Stansted Airport railway station


Stansted Airport railway station is on a branch line off the West Anglia Main Line in the east of England and was opened in 1991 to provide a rail link to London Stansted Airport. It is down the line from London Liverpool Street station, to which a frequent dedicated service called the Stansted Express operates.
The short branch line was constructed at a cost of £44 million and opened by British Rail to coincide with the completion of the airport's new terminal building.

Layout

Platforms 1 and 3 run the full length of the station and are used for Stansted Express and services. The shorter platform number 2 is used for CrossCountry-operated services to Birmingham New Street.
In 2011 platform 1 was extended to accommodate two trains simultaneously in combinations of up to 16 coaches, and platform 2 was extended to accommodate four-coach trains.
The station is in a concrete box structure that is unusually above ground level rather than below ground, being constructed under the terminal building. This is evident at the western end of the platforms which are left open and is a similar design to Wembley Central railway station.

Services

The principal service to Stansted Airport is the Stansted Express, a dedicated airport link service from operated by Greater Anglia which runs every 15 minutes. Greater Anglia also operates trains to/from.
The station is also served by CrossCountry which operates an hourly service to via Cambridge, and and, from December 2019, the new Greater Anglia service to Norwich via Cambridge and Ely, which uses the new Class 755 Stadler bi-mode trains