goods traffic approaching Temple Mills Yard. In 1849 the ECR opened a branch line from to Enfield. The ECR and certain other companies in the east of England amalgamated to form the Great Eastern Railway (GER) in 1862. The GER adopted a policy of running frequent passenger services on the London suburban lines: in 1864 there were 29 departures per day for the N&ER line. Shoreditch station had been renamed Bishopsgate, but it was obviously inadequate for both main line traffic and N&ER line traffic, and the decision was taken to extend westwards: Liverpool Street station was opened in 1871, with a connection to the underground Metropolitan Railway opening in 1875. In 1872 a new shorter route towards Broxbourne was opened, from , near Liverpool Street, via to Copper Mill Junction, south of station. In time this became the dominant route from London. In 1891 the Churchbury loop was opened, from Bury Street Junction via to . The area was undeveloped and the sparse train service failed to encourage residential travel. It closed to ordinary passenger trains in 1909. The N&ER line never became the primary route from London to York (which was the Great Northern Railway's route via Peterborough and Newark), but from 1882 the GER participated with the GNR in a joint railway, the Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway, which gave it access to Doncaster, and by means of running powers to York. A significant flow of coal ran south from Yorkshire to London over the N&ER's line, and for a while an express passenger train, the Cathedrals Express, ran over the route. The cathedrals alluded to were Ely, Peterborough and Lincoln, and the service ran from 1892 to 1918. The twentieth century Passenger use of the line intensified in the 20th century, particularly for residential travel as people became accustomed to travelling longer distances in order to live in more rural surroundings. Cambridge too became increasingly significant as a regional centre, attracting express passenger trains over the route. Goods and mineral traffic too remained dominant, although declining steeply after 1955. Organisationally the N&ER company was absorbed into the GER in 1902; the GER was a constituent of the new London and North Eastern Railway in 1923 (as part of the "grouping" of the railways) and in 1948 the LNER in turn was nationalised. The Churchbury Loop from Bury Street Junction, near Enfield, and Cheshunt, had