National Rail Stations: Dunton Green - Filton Abbey Wood

Britain's Smallest Train: Dunton Green - Filton Abbey Wood

The Darent Valley Path is about a 19 mile signposted walk that starts at the Dartford Creek Barrier, and begins along the River Darent to Dartford, of which I had walked before as part of one of my favourite walks by the Littlebrook Power Station. This pathway continues all the way until it finishes at Sevenoaks, and this last couple of miles or so is what I started to walk along on this trip out of London to tick off a small amount of new stations, starting at Dunton Green, the first stop outside of the oyster zone. I came away from the Darent Valley Path to visit the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve, a rather nice spot by a lake here, which I thought at first was the source of the River Darent, but it's actually more closer to Westerham, despite the pathway ending at Sevenoaks. Using Sevenoaks Station for the first time, I went one stop on a Thameslink train which starts here, to get off at the interesting named station of Bat & Ball. If I was passing a station name quite like this one, of course I was going to have to look around, waiting half an hour for the train behind. Interestingly, the station still seemed to be owned by Southeastern, despite the fact that Thameslink has taken over all services that stop here. I believe the station was named after a pub with the same name, and although it doesn't exist anymore, I thought I'd go and have a look at where it was. The building just looked like a very standard affair, and was now just a solicitors place, right beside a junction of two main roads, so it was a little underwhelming. Half an hour later, I was back on a Thameslink train, stopping at a couple of more stops, before I reached my final station of the day, Eynsford, one stop before the oyster zone begins. I got off here though to have a look around, because nearby was the Lullingstone Country Park that I thought would be worth exploring. The entrance to it had a visitor centre, which I always like to go in and have a look around, and actually, the Darent Valley Path passes through this area too, on its way between Dartford and Dunton Green. It was very pretty taking a small walk along the River Darent here, with a lake beyond, until I reached Lullingstone Castle, a rather nice looking affair hidden away within the grounds of the country park. Before making my way back towards the station, I saw a rotting red telephone box, which was strangely placed, and I saw across the valley here what looked like a magnificent viaduct, which would have been cool to go up closer to have a look at. Back at Eynsford, I jumped back on a Thameslink train, and actually travelled over the viaduct that I saw from the country park. It was a really fun trip, consisting of only 6 new stations, and I had this trip in the works since London Loop Day 3, of when I was sat on top of a hill, looking across towards the area of Sevenoaks, and I came up with the idea to look on the map to see if it's worth going out there, and it's safe to say that it was.

A couple of weeks later, I headed out on South Western Railway to complete another few stations on a branch line out towards Shepperton. Passing Fulwell, where I caught my very first SWR train, after the company changed from being called South West Trains. At the end of the line at Shepperton, I took a walk right down the high street, finding a discarded Domino's Pizza hat, which I did take with me and wear for the rest of the day, even though it was wet as it was slightly raining. I made my way down to relax by the River Thames for a while, because of course, if I ever get an opportunity to be beside the river at a place outside of London, I will go and see it. Returning on the line, I jumped off at Kempton Park, which exists almost solely for the racecourse that is nearby, and it used to only be open when there was an event occuring at its name sake. That was my day out on the railways already finished, as it was just nice and quick to tick off a few stations. However, it wasn't the end of my day, as I was of course going to check out the racecourse, despite that I've visited there before. It's one of my favourites though as you get the opportunity to actually go and chill in the emtpy stands, the only racecourse I've found where you can really do this. It's a lovely secluded place if you get the stands to yourself, and it's worth visiting just because of the relaxation I felt there. As I've visited one of my favourite areas, this particular racecourse, I caught a bus afterwards to another one of my favourite places. Feltham isn't one of my favourite places, but from here, I took a walk through a park towards Hounslow Heath, which is. I've always found this place incredibly interesting as there's a selection of abandoned places from what looks to be an empty skate park, a creepy tunnel, which strangely had old railway sleepers on top of, and a garden centre. I always like to come and see this place, and this time it was slightly raining, which made the aura around the empty car park beside the garden centre even creepier and I loved it. There was also weirdly some burnt out cars on the heath here, which I hadn't seen before, and I found so strange that someone had gotten this car out here and burnt it. This just added to the spookiness of Hounslow Heath, as it's always felt like a place that time has forgotten, and it feels cut off from the rest of London, as nobody seems to be looking after it.

