Hayes and Harlington railway station

Hayes and Harlington railway station is a railway station in Hayes and Harlington in the London Borough of Hillingdon.

History
It is on Isambard Kingdom Brunel's former Great Western Main Line running out of London Paddington to the Thames Valley, Bristol, South Wales and the West Country. The line was opened on 4 June 1838, initially running to a temporary Maidenhead to allow completion of the famous brick arch bridge over the River Thames just west of the station. The station at Hayes opened in 1868.

From 1 March 1883, the station (then named Hayes) was served by District Railway services running between and Windsor. The service was discontinued as uneconomic after 30 September 1885.

Description
Although a busy station there are no automatic ticket barriers, but manual ticket checks take place on a daily basis.

Airport Junction
Hayes is the location of the junction for the recently completed Heathrow Airport branch. For this reason, the lines through the station are electrified with 25kV a.c. overhead power, although they only continue along the Airport branch — the main line to Reading is not yet electrified.

The junction itself consists of two ground level high-speed turnouts from the main lines, the 'down' (away from London) line curving away to the left towards the Airport and the 'up' (towards London) line passing over a major concrete flyover construction to clear the up and down main lines before joining the up main line on the flat. This arrangement permits a London-bound electric train to join the main line from Heathrow at the same time as a Reading-bound train passes along the down main line – if there were simply a flat junction one of the trains would have had to be held to allow the other to pass.

Services
Services at Hayes and Harlington are provided by FirstGroup plc. First Great Western run stopping services and fast services in both directions between and Reading stations. Heathrow Connect services are jointly run with BAA plc ( who built the tunnel and airport junction to the airport) and FirstGroup (providing a fast electric main line alternative to the Piccadilly Line for passengers travelling to Heathrow Airport). Heathrow Connect replaced the stopping services under First Great Western Link between Hayes & Harlington and London Paddington. This has allowed for speedy journey times in the Greater London Area.

The station is served by local services operated by First Great Western from London Paddington to Reading and Heathrow Connect services from Paddington to Heathrow Airport.

As of October 2008, Oyster "pay as you go" can be used for journeys originating or ending at Hayes & Harlington. .

Transport Links
London bus routes 90, 140, 195, 350, E6, H98, U4 and U5.

Future plans
In the future, Hayes and Harlington will become one of the stations on London's planned Crossrail route, the new twin-bore main line diameter tunnels underneath central London which will surface west of Paddington station. Although beyond the core tunnel section, Hayes and Harlington will be provided with a frequent metro service across the capital to Docklands, east London and Shenfield, replacing the current First Great Western service. The project also includes electrification of the slow lines along the Thames Valley as far as Maidenhead, Crossrail's planned terminus.