Ockley railway station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ockley

Location

Place

Ockley

Local authority

Mole Valley

Operations

Station code

OLY

Managed by

Southern

Platforms in use

Live departures and station information from National Rail

Annual Rail Passenger Usage

2004/05 *

32,883

2005/06 *

33,890

History

Key dates

Opened 1 May 1867

National Rail - UK railway stations

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

* Annual passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Ockley from Office of Rail Regulation statistics.

UK Railways Portal

Ockley railway station serves the villages of Ockley & Capel in Surrey, England being situated two miles to the east of Ockley and just over one mile to the west of Capel . The station is 50 km (31 miles) south east of London Victoria. Ockley is managed by Southern who also provide all the services.

It opened as Ockley & Capel on the 1st May 1867 as part of the London Brighton South Coast Railway extension to Horsham. It's 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 30s when this trade was lost to road transport.

Goods traffic declined slowly over the next thirty years ceasing finally in June 1962 (information from Epsom to Horsham Southern Min Lines by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith (Middleton Press))

[edit] Services

For most of the day there is only one train per hour southbound to Horsham via Warnham and there is also only one train per hour northbound towards Victoria via Holmwood, Dorking and then onwards 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 very limited mid and late evening service Southbound from Monday to Friday (there being no train from London Victoria serving the station after the 1920 service on Mondays to Fridays until the final 2326 service that was introduced in late 2004 as a result of the efforts over several years of a campaign by one of the two local district councillors for Capel) and no evening service at all on a Saturday. Whilst the service on Saturday in the daytime is hourly somewhat illogically there is then no service at all on the line on a Sunday. This results from the minimum service operating requirements imposed on Southern as a condition of their being granted the franchise but that in philosophical terms quite clearly date from the days when many people in offices had to go to work on Saturday, no shops were open on a Sunday and most local people went to church and nor did any sporting events take place on this day.

The station has a Permit To Travel machine but no proper ticket machine. The station also has free parking available for around 16 cars in the Station Approach but these spaces are now often full after 7.30am in the morning on a weekday. If the car parking at Ockley station is full when arriving by car the only option is either to risk parking on an area of double yellow line (not currently enforced) in Station Approach, to risk parking outside Station Approach in the unlit Coles Lane (inadvisable if returning after dark as there is a high risk of your vehicle being damaged by passing traffic at night) or to drive north on the A24 to Beare Green village where there is a significantly more plentiful supply of free safe parking available on the village road next to Holmwood station.

It is important to note that this station is a minor rural hault and that consequently there is no taxi rank service available from the station and that any taxi from it would therefore have to be summoned by telephone from Dorking or Horsham at what is likely to be a substantial call out cost. It is therefore only advisable to use this station if either driving to or from it or alternatively if travelling there on foot from Capel village. The walk to Ockley village on an unlit country lane with no pavement is actually much longer than to Capel village and should only be contemplated either during the hours of daylight or otherwise at night only if armed with a good torch and preferably also only if wearing reflective clothing.

It should be noted that Ockley station is currently in the same fare zone for Southern's offpeak Pricebuster ticket as Dorking station for which the return fare is just £7.00 to London Victoria only (not valid to Waterloo, London Bridge or other London termini) on all trains arriving at Victoria after 11am. This combined with the free parking at the station, the now high cost of parking in the car park at Dorking station and also the introduction of the one late evening service to Ockley from London on Monday to Friday seems to explain the significant increase in the level of passenger use of this station (especially by car based users) over the course of the last 10 years.