Sunshine Coast History
The Great Eastern Main Line opened between Colchester and Ipswich in 1843 and the section to London was due to open in 1849.
The first short section of the Sunshine Coast Line was built by the Colchester, Stour Valley, Sudbury and Halstead Railway to the port of Hythe opened for goods on 31 March 1847. In 1859 the Tendring Hundred Railway Company was formed to extend the line from Hythe to Wivenhoe which opened on 8 May 1863 for both passenger and goods services from Colchester. By the time the Wivenhoe extension open the line was operated by the GER Great Eastern Railway.
The line was then extended to Weeley on 8 January 1866, to Kirby Cross on 28 July 1866, and on to its terminus at Walton-on-the-Naze on 17 May 1867. In the meantime, a short branch to a new, more central station at Colchester St Botolphs (Colchester Town railway station) opened on 1 March 1866.
A second company, the Wivenhoe & Brightlingsea Railway, had been incorporated in 1861 to build a line from Wivenhoe to Brightlingsea which opened on 17 April 1866. There were also proposals to build a line to Clacton as early as 1866, but nothing came of them until 1877, when the Clacton-on-Sea Railway was incorporated. The connection from Thorpe-le-Soken to Clacton opened on 4 July 1882, also operated by the GER.
The GER soon negotiated to buy both the Tendring Hundred Railway and the Clacton-on-Sea Railway, and both became part of the GER on 1 July 1883. The Wivenhoe & Brightlingsea was absorbed by the GER on 9 June 1893. Electrification of the line was ongoing in 1959 and by January the line was electrified as far as Great Bentley. The first trial train to run on the newly electrified section departed Colchester on 18 January 1959 and terminated at Great Bentley. The line was the first to be electrified at 25 kV AC, using overhead wires, with electrified services inaugurated on 13 April 1959.
Passenger services have been operated by two different franchises since privatisation in 1997, First Great Eastern ran the services until 31 March 2004 when the National Express Group took over the franchise, with the company branded one Railway until February 2008, at which time it was rebranded to National Express East Anglia.
In the book "A History of Thorpe-le-Soken to the year 1890" by Ernest Alan Wood, M.D., extracts, giving details of the railway are given as follows:-
The railway came to Thorpe late in the century. It had been intended to build one from Mistley to Walton, and notice to landowners was given in 1862, prior to subscription and contract for making it in 1864.
A half-yearly meeting of the Mistley, Thorpe and Walton Railway Co. was held in Feb. 1866 at Bishopsgate Station of the Great Eastern. I do not know when the scheme was abandoned, but already land was being acquired on the line of the present railroad between Weeley and Clacton and in that month the Tendring Hundred Railway extension had been opened to Weeley. Some abandoned workings for the Mistley - Walton rail can be seen in Tendring parish.
The 25 inch Ordnance map of 1823 shows a long narrow strip of wood marked "abandoned railway" about half way between Tendring rectory and the Weeley (here called Tendring) Brook, pointing south-east towards Hill House in Thorpe.
For the railroad which eventually survived, a little land was transferred to the Company from the territory of "The Grange", with diversion of the brook to the south side of the railway embankment. In 1867 Stephen and Georgiana Martin Leake sold to them a part of Hull Row Wood, and Rev. F. P. Lowe and his wife (nee Martin Leake) sold other parts of Thorpe Hall lands. In 1864 William Charles Grant ceded part of Thorpe Park farm in the occupation of James Rolph to the Tendring Hundred Railway Company.
There is a plan of the Thorpe and Clacton railway and pier extension dated 1874. Extension to Clacton was still "proposed" in 1876 but other strips of ground were acquired for the railway from Maria Grant, widow, in 1882 and 1884.
