SECTIONS BETWEEN TJPMINSTER AND EOMFOED. 365 



21. The New Eailwat /rom Grays Trueeock to Romfoed: sections 

 between Upminstee and Romfoed. By T. Y. Holmes, Esq., 

 P.G.S. (Read March 9th, 1892.) 



This railway, which has been in process of construction during the 

 last two or three years and is still incomplete, diverges from the 

 London and Tilbury line about a mile west of Grays Thurrock 

 station. Thence its range is either northerly or north-westerly. 

 It crosses the Mardyke about half a mile west of Stifford, and its 

 course lies westward of the villages of I^orth and South Ockendou 

 and eastward of Stubbers and Cranham Hall. From Cranham Hall 

 to Romford its direction is more westerly. At Upminster it joins 

 the railway from Barking to Langdon Hills and Pitsea, and then, 

 leaving it again close to Upminster station, keeps on the northern 

 side of the road between Upminster and Hornchurch, and crosses 

 that ranging northward from the last-named village at Butts Green. 

 Then, passing close to, but southward of, the farmhouse called Great 

 Gardens, it joins the Great Eastern Railway about half a mile east 

 of Romford station. The portion of the line south of Upminster 

 is in a more advanced state than that between Upminster and Rom- 

 ford, the mile nearest Romford being at present (Feb. 1892) in the 

 most backward condition. 



Having described elsewhere the sections seen between West 

 Thurrock and the Mardyke,^ I will only remark with respect to that 

 part of the line that the junction of the Chalk with the Thanet 

 Sands was once visible where Back Lane crosses the railway. Thence, 

 to the end of the cutting north of Back Lane, Thanet Sands (below 

 gravel) appeared. The Woolwich Beds would naturally come on in 

 the Mardyke Valley, where the cutting is replaced by a viaduct, 

 and there is an alluvial flat below, on each side of the stream ; they 

 are, consequently, nowhere to be seen. But in the cutting on the 

 northern flank of the valley London Clay, below gravel, appears ; 

 and from the Mardyke to Romford London Clay is the oldest forma- 

 tion anywhere visible beneath the superficial drift. 



Between the Thames and the Mardyke, on the southern flank of 

 the Chalk, there is Thames Valley Gravel at various levels, the 

 highest point reached by it being the 50-feet contour-line. Towards 

 the northern flank of the Chalk the old Thames gravel and loam 

 forms a plateau, the surface of which, from a point about a mile 

 south of the Mardyke to another about a mile south-east of Up- 

 minster, at which the railway begins to run on an embankment, is 

 from 60 to 70 feet above Ordnance datum. The London Clay is 

 but little seen anywhere below this gravel terrace except within 

 about half a mile of the Mardyke, the cuttings between that stream 



1 'Essex Naturalist,' vol. ir. (1890) p. 143 ; Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. xii. (1891) 

 p. 195. 



Q. J. G. S. No. 191, 2 D 



