About SideTracked Caches
This cache belongs to the SideTracked series. It is not designed to take you to a magical place with a breath taking view. It's a distraction for the weary traveller, but anyone else can go and find it too. More Information can be found at the SideTracked Website
Welcome to the present day Tring Station
About Tring Station
Tring station was opened by the London and Birmingham Railway on 16 October 1837 when the L&BR extended its line out of London beyond Boxmoor to Tring. The first train to Tring ran from Primrose Hill at 9:00 am on 16 October 1837, reaching Tring at 10:10 am. On 15 November 1844, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made their first train journey north from Euston, reaching Tring in 52 minutes where the train stopped to take on water. Despite rain, the appearance of the royal train attracted crowds of farm labourers and local children, to the Queen's delight. It is reported the after this stop, Victoria asked that the speed of her train be reduced.
The L&BR was constructed by the railway engineer Robert Stephenson. He originally planned a route which would have taken the new railway to the east of Tring, but vociferous opposition from influential local landowners such as the Earl of Essex, Earl of Clarendon, Lord Brownlow and Sir Astley Cooper delayed the project and forced the route to be changed before parliamentary approval could be obtained, with the result that Tring railway station had to be sited some distance from the town. .
The remote location of Tring station is sometimes wrongly attributed to objections which were said to have been made by Lord Rothschild to protect his land in Tring; in fact, Lord Rothschild was not born until 1840, three years after the railway had opened and the Tring lands were only acquired by his father Lionel in 1872. He did, however, object to a much later plan to build a steam tramway between Tring Station and Aylesbury.
Tring station's distance from the town would have been greater had the L&BR placed the station at Pitstone Green, some 3 miles further north, as it originally planned to do. The preferred location at Pendley required purchasing land from the Comte d’Harcourt, another landowner reluctant to admit the railways to his estate, and he demanded such an exorbitant price that the L&BR selected a cheaper but less convenient plot of land. The townspeople of Tring were so enthusiastic for a railway that in 1837 they raised funds to bridge the difference in price between what the Company was prepared to pay and the price demanded by the Harcourt estate. They also supported the construction of a new road to the station and according to the 1839 issue of the Railway Times, "As soon as the Company had determined upon making it a first class station (where every train stops), the inhabitants came forward in a very spirited manner, and at their own expense formed a new road direct to the town".
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Tring station was originally intended as a destination of a branch of the Metropolitan Railway (MR). A short section of the branch from Chalfont and Latimer to Chesham was built in 1887-89 before the MR chose to construct an alternative route across the Chilterns via Aylesbury instead. Although the MR continued to buy land between Chesham and Tring for some years after Chesham station opened, the route was never extended
Some bygone images of Tring Station
And now to the Cache
This is my second SideTracked cache. It is a nice straight forward (hopefully) easy to find Letterbox Cache, placed close to my nearest Station.
Stealth will be needed, so if you can avoid peak times, I would recommend that you do so.
You are looking for a small container in a cammo bag. As this is a Letterbox cache, please do not remove the Stamp.
Please take extra care if you are caching with geokids or geodogs, the road past the station can be very busy.
Happy Caching and Safe Travels.
Congratulations to Grumpynsnoozynchatty on their speedy FTF.