I previously had a lot of fun exploring the Southern branches to places such as Tattenham Corner and Caterham, so I was excited to do a couple more outside of London this time. Getting off at Whyteleafe on the Caterham branch, taking the small walk over to Upper Warlingham, the last stop on the oyster zone, to head out of London on a branch that then proceeds to split into two at Hurst Green. The Uckfield branch, of which I was going to travel on first, has trains that doesn't actually stop at Upper Warlingham, and as I knew I would be changing at Hurst Green later to switch to the other branch, I thought I'd instead change at the stop before at Oxted, to explore the maximum amount of places I can. I had a quick wonder around, having a look at the local park, discovering that Oxted is a rather cute little village, before noticing that the signal box beyond the end of the platforms had a classic NSE sign on it. Heading down the Uckfield line, it was very noticeable about that this used to be a double track line with some abandoned platforms at stations, a clear open land where the second track would have been, and even some old sleepers dug into the ground at points along. Eridge Station looked very interesting as it had heritage signs on the platform, and that's because the Spa Valley Railway runs from here to Tunbridge Wells West. I would have loved to have gotten off there and had a look around if I knew the station looked so nice, but I didn't, so I headed on to the end of the line at Uckfield. Despite the two lines I was tackling today being branches, both lines used to continue further before linking up at Lewes Station. Upon closure, Uckfield Station used to sit across the road with a level crossing, but then they moved it to a newer location before the road, so traffic can flow easier with no level crossing needed. It also had an old signal box that had been turned into a taxi place, and a pub named 'The Station.' It's actually unbelievable the amount of stations that you go to that has a nearby pub named something to do with it, mainly 'The Railway.' I took a walk from Uckfield beside the river that runs by the railway, across some meadows and parks behind the nearby estate, and then up through a beautiful woodland. I was a little bit worried that the next part was private land as I was walking behind a mansion like hotel, but there were signs saying to strictly stay on the public footpaths. Near the end, there was a pillbox in the middle of the meadows, which was unexpected, but always great to see, until I reached Buxted Station, the penultimate stop on the line, before returning up to Hurst Green. I didn't have too long to change at Hurst Green, but I did have enough time to walk down to the actual green, which looked rather pretty, before making my way down the East Grinstead branch. I got off at the very first stop though at Lingfield, as I knew that there was a racecourse nearby. I found access down a pathway that leads right underneath the race track and into the middle of the grounds, of which the tunnel was a little bit spooky. However, it seemed that there was some sort of event happening at the racecourse, and there was nobody else on this path, so I didn't feel like showing my face in the middle of the grounds if there was nobody else there whilst an event was occurring. I walked around the edge of the racecourse into the woods that leads through to Dormans Station to jump on a train one more stop to the end of the line at East Grinstead. This place was home to Dr Beeching, the man ultimately responsible for the closure of hundreds of railway lines across the country back in the 60s, so it is therefore ironic that the line suddenly stops at East Grinstead today, rather than carry on to Lewes as it used to do. However, a section of this line beyond East Grinstead has been turned into the Bluebell Railway, a heritage steam line, much like the one from Eridge earlier that day, and I was luckily just in time to catch one of these steam trains departing, passing over an amazing viaduct south of the town. It would have been cool to ride the steam train down to its terminus of Sheffield Park, but I was only focused on the main National Rail lines that day. These branch lines were a lot of fun to travel on, and I was happy to have had the opportunity to get off at so many stations throughout the day too, from Oxted, to Uckfield, to Buxted, to Hurst Green, to Lingfield, to Dormans, to East Grinstead, managing to use every station on the latter branch.

