Braintree ticket office to Beaulieu Park on Sunday.
Roger is right to use the word “meander” about the bus services. I tried the C11 and it was painfully slow working its way through the housing estates and then getting caught in traffic jams as it neared the city centre even on a Sunday.
Nigel Turner
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How is Beaulieu pronounced? Is it as in Hampshire of “Bewley” or as in French of Beau lieu?
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Probably, “Bow-lee-ur” as in Essex
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While since corrected online if you happen to pass through a GA station have a look at the October engineering work map and you’ll see BP is marked south of Chelmsford
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The C8 and 73 look best if you want to travel into Chelmsford – but really wont you be getting them FROM Chelmsford as much as to if interchanging to bus.
For the Bus Stops note it is 73 series that are furthest away and one would probably change to them at Hatfield Peveral if using train. For the rest it is set down , fairly close to the station and I suspect drivers will probably get to know regular passengers or arrival times of trains to allow interchange.
Clocks – Were there any at all ? I assume station planned before GBR and hence time appears on arrival boards . however the GBR clock is digital (is there a app for my phone ?) and I have seen it on the digital departure panels at Victoria and Earlsfield and Very Good it looks too.
Interesting 3rd running line – I thought Torando was wrong line working.
Buses – It would be nice to see an Eastern National FLF in NBC Green on a running day at some time – the location looks like it could be a good site to arrange such things in the future.
I also assume bus routes will vary if the developments occur more east of the station since there is no clear purpose otherwise for the station I would also think a lot of passengers will be going to Stratford for Canary Wharf. I did think that there was a case of extending Elizabeth Line services half hourly to Colchester Town at some future point , if only to relive station crowding at Stratford these days.
JBC Prestatyn
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Elizabeth line trains to Colchester Town? I would support that! My Freedom Pass would then allow me travel free to visit my friend who lives near Colchester.
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I wouldn’t count on it, what next, the Central line to Stansted Airport?
Of course Colchester is “only” 2 and a half hours from Brentwood by bus which might be more realistic for a free journey opportunity.
Daniel
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Colchester is a hell of a way from Romford by car (as I found out once) then you have to get round or through the city walls etc to final destination ( did it once doing a rather large delivery , never again)
JBC Prestatyn
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Brentwood-Colchester by bus is actually more like 3 hours, because there is no direct bus: the simplest and fastest option is to change bus at Chelmsford bus station, with the interchange time usually in the region of 25–30 minutes. For what it is worth, I do know someone who makes that end-to-end journey by bus, but that is because he has a free bus pass. I suspect that there are nowhere near enough end-to-end journeys made by bus on that route to justify a direct service.
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Here you go, if you so wish to look at the new clock on your phone, tablet, computer, smart fridge etc 🙂
RailClock
Daniel
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The “no ticket office” is interesting, and presumably, plans for this station were made at the time it was the intention to abolish such “luxuries” over the rest of the system?
Certainly yet another monument to the concrete jungle the south-east is fast becoming, and I wonder if two hands will be necessary to count by fingers those of the 10,000 new homes who will be car-less?
Terence Uden
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I assume the houses will all have electric charging points and solar panels though , so more carbon neutral. There are plenty of Essex house where there are cars but the daily commute is mainly by rail. What is the plusbus add on fare ?
JBC Prestatyn
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Here you go …
https://www.plusbus.info/chelmsford
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Let’s all play “railway historians” – let’s all name stations that were built as a result of residential development (Hersham, my local, was a latecomer in 1936) The “before” and “after” pictures of Golders Green are quite startling with, in my opinion Queensbury having equal status of generating traffic and jobs for builders.
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Impressive station, but the bus interchange and station forecourt locations should be swapped. Presumably the forecourt is for important people being dropped off by car. Seriously though, it really should be policy that bus interchanges should be right outside a railway station’s front doors. This sends the right message that buses (and their passengers) are important, plus they can’t then be ignored or not noticed by potential new (currently car driving) passengers.
