Staines railway station

Staines National Rail
Staines
Location
Place Staines-upon-Thames
Local authority Borough of Spelthorne
Grid reference TQ042714
Operations
Station code SNS
Managed by South Western Railway
Number of platforms 2
DfT category C2
Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections
from National Rail Enquiries
Annual rail passenger usage*
2012/13 Decrease 2.825 million
2013/14 Increase 2.850 million
2014/15 Increase 2.881 million
2015/16 Decrease 2.777 million
2016/17 Decrease 2.771 million
History
Key dates Opened 22 August 1848 (22 August 1848)
National Rail – UK railway stations
* Annual estimated passenger usage based on sales of tickets in stated financial year(s) which end or originate at Staines from Office of Rail and Road statistics. Methodology may vary year on year.
UK Railways portal
The station platforms looking east, and showing the new footbridge.
The station platforms looking west, and showing the old footbridge.
From the old footbridge, the junction of the Reading (left) and Windsor (right) lines can be seen.

Staines railway station is on the Waterloo to Reading line and is the junction station for the diverging Windsor line, in southern England to the west of London. It is 19 miles 2 chains (30.6 km) down the line from London Waterloo.

History

The station was opened on 22 August 1848 by the Windsor, Staines and South Western Railway, as part of its line from Richmond to Datchet. The line was further extended from Datchet to Windsor & Eton Riverside on 1 December 1849, by which time the Windsor, Staines and South Western Railway had become part of the London and South Western Railway (LSWR). The junction at Staines, together with the line to Wokingham was authorised in 1853 and built by the Staines, Wokingham and Woking Junction Railway, opening as far as Ascot on 4 June 1856 and onwards to Wokingham on 9 July 1856. From the outset, the line was leased to, and operated by, the LSWR, who purchased it outright in 1878. From Wokingham, LSWR trains continued to Reading Southern using running powers over the South Eastern Railway (SER).[1][2][3][4]

In the grouping of railways in 1923, the LSWR and SER became part of the Southern Railway. In 1930 the Windsor line was electrified on the third rail system at a nominal 660 volts DC. The line towards Reading was electrified as far as Virginia Water in 1937, and throughout by 1939.[2]

The Southern Railway was nationalised along with the rest of the railway network in 1948 and incorporated into British Railways. Following the privatisation of British Rail in the 1990s, the operation of Staines station and the trains serving it were transferred to the South West Trains train operating company, owned by the Stagecoach Group, whilst ownership and management of the track and infrastructure passed to Railtrack and, subsequently, Network Rail.

A refurbishment of the station was completed in November 2008 with ticket barriers on the platforms and a renovated ticket office. Wheelchair access to the platforms was provided by a new footbridge with lifts.

Setting and previous name

The station serves the town of Staines-upon-Thames in Surrey in southern England to the west of London and is a pre-junction/junction station for the diverging Windsor line.[n 1] The Windsor Line, a branch of the longer route to Reading laid out as the original destination for the lines from London via Staines, is due to quirk of naming conventions in the rail sector, rarely referred to as a branch line. Both lines are traditionally referred to as "the Windsor Lines" and the passenger lobby group influencing the service pattern of the lines is named the Windsor Lines Passenger Group.[n 2] The station is managed by South Western Railway on a contract awarded by recurring private franchise, who continue passenger services to/from London Waterloo as since the middle of the 20th century to Reading, Windsor & Eton Riverside and Weybridge.

The station was one of three – the others were Staines High Street, on the Windsor line, and Staines West, the terminus of a defunct branch of a main west-facing route from West Drayton to the north. To distinguish it from the others during their existence the station was known as Staines Central, Staines Junction and Staines Old..[5][6]

Operation

Layout

Staines railway station is a conventional (double-track) railway, immediately east of the junction of the Windsor and Reading lines, having converged. It has two flanking platforms, with the main station entrance and buildings on the northern platform 1, and a secondary entrance and buildings on the southern platform 2.

The two platforms are linked by two footbridges, one at each end of the station. The older western bridge is accessed by stairs. The newer eastern bridge has stairs and lifts. There are toilets on Platform 2.

Services

Staines railway station is served by South Western Railway services from London Waterloo to Windsor, Reading and Weybridge. Off-peak, each of these services operates two trains per hour, combining to provide six trains per hour from Staines to Waterloo (four are limited stop via Richmond, the other two are all stations via Brentford). Some early morning & late night services start or terminate here and there are additional weekday peak period trains on the Reading line and to/from Aldershot.[7]

On Sundays, there is an hourly stopping service on the line via Brentford - this runs to/from Woking rather than Weybridge. The Reading & Windsor lines still run half-hourly.

