Place Ockley Station code OLY DfT category F2 Number of platforms 2 | Grid reference TQ164404 Managed by Southern 2011/12 43,158 | |
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Address Capel, Dorking RH5 5HT, United Kingdom Similar Holmwood railway station, Warnham railway station, Box Hill & Westhumble railway st, Dorking railway station, Leatherhead railway station | ||
Ockley railway station serves the villages of Ockley and Capel in Surrey, England and is situated 1.4 miles (2.3 km) from Ockley village and only 0.5 miles (0.80 km) west of the village of Capel. The station is 29 miles 20 chains (47.1 km) from London Waterloo station. Ockley is managed by Southern which also provides all the services.
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It opened as Ockley & Capel on 1 May 1867 as part of the London Brighton & South Coast Railway extension to Horsham. Its 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 1930s when this trade was lost to road transport.
Goods traffic declined slowly over the next 30 years ceasing finally in June 1962.
The station could very easily have suffered a similar fate (with the potential loss of many of its most important historic features - especially the wooden station canopy) as Warnham station level crossing and signal box, but in recent years Ockley Station has been protected from such an outcome by the efforts of one of the property owners living in the Station Approach who a number of years ago successfully applied to English Heritage to have the station Grade II listed. This means Network Rail must maintain it in its present form.
A great deal of further detail on the history of this station and the entire section of line between Dorking and Horsham can be found in John Harrod's Up The Dorking
Services
For most of the day there is only one train per hour southbound to Horsham and there is also only one train per hour northbound towards Victoria 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 limited mid and late evening service from Monday to Friday as there are no trains from London Victoria between the 19:20 service and the 23:26 service and no trains to Victoria after the 20:17 departure; there is no evening service on a Saturday and no service at all on a Sunday.
Facilities
The station has free parking for around 17 cars (15 normal spaces and two disabled) in the Station Approach, but these spaces are often full by 7.30am on weekdays. When the station car park is full there is no other safe parking location at the station as the winding unlit Coles Lane from which the Station Approach is accessed is neither safe nor suitable for parking and the nearest safe parking locations on public roads in Capel village are at least 0.5 miles (0.80 km) away. There is no taxi rank, so a taxi would have to be summoned by telephone from Dorking or Horsham rendering it largely uneconomic to do so. There is a BT payphone in front of the station building which only takes credit or debit cards. There are no buses that serve the station itself.
Journey times
Journey times now vary between 63 and 76 minutes to London Victoria compared to times of between only 51 and 60 minutes as recently as 1992.