Construction of the Eastern Counties Railway, near Ilford, Essex, 1838.

Watercolour by Thomas Colman Dibdin (1810-1893), showing a house beside a bridge crosing the Eastern Counties Railway. The Eastern Counties Railway Company was incorporated in 1836 to build a line from Shoreditch in the East End of London, to Yarmouth via Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich. The line from Shoreditch to Brentwood was opened in 1840 and reached Colchester in Esex in 1843, but it was left to the Eastern Union Railway to build the line further north.