Ockley railway station

Ockley National Rail
Location
Place Ockley
Local authority District of Mole Valley
Grid reference TQ164404
Operations
Station code OLY
Managed by Southern
Number of platforms 2
DfT category F2
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections
from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2008/09 Increase 50,224
2009/10 Decrease 42,584
2010/11 Increase 46,852
2011/12 Decrease 43,158
2012/13 Increase 45,430
2013/14 Decrease 43,432
2014/15 Increase 43,726
History
Key dates Opened 1 May 1867 (1 May 1867)
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Ockley from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal

Ockley railway station serves the villages of Ockley and Capel in Surrey, England and is situated 1.4 miles (2.3 km) from Ockley village and only 0.5 miles (0.80 km) west of the village of Capel. The station is 29 miles 20 chains (47.1 km) from London Waterloo station.[1] Ockley is managed by Southern which also provides all the services.

It opened as Ockley & Capel on 1 May 1867 as part of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway extension to Horsham. Its situation next to Le Steeres of Jayes Park brickworks (closed c 1914) and nearby Phorpres Works (now Clockhouse Works) allowed for substantial brickwork traffic for many years. Milk traffic was also important until the early 1930s when this trade was lost to road transport.

Goods traffic declined slowly over the next 30 years ceasing finally in June 1962.[2]

The station could very easily have suffered a similar fate (with the potential loss of many of its most important historic features - especially the wooden station canopy) as Warnham station level crossing and signal box, but in recent years Ockley Station has been protected from such an outcome by the efforts of one of the property owners living in the Station Approach who a number of years ago successfully applied to English Heritage to have the station Grade II listed.[3] This means Network Rail must maintain it in its present form.

A great deal of further detail on the history of this station and the entire section of line between Dorking and Horsham can be found in John Harrod's Up The Dorking[4]

Services

For most of the day there is only one train per hour southbound to Horsham and there is also only one train per hour northbound towards Victoria via Sutton and Clapham Junction. However, in the Monday to Friday morning peak northbound and the evening peak southbound there are some additional services on an approximately half-hourly basis.

There is only a limited mid and late evening service from Monday to Friday as there are no trains from London Victoria between the 19:20 service and the 23:26 service and no trains to Victoria after the 20:17 departure; there is no evening service on a Saturday and no service at all on a Sunday.[5]

Facilities

The station has free parking for around 17 cars (15 normal spaces and two disabled) in the Station Approach, but these spaces are often full by 7.30am on weekdays. When the station car park is full there is no other safe parking location at the station as the winding unlit Coles Lane from which the Station Approach is accessed is neither safe nor suitable for parking and the nearest safe parking locations on public roads in Capel village are at least 0.5 miles (0.80 km) away. There is no taxi rank, so a taxi would have to be summoned by telephone from Dorking or Horsham rendering it largely uneconomic to do so. There is a BT payphone in front of the station building which only takes credit or debit cards. There are no buses that serve the station itself.

Journey times

Journey times now vary between 63 and 76 minutes to London Victoria compared to times of between only 51 and 60 minutes as recently as 1992.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Yonge, John (November 2008) [1994]. Jacobs, Gerald, ed. Railway Track Diagrams 5: Southern & TfL (3rd ed.). Bradford on Avon: Trackmaps. map 19A. ISBN 978-0-9549866-4-3.
  2. ↑ From Epsom to Horsham Southern Min Lines by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith (Middleton Press)
  3. ↑ British Listed Buildings http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-479635-ockley-railway-station-rhumbles-and-the-
  4. ↑ Up The Dorking by John Harrod Ian Allen Publishing
  5. ↑ GB eNRT 2015-16 Edition, Table 180
  6. ↑ GB National Rail Timetable May 1992 Edition, Table 182
Preceding station National Rail Following station
Holmwood   Southern
Sutton & Mole Valley Lines
Mondays-Saturdays only		   Warnham

Coordinates: 51°09′07″N 0°20′10″W / 51.152°N 0.336°W / 51.152; -0.336

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