Trains at: Surbiton, SWML, 19/10/19

A very enjoyable hours session spent at Surbiton on the South Western Mainline where we see plenty of services from South Western Railway.

Surbiton actually had a very difficult birth, this was because the original site of the station would've been roughly 1.5 miles away from where it currently sits, the reason why this was declined and subsequently moved was because at the time the Kingston Corporation objected to the plans because they feared that the introduction of the railway would take away the business that their coach company was serving. Eventually the station was opened in 1838 by the London and Southampton Railway 0.5 miles away from its current sight. When the station was opened the area was incredibly barren, it just gives you an idea how much London has grown over the years. In 1838 Surbiton consisted of a barn. That's it, just a barn. Then inbetween 1840 and 1845 the station was moved half a mile to its current location. The station housed a very moderate sized goods yard to the south of the station with two additional sidings located to the Western side. This area of the yard actually served the short lived Surbiton - Okehampton car carrier service which worked from 1960 to 1964.

The goods yard was eventually closed in 1971, eventually becoming the sight of the concrete car park.

Sadly this station doesn't go without incident, on the same year that the goods yard closed a freight train derailed at the station after coming off from a set of points at the London end, the wagons toppled over and went through platforms 3 and 4. The driver was completely unaware that his train had derailed and kept on going, the result being that the derailed wagons were now blocking the down fast line which sadly meant that the wagons were nothing more than a barrier for an express train that was heading towards London. The loco of the express train came off the tracks and toppled over, the leading passenger carriage came to a stop once it struck a nearby road bridge. Amazingly no one was killed in all of this which I find simply astonishing. The cause of the crash was eventually put down to one of the freight wagons being overloaded with ballast which caused the train to jump on the points. The train was travelling from Clapham Junction Yard.

Last year the station saw roughly 9.1 million passengers pass through its doors.

Because of engineering works taking place on the following weekend from when I filmed this it meant that my next station is going to be Gatwick Airport on the Brighton Mainline followed by Brighton.

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