Holmwood railway station
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Holmwood railway station serves the villages of
Beare Green Capel () is a village and civil parish in southern Surrey, England. It is equidistant between Dorking and Horsham – about away. Around Capel, to the west, skirts the A24 road. Capel is approximately north of the West Sussex border, s ...
and
South Holmwood South Holmwood () is a semi-rural village in Surrey, England. It can be considered cognate with its wider civil parish, which stretches to the east to embrace Holmwood Common, but does not include Mid Holmwood, or North Holmwood, the latter ...
in
Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
, England, on the
Sutton and Mole Valley Lines The Sutton and Mole Valley lines were constructed between 1847 and 1868 by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, the London and South Western Railway and the LBSCR-sponsored Horsham, Dorking and Leatherhead Railway. Services Services ...
between and Horsham, from
London Waterloo Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of ...
.


Services

All services at Holmwood are operated by
Southern Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...
using Class 377
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 Victoria Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster, managed by Network Rail. Named after the nearby Victoria Street (not the Q ...
via
Sutton Sutton (''south settlement'' or ''south town'' in Old English) may refer to: Places United Kingdom England In alphabetical order by county: * Sutton, Bedfordshire * Sutton, Berkshire, a List of United Kingdom locations: Stu-Sz#Su, location * S ...
* 1 tph to During the peak hours, the service is increased to 2 tph. There is no service on Saturday evenings (after approximately 18:30) or on Sundays.


Facilities


Station Facilities

The station is unstaffed and has no ticket office although there is a self-service
ticket machine A ticket machine, also known as a ticket vending machine (TVM), is a vending machine that produces paper or electronic tickets, or recharges a stored-value card or smart card or the user's mobile wallet, typically on a smartphone. For instance, ...
on the
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
bound platform for ticket purchases. Both platforms have departure boards, shelters and modern help points. There are no
car park A parking lot (American English) or car park (British English), also known as a car lot, is a cleared area intended for parking vehicles. The term usually refers to an area dedicated only for parking, with a durable or semi-durable surfac ...
ing facilities at the station although there is a small
bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bic ...
storage facility at the station.


The Signal Box

The original 1877
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'' ...
remains on the London bound platform although is now disused. The signal box is Grade II listed.


History

The station opened in 1867 in what was the far north of the
civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...
of
Capel Capel may refer to: People *Capell, surname, includes a list of people with the surnames Capel and Capell *Capel (given name), includes a list of people with the given name Capel Places England *Capel, Kent, a village and civil parish near T ...
along the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway line to Portsmouth. Why it was called Holmwood is mysterious, however Beare Green was a smaller settlement than the Holmwood area which was expanding with building at the time. Holmwood for many years had until a revised timetable of 10 July 1967 two hourly services during the day in each direction: *to and from Waterloo and Horsham *to and from London Bridge (via Sutton and Tulse Hill) and Horsham. In respect of the first route where on time the journey was completed in less than 55 minutes: no slack, allowing for lengthy boarding assuming identical track speed, was built into the timetables. Of relevance to Bognor Regis, a once an hour non-stop express Victoria service went through the station from the coastal resort. Further, Holmwood was a terminus for various additional trains to and from Waterloo. Prior to 1963 the use of Holmwood as a terminus was implemented for much of the day. For example, a serious accident at Motspur Park on 6 Nov 1947 involved the 16:45 Southern Railway train from Holmwood to Waterloo. This service was withdrawn in 1963, the later 17:45 being the last of a series of hourly trains from Holmwood to Waterloo to be retained in the 1963 timetable. The accident in 1947 resulted from incorrect manual fog signalling when the driver of the Holmwood train was given permission to enter the junction at Motspur Park before the down Chessington train had cleared the junction, and before the signals and points were changed by the signal box. This is one of the few references one can find to the important role that Holmwood station played in the
Sutton and Mole Valley Lines The Sutton and Mole Valley lines were constructed between 1847 and 1868 by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, the London and South Western Railway and the LBSCR-sponsored Horsham, Dorking and Leatherhead Railway. Services Services ...
to Waterloo service initiated in the early 20th century by the Southern Railway. Before nationalisation in the 1940s, the Southern Railway built, owned its trains, running from today's two London termini as well as Waterloo following the formation of the Big Four. Thus the earlier timetables for services on the line from London Victoria to Horsham in 1905 and 1917 show that services to London Waterloo and London Bridge adhering to the Victorian service pattern from Holmwood, Ockley and Warnham being to London Victoria only. Some features of the unusual service pattern endure include its last evening weekday rush hour service from London Victoria at 7:20pm (apart from the 11:26pm weekday service added to the timetable in December 2004 following several years of pressure from a local campaigner) traceable to the Victorian/Edwardian origins. From at least Victorian times (or quite probably from the opening of the line in 1867) until the middle of the 20th century the line also had four services to and from London Victoria in each direction on a Sunday compared to no Sunday service at all in current times. There were two services in each direction in the early morning and two more in the late afternoon/early evening (a total of eight trains in all on the Dorking to Horsham section of line during the day) making Sunday outings to the Capital and elsewhere possible in this still largely pre-motor car era. However it is not clear from easily available records precisely when Holmwood and the neighbouring two stations of Ockley and Warnham lost their Sunday railway services.


References


External links

{{TSGN and SE Stations, Mole Valley=y, FCC None=y, SE None=y Railway stations in Surrey Former London, Brighton and South Coast Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1867 Railway stations served by Govia Thameslink Railway