Charing railway station serves the village of

Charing Charing is a village and civil parish in the Ashford District of Kent, in south-east England. It includes the settlements of Charing Heath and Westwell Leacon. It is located at the foot of the North Downs and reaches up to the escarpment. T ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England. It is down the line from . The station, and all trains serving it, is operated by

Southeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

. The ticket office is staffed only during part of the day; at other times a

PERTIS In the ticketing system of the British rail network, a Permit to Travel provisionally allows passengers to travel on a train when they have not purchased a ticket in advance and the ticket office of the station they are travelling from is closed ...

'permit to travel' machine, located outside the station building on the 'down' side, suffices. The next station eastwards (towards Ashford) used to be

Hothfield Hothfield is a village and civil parish in the Ashford Borough of Kent, England and is 3 miles north-west of Ashford on the A20. It is completely split in two by Hothfield Common. Geography In the north west is Hothfield Common, 58 hectares (1 ...

, however it was closed in 1959, although it remained a 'request' stop for railway staff throughout the 1960s.

History

Charing railway station building and car park in 2009

The station was opened on 1 July 1884, as part of the

London, Chatham and Dover Railway The London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR or LC&DR) was a railway company in south-eastern England created on 1 August 1859, when the East Kent Railway was given parliamentary approval to change its name. Its lines ran through London and nor ...

(LCDR) extension to of the 1874

line Line most often refers to: * Line (geometry), object with zero thickness and curvature that stretches to infinity * Telephone line, a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system Line, lines, The Line, or LINE may also refer to: Arts ...

to Maidstone, which itself was a branch off the LCDR's Sevenoaks branch of 1862, which joined the LCDR mainline of 1840 at Swanley. In the wake of 1955

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

Modernisation plan, the "Kent Coast Electrification" scheme saw the suburban electrification of the previous Southern Railway extended from Maidstone East through to Ashford. The goods yard comprised five sidings on the down side and one on the up side. It was taken over for military use during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Electrification also saw the addition of a footbridge, but by 16 May 1964 freight operations ceased. Charing's signal box closed on 14 April 1984, when the upgraded Maidstone East Panel took control of the whole line.

Services

Charing railway station platforms in 2009

All services at Charing are operated by

using and

EMUs Emus may refer to: * Emu The emu () (''Dromaius novaehollandiae'') is the second-tallest living bird after its ratite relative the ostrich. It is endemic to Australia where it is the largest native bird and the only extant member of the g ...

. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: * 1 tph to via * 1 tph to During the peak hours, the station is served by an additional hourly service between London Victoria and Ashford International, increasing the service to 2 tph in each direction.

References

;Sources * *

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Charing Railway Station Transport in the Borough of Ashford Railway stations in Kent DfT Category E stations Former London, Chatham and Dover Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1884 Railway stations served by Southeastern 1884 establishments in England