© 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. A search for the leptonic decays of W bosons produced in the reaction e+ p → e+ W± X at a centre-of-mass energy of 300GeV has been performed with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 47.7 pb-1. Three events consistent with W → eν decay are found, giving a cross section estimate of 0.9+10-07±0.2 pb, in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction. The corresponding 95% C.L. upper limit on the cross section is 3.3 pb. A search for the decay W → μν has a smaller selection efficiency and yields no candidate events. Limits on the cross section for W production with large hadronic transverse momentum have been obtained. A search for high-transverse-momentum isolated tracks in events with large missing transverse momentum yields results in good agreement with Standard Model expectations, in contrast to a recent report by the H1 collaboration of the observation of an excess of such events.