Peter Brown
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Cars and taxis more likely to use luggage than bus users , I dont think the short walk to get to a bus shelter is a big problem , there are plenty worse
JBC Prestatyn
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As things are, one has to agree – but it does send the message ‘don’t bother to make a bus+train journey if you want to take luggage with you’. If we are trying to get more people to switch from cars to public transport (for climate, health, efficiency etc. reasons), we need all the signs we can use to show that it will be easy and worry-free.
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A brand new railway station but yet the signage and running-in boards are all in Greater Anglia’s typeface and style, vice the requirements of using Rail Alphabet 2.
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Beaulieu Park station has had a very long gestation period. Plans for a second station for Chelmsford first started to gain momentum in the late 1980s, when the proposal was for a new station at Springfield (which would have been closer to Chelmsford than Beaulieu Park is).
By the early 2000s, however, the current location was the preferred choice. I recall attending a couple of planning meetings in 2003(!), at which stage the station was planned to have four platforms – with through trains running on the outer platforms and the middle two for terminating trains. The cost…£9m!
It’s not clear how much the current three platform station cost, as it’s part of a £250m package of infrastructure improvements, but I would estimate that a ball park figure of £150m is not too far off the mark.
Roger’s sample of ticket prices shows how much work is to be done in making fares more sensible. For the non-London journeys, the difference between Anytime Day returns and Off-peak Day returns is almost neglible. Why are Super Off-peak Day returns even needed? It would make more sense to simply reduce the price of the Off-peak day return, and abolish the Super Off-peak return altogether.
Carllo
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It astonishes me how much money seems to be available to build railway stations: the costs are astronomic! £175million for two trains an hour each way! (OK a few more in the peaks.) I gather Cambridge South will cost about £200million: an investment like that could be totally transformational for public transport for the entire county!
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Well you get a Car Park, Bridge, Cycle Parking , and a Bus Station for all of that. Of course if it were Metro frequencies it might make more sense , but if rail takes more Chelmo / Colchester /Southend or London main flows off the road that leaves more space for the local bus services to get around
The lifetime of the main “land” infrastructure should be about 50 odd years so thats £5m a year plus interest on £250m plus maint costs.
JBC Prestatyn
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Beaulieu Road & Beaullieu Park.
Very similar names indeed.
I wonder which one will get renamed first?
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Neither, I would expect. If Richmond and Richmond, and Clapham and Clapham Junction, are allowed to coexist, I can’t see much desire to distinguish these any further.
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I think you’re right. Up until 1995 we had a station in the New Forest area named Lyndhurst Road. Given its close proximity to the village of Ashurst it was sensibly re-named Ashurst (New Forest). I’m sure not too many people will have confused it with Ashurst in Kent over the years, but then again….
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IMO “simple” rail fares are standard mileage based single fares, no advance booking necessary, perhaps with a peak/off peak variation. This is how it’s done in The Netherlands.
“Domestic rail fares in the Netherlands are fixed and depend on distance travelled. You can always just turn up at the station and purchase a ticket at the standard fare.”
https://www.amsterdamtips.com/train-tickets-netherlands
Anything more complicated than this isn’t “simple”. There’s no need to have advanced booking and seat reservations on a railway, these are for coaches and planes. Trains should always have sufficient capacity to be able to absorb unexpected demand surges, so if normal demand is served by two car trains, three car trains should be used instead.
Peter Brown
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(Not sure why my comment is anonymous: it wasn’t meant to be!)
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Typo, bus to Maldon not Malden.
I thought another one (not Roger’s) was Beaulieu “Rydes”, but it’s just ludicrously pretentious developer-speak.
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Thanks – corrected.
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“Buses routes serving…” Doesn’t sound quite right. Still, better to have a clear map with dodgy grammar than nothing at all.
John
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Re Fares : Geoff Mentioned in Vid that he met one commuter that walked to the station , having previously taken a bus to Chelmsford paying £3 each way ( what no return or weekly cheaper fares ? ) and £3 for 3 miles is that first overdoing the walk on fare for what seems a shortish journey miles wise. So that will be a change of money from Bus to rail. I see BusPlus from Chelmsford is £4.90 allday allbuses , so the £4.50 extra on the rail fare sort of compares, Does Chelmsford see more calling trains than the new station ?
JBC Prestatyn
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