Deal railway station serves

Deal A deal, or deals may refer to: Places United States * Deal, New Jersey, a borough * Deal, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * Deal Lake, New Jersey Elsewhere * Deal Island (Tasmania), Australia * Deal, Kent, a town in England * Deal, ...

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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The station and all trains serving it are 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 station is on the Kent Coast Line north east of

Dover Priory The Priory of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Martin of the New Work, or Newark, commonly called Dover Priory, was a priory at Dover in southeast England. It was variously independent in rule, then occupied by canons regular of the Augustinian r ...

and south east of

London Charing Cross Charing Cross railway station (also known as London Charing Cross) is a central London railway terminus between the Strand and Hungerford Bridge in the City of Westminster. It is the terminus of the South Eastern Main Line to Dover via Ashf ...

History

Early Years

Deal was originally the terminus of a South Eastern Railway branch line from Minster Junction through Sandwich and opened on 1 July 1847. This meant the original services to London ran via Canterbury,

Ashford Ashford may refer to: Places Australia *Ashford, New South Wales *Ashford, South Australia *Electoral district of Ashford, South Australia Ireland *Ashford, County Wicklow *Ashford Castle, County Galway United Kingdom * Ashford, Kent, a town ** ...

, Tonbridge, Redhill and Croydon to

London Bridge Several bridges named London Bridge have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, in central London. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It r ...

. Charles Dickens attended the celebrations that accompanied the opening of the line.The Old Pubs of Deal & Walmer, Steve Glover & Michael Rogers, Bygone Publishing, . The link south to

Dover Dover () is a town and major ferry port in Kent, South East England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies south-east of Canterbury and east of Maidstone ...

was delayed by commercial rivalry between the two Kent railway companies, the South Eastern Railway and the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. However, the companies finally agreed to build the line jointly and it opened on 15 June 1881.South Coast Railways, Dover to Ramsgate, Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith, Middleton Press 1990, . The original single platform with its 2-storey 1847 building became the new 'up' platform. This line now continued south under a new flyover carrying London Road and necessitated demolition of the middle houses in Sunnyside Terrace. The siding next to this was extended to become a through siding. Finally, a new 'down' platform was built to the west with buildings similar to those at Walmer. The existence of this middle siding explains the gap between the current tracks. The footbridge, which originally had a roof, also dates to 1881.An Historical Survey of Southern Stations, Volume 1, GA Pryor and GJ Bowring, Oxford Publishing Company, 1980, South Eastern & Chatham Railways, Adrian Gray, Middleton Press 1998, . Mileage on the line is measured from via and ; on this basis, Deal is from Charing Cross. Hence the milepost on the 'up' platform at Deal says 90¾ (via Canterbury) but Deal is actually only 86¾ miles from Charing Cross (via Dover).British Railways, Southern Region, Timetable 11 September 1961 until 17 June 1962. Deal used to have extensive coal yards (bordered by St Patrick's Road), goods yards (no
Sainsbury's
and a locomotive shed and turntable (now Bridgeside). The locomotive shed was shut in 1930. Albert Terrace was built in the 1860s for railway employees in a line with Lower Queen Street before the railway was extended to Dover. Hence the London Road flyover was built with a 'kink' around them. The station-master's house received a direct hit during World War 2 (although a garden wall still exists), as did the goods shed. The substantial buildings on the 'down' platform were demolished about 1970 and replaced with small

CLASP Clasp, clasper or CLASP may refer to: * Wrist clasp, a dressing accessory * Folding clasp, a device used to close a watch strap * Medal bar, an element in military decoration * Fastener, a hardware device that mechanically joins objects together * ...

-style buildings. These have since been replaced with a small modern shelter, as shown in the photograph on the right.

Signalling

Deal retains its

semaphore signals Railway semaphore signal is one of the earliest forms of fixed railway signals. This semaphore system involves signals that display their different indications to train drivers by changing the angle of inclination of a pivoted 'arm'. Semaphore ...

at the station and at Victoria Park. The

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

moved from the platform to the Western Road level crossing in 1939. It is a good example of a Southern Railway odeon/art deco ‘glasshouse’ signal box (a Type 13). One siding remains, occasionally used for infrastructure trains.

Former services

During the 19th and early 20th centuries Deal enjoyed a higher status than now as a resort and, with extensive Royal Marine barracks, was a terminating/originating point for a number of trains travelling routes that seem unusual nowadays. Trains to/from London could run either north or south. For example, there were direct trains to Reading via Redhill, and a daily service to Birkenhead began in 1903 and continued for many years, surviving as a daily through train to Wolverhampton until 1962. There was also a daily train to Manchester before WW1 and regular daily trains to Victoria until the 1960s. From 1948 to 1962, the peak 16:56 service from Cannon Street that divided at Ashford was unusual in having both portions call at Deal. The portion via Dover called at Deal at 19:16, to Ramsgate. The portion via Canterbury called 3 minutes later, to Dover.Southern Railway Passenger Timetable, 6 October 1947, .

Electrification

Services through Deal were electrified using the 3rd rail system at 750 volts DC as Phase 2 of

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 ...

's Kent Coast Electrification Scheme. Some electric trains began running in 1961, with the full service beginning with the Summer timetable on 18 June 1962. There were 2 trains per hour (tph) off-peak, mostly from Charing Cross to Ramsgate, until May 1982, when the service was reduced to 1 tph off-peak (2 tph in the peaks).

Services

All services at Deal 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 London St Pancras International * 1 tph to During the peak hours, the station is also served by a number of services between Ramsgate and

via .

TV

Deal and its station featured in an episode of the BBC TV Great British Railway Journeys, Series 2, that aired on BBC2 on 27 January 2011. Presenter Michael Portillo travelled from Ramsgate to Folkestone and spent the night at Deal's historic Royal Hotel. He explored local attractions including Walmer Castle and the

Timeball Tower ''Timeball'' is a puzzle video game released by NEC for the TurboGrafx-16. The object of the game is to guide a ball along pieces of track by moving tiles like a sliding puzzle. The game's name in Japan is ''Blodia'', an anagram of ''Diablo'', th ...

.Great British Railway Journeys, Charlie Bunce & Michael Portillo, Collins 2011, .

Current facilities and access

Deal station has a ticket office, waiting room and café. The station building also incorporates toilets (including disabled access and baby-changing facilities), staff facilities, photo machine and snack machines. There is a help-point and automatic ticket machine on the platform.

References

External links

{{TSGN and SE Stations, Staplehurst=y, High Speed=y, FCC None=y, SN None=y Deal, Kent Railway stations in Kent DfT Category E stations Former South Eastern Railway (UK) stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1847 Railway stations served by Southeastern 1847 establishments in England