Trains to Waterloo stop at platform 1 and trains from Waterloo stop at platform 2.

Preceding station National Rail Following station
Feltham   South Western Railway
Waterloo to Reading		   Egham
Ashford (Middlesex) or Terminus   South Western Railway
Windsor Line		   Wraysbury
  South Western Railway
Waterloo to Chertsey via Hounslow		   Egham
  Historical railways  
Feltham   Anglia Railways
London Crosslink		   Woking

Connections

Staines station is 0.4 mi (0.64 km) south-east of Staines town centre. The two are linked by a walking route that first parallels the Windsor line to the north-west, before passing under that line near the site of the former Staines High Street station.

The 950 Thorpe Park Express bus link runs between the front of the station and the nearby Thorpe Park theme park. London Buses route 117 and 290 have stops 50m north of the station. Other buses operate from the bus station accessed via a broad archway and surface car park from the path to the town centre.

Service expansion schemes

Steam revival locomotive calling point

Since the early 2000s British Summer Time excursions, mainly at weekends, are driven by luxury steam locomotives calling at Staines for day-trip tours of towns and tea room villages in or including Bath, other parts of Somerset, Dorset, west Wiltshire, Devon, Winchester and Salisbury. Permitted operators are the spot-hire companies British American Railway Services, Europhoenix, Harry Needle Railroad Company, MiddlePeak Railways,[8][9] Nemesis Rail, Rail Operations Group, Riviera Trains, UK Rail Leasing, and West Coast Railways.

Additional route and track proposals

Two early 21st century proposals short of central government pledge stage, or Network Rail proposals, exist for the Hounslow Loop Line, further details of which are mentioned at Syon Lane.

Airtrack

The primary scheme lobbied for by local authorities, residents and the Chamber of Commerce is a Heathrow Airtrack. This entails construction of a direct rail service from Heathrow Airport through south-west London to Waterloo, BAA has proposed that the existing Heathrow Express service be extended from Heathrow Terminal 5 and run south to terminate at Staines. This would then provide a direct express rail service from Staines to Paddington via the airport and would reopen parts of the disused Staines and West Drayton line. Due to expensive need to replace level crossings with tunnels or bridges to connect Guildford or the South West Mainline crossing miles of track to the south-west, the scheme has been allocated government funding proposals to date.[10]

The original proposals for the AirTrack link[11] included a new station, to be called Staines High Street railway station, to be built between the existing Staines and Wraysbury railway stations near to the site of a former station of the same name. However the plans for this new station have been dropped from the revised proposals in the second public consultation, published on 20 October 2008.[12]

Notes and references

References
  1. ↑ The Times, Thursday 24 August 1848
  2. 1 2 "The Railways at Windsor". The Royal Windsor Web Site. Retrieved 15 July 2007.
  3. ↑ Mitchell, Vic and Smith, Keith (1989) Branch lines around Ascot, 1st ed, Middleton Press, Midhurst
  4. ↑ Maggs, Colin C. (1993) Branch Lines of Berkshire, 1st ed, Alan Sutton Publishing, Stroud
  5. ↑ Brown, Joe (2006). London Railway Atlas. ISBN 978-0-7110-3137-1. - pp.37
  6. ↑ Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (1988). Waterloo to Windsor. Middleton Press. p. 97. ISBN 0-906520-54-1.
  7. ↑ Table 149 National Rail timetable, May 2016
  8. ↑ MiddlePeak Railways
  9. ↑ Rail Equipment Solutions
  10. ↑ "Improving public transport access to Heathrow Airport - Consultation brochure 2" (PDF). BAA Heathrow Airport. October 2008. Archived from the original (pdf) on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  11. ↑ "Improving public transport access to Heathrow Airport, Consultation brochure 1" (PDF) (Press release). BAA Heathrow Airport. February 2008. Archived from the original (pdf) on 7 October 2008. Retrieved 3 March 2008.
  12. ↑ "Improving public transport access to Heathrow Airport - Consultation brochure 2" (PDF) (Press release). BAA Heathrow Airport. October 2008. Archived from the original (pdf) on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
Notes
  1. ↑ The town was officially renamed as Staines-upon-Thames in 2012.
  2. ↑ The Reading line from London Waterloo has a second branch leading to Weybridge, known as the Chertsey Branch Line or Chertsey Loop Line


Coordinates: 51°25′55″N 0°30′11″W / 51.432°N 0.503°W / 51.432; -0.503

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.