Holmwood railway station

Holmwood railway station is a railway station serving the villages of Beare Green and South Holmwood in Surrey, England.

Holmwood is the nearest station for walkers wishing to climb Leith Hill, the second highest point in southern England. Walkers can also easily plan a circular walking route where they alight from their train from London at Holmwood station, then visit Leith Hill before reboarding the train for their return journey to London at Ockley station, although it is essential to buy a return ticket from London to Ockley and not to Holmwood station (the price is the same for a journey to both stations for an off peak day return from London Victoria) if planning to do so.

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 Dorking and then onwards 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 Southbound from Monday to Friday as there are no trains from London Victoria between the 1920 service and the 2326 service; no evening service on a Saturday and no service at all on a Sunday.

Facilities
Although the station is completely unmanned it has recently (during the latter half of 2011) benefited from the installation of a fully automated Quickfare ticket machine taking both credit and debit cards and cash that sells through tickets to anywhere on the UK railway network in place of the previous Permit To Travel only ticket machine. Tickets can also be purchased in advance of travel from Southern's website at http://www.southernrailway.com, and then collected from the ticket machine at Holmwood station before boarding a train using the credit or debit card with which they were purchased.

The station does not have any parking spaces of its own but free unrestricted parking is normally always available on the main road next to the station entrance to the two platforms. There is no taxi rank, so a taxi would have to be summoned by telephone from Dorking, possibly rendering it largely uneconomic to do so.

There is also a public payphone accepting only credit and debit cards for payment situated around 100 yards south of the station entrance in the car park outside the Beare Green newsagent and village store.

Fares
For tickets travelling to London Victoria only from Holmwood (but not to other London railway termini) there is a discount on the normal Southern off peak return walk up ticket price of around 15% available for approximately 30 weeks of the year (current fares regulations prevent Southern from offering a permanent discount on advance online purchase of discount tickets for travel on their own network on a year round basis) if tickets are bought in advance at www.southernrailway.com and then collected from the ticket machine situated on the Northbound platform at Holmwood station using the credit or debit card with which the online booking was paid for. When available these discount advance purchase off peak day return tickets can be bought online as little as two hours before the departure time of the service on which a passenger intends to travel.

Journey times
Journey times now vary between 59 and 72 minutes to London Victoria compared to times of between only 46 and 55 minutes as recently as 1992. It is also believed that services to and from London from Holmwood would have been faster still than those 1990s times post electrification of the line in 1938 and prior to the removal of the passing loops on the line at Cheam in the 1960s.

Historical perspective
Holmwood was until the new timetable of 10 July 1967 quite a busy station. There was an hourly service to and from Waterloo / Horsham and an hourly service to and from London Bridge via Tulse Hill / Horsham. And once an hour a non-stop express Victoria service went through the station from Bognor Regis. Further, Holmwood was a terminus for various additional trains to and from Waterloo. The reader is referred to British Railways Southern Region passenger and working timetables for 1966-1967. Notice the faster speeds than today's fastest time to Victoria of 59 minutes. Unlike today, no slack, giving the appearance of on-time performance, was built into the timetables in those days.

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, as shown above. 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 Waterloo to Dorking electric service initiated by the Southern Railway. The reader should note that the Southern Railway of those days built, owned and operated all trains from Victoria, Waterloo and London Bridge and has no connection with its modern day namesake.

However the earlier timetables for services on the line from London Victoria to Horsham in both 1905 and 1917 to be found at http://www.lbscr.org.uk/timetables/Nov1805/NEW-9B.jpg and http://www.lbscr.org.uk/timetables/Nov1017/NEW-12.jpg show that services to both London Waterloo and London Bridge were a development that presumably only followed on from the electrification of the line between Dorking and Horsham in 1938 with the original Victorian service pattern from Holmwood, Ockley and Warnham being to London Victoria only, just as it is once again today. Some features of the very unusual service pattern of today from Holmwood (for a commuter station in Surrey with direct rush hour services to a London terminus) such as the last evening weekday rush hour service from London Victoria at 7.20pm (apart from the 11.26pm weekday service only added to the timetable in December 2004 following several years of pressure from a local campaigner) can even be traced back to those far off Victorian/Edwardian origins. However it is worth noting that back in Victorian and Edwardian times the line also enjoyed four through services a day from Holmwood both to and from London Victoria. Two in the early morning and two in the late afternoon/early evening making Sunday outings to the Capital and elsewhere possible in this still largely pre motor car era. It is not known at what point in time Holmwood and the neighbouring two stations of Holmwood and Warnham lost their Sunday railway services.