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The Alban Way

St. Albans - Hatfield

Part of the Lost Rails project

Click to enlarge this map of the route

© Stephen Wragg 2010

The Hatfield & St Albans Railway illustrates Victorian ‘railway mania’ and the unplanned growth of the network. It was backed by the Great Northern Railway to attract passengers back to its Hatfield Station from the rival St Albans Abbey Station for Watford Junction.

The line opened in 1865, but in 1868 passenger demand was destroyed by the new Midland main line railway to St Albans (City).

Most of the six mile track is across flat country and was relatively cheap to build, at £87,000 (say £50 million today) - but the annual revenue of under £1,500 did not even cover the interest on loans. So the poorly used track was subsidised by the Great Northern’s main line. In the twentieth century bus services and the North Orbital Road provided overwhelming competition. Goods traffic grew, however, and by the 1890s the line encouraged the growth of Fleetville and other industrial suburbs between St Albans and Hatfield. The Salvation Army Print Works (Campfield Press) was built alongside in 1889 and others followed.

The new Salvation Army Printing Works and its siding, Campfield Road, St Albans, circa 1900s.

For the next 75 years tank engines delivered coal to Sanders Orchid Nursery or the County Mental Hospital at Hill End, picked up wagon loads of Bibles and the War Cry, and took Fyffe’s bananas to the north London cold store at Acrewood Way. During World War II special trains took aircraft factory workers to work at Lemsford.

Today almost all the trackbed is preserved as a well-used footpath and cycle-way, mainly with open countryside to the south. The highlight is at St Albans where the Midland Railway’s huge arch over the former branch line is Hertfordshire’s finest monument to the railway age.

Discover more

Photo gallery of The Alban Way

Audio memories

Below you can listen to a selection of clips taken from interviews with people who worked on or lived near the line.

Anti-aircraft guns on The Alban Way

Ronald Truwert remembers hearing anti-aircraft guns being used on The Alban Way in World War Two

Hill End hospital

Mr Truwert recalls how, in the 1950s, some of the patients from Cell Barnes hospital worked at the nearby station.

Collecting coal from London Road station

David Day, born 1936, talks about his father's job, transporting coal from London Road station to Halsey's timber yard in London Colney

Transporting War Cry

Bernard Woodhouse started working on the railways in the 1940s and recalls jobs picking up copies of War Cry, the Salvation Army's magazine from the Campfield Road printing works

A derailment on The Alban Way

John Garrick lived near the rail line in Dellfield. In this extract he recalls a derailment near the Camp Road bridge

Playing by the line

Mr Garrick talks about the games he used to play by the side of the line near Sanders Orchids

The waiting room at London Road station.

Valerie Robertson describes London Road station, which she lived next to and where her father worked from 1938.

Prisoners of War

Mrs Robertson explains how German prisoners of war were put to work on the railway lines

This page was added by N White on 01/03/2011.

Comments about this page

I Lived at 181 Dellfield the Garden of which backed on to this Railway,from the age of two years until I was 17 and have many memories of the Line in Question And some of the most vivid were of the evening Goods from St Albans to Hatfield struggling to make the top of the incline from the London Rd Station often having to shunt the first half dozen wagons into Sanders Royal Orchids sidings and the go back for the rest and also of many hours playing on the spare ground around the railway at that point "Happy Days" Unfortunatly I cannot Recall Mr Garrick But I am aware of the incident where the train came over the bridge and went into Sanders siding and over the walkway into Mr Towseys back garden

By Roy J Sinfield
On 06/03/2012