It seemed like I kept going to racecourses at this time, and my next trip on the railways was no different. Ascot was my first stop of the day, as I walked down through the high street to head out to the racecourse. However, as it's more of a royal racecourse like Windsor, there didn't seem to be any entrance onto the grounds for the public, so I could only see it from afar. It was no worries though as I was still glad to see it in person, and I enjoyed my walk through the town, popping into a book store along the way. Back at the station, I jumped on the train one stop to Martins Heron, for another explore around here. The main reason for coming here was the fact that the actual 4 Privet Drive from Harry Potter was set right here in Picket Post Close in Martins Heron. It was so weird to see this location I'm so familiar with seeing on screen in real life. I knew that this is where Privet Drive was set as it was actually listed as a place of interest on Google Maps, when I was having a look at what's around the stations so that I can come up with an idea of places to explore, however, it is no longer on there. I can only imagine that is because the property owners must have gotten frustrated with probably loads of people coming to stand outside their house to see the real 4 Privet Drive. I took a small walk around the town of Martins Heron down some pathways behind houses and parks to loop back around to the station. Back on the train, I headed straight into Reading from here, as the intention of the day really was to tackle the SWR route from London to here, instead of the GWR one for once. This time though, I actually made sure to walk down to see the River Thames this time, and after crossing a rather nice looking bridge over to a park, it was a pleasant relaxing spot by the water. I also noticed this time that there is a rather large pub right next to Reading Station that suspiciously looks like an old station building. It must have been, as Reading has a rather new looking building, so the old one is a nice touch to turn it into a different property, rather than get rid of it. Returning back out on SWR, I jumped out at Sunningdale, a station I passed through earlier on my way to Ascot. I noticed in the car park to the station, there looked to be a permit to travel machine, but it was instead being used for users of the car park, so maybe they repurposed it, which I hadn't seen before. My reasoning for coming here later in the day was to take a walk through an amazingly landscaped common to Longcross, a station I hadn't stopped at earlier that day as it really only got trains during the peak. However nice it was walking through that common, I strayed off of the marked path to try and cut across, only to find that a lot of it was flooded, and my new shoes, which I wore for the first time that day, sunk right through long grass into a murky puddle. Slightly frustrated, I finally reached the station, but it was really cool to eventually get to. This station used to only really exist for the film studios that are right outside the entrance of the station. However, what used to be a private footpath was now turned into an actual pathway as a new housing development was being built nearby, bringing another reason for people to come here, and causing the train service to become more frequent throughout the day. There was an actual working permit to travel machine here, so I did buy one for 20p as a souvenir, and it felt like such a strange station as it was really secluded and was deep in the middle of the woods. A poster on the London bound platform suggested that there was no access on foot to the station, but I clearly walked here from Sunningdale on public footpaths with no issues, apart from ruining my new shoes. Nibbling on some Pringles whilst waiting for my train, I changed at Staines on the way back into London, to make sure to pick up Ashtead Station as I would have skipped it otherwise, at the very end of the day, a rather fun one heading out towards Surrey and Berkshire. 

I was really excited for my next trip as I would be heading to Britain's second busiest city after London, Birmingham, for the very first time, as I'd be wanting to for a very long time. Straight out of Marylebone on a loco hauled train all the way to Birmingham Moor Street, taking less than 2 hours, a really nice station that seemed to have a lot of heritage features and signs attached to it. I had some time to kill in Birmingham City Centre, so I had a look around, noticing the largest Primark in the world that had recently opened, sitting opposite the station, and the very strange looking building of the Bullring Shopping Centre. I found a really good view looking down at Moor Street Station from on top a car park, and another great view of New Street Station, the busiest station outside of London of which I wouldn't be using today, where fast trains out of London Euston run to, so there's a choice of route to travel here, from a bridge at the far end of the platforms with the Grand Central building situated behind. I then went for a walk down to another station, realising that there seemed to be a lot of abandoned industry buildings alongside a rather dusty main road. The station I was walking to was Bordesley, which has a depressing looking entrance sitting underneath the railway line, but the reason why I came here was because there was only *one train a week* that stopped here on a Saturday back towards Birmingham around 1PM. It's rather strange that a station so close to a major city centre like Birmingham only gets one service a week, and considering the low amount of passengers using the train that I got caught, I can't see the 50,000 or so people statistics say use the station every year, which makes me think that maybe a lot of people buy a ticket to here as it's the closest station to their destination, only to find out there's no trains at the time they want there to be. It may seem strange, considering there's only one train a week, that there's two platforms, and has recent new signs put in to advertise destinations by train for a platform that has no trains running in that direction. However, when the football stadium nearby has a game on, I believe that additional trains call here, and might even get rather busy, so maybe that's where the 50,000 people come into the picture. On a normal Saturday though for the once a week train, it's a strange desolate place, with clearly visible abandoned platforms, and absolutely no seating, and definitely an obscure train station to catch a service from. I can't help but feel if it got a regular service, it would actually be pretty decently used, but it just needs to get some facilities added, as there's literally nothing but a smelly empty shelter. Back at Moor Street, after my first West Midlands Trains experience, it was now time to switch from the trains to the trams, or more accurately, the West Midlands Metro, which starts at Grand Central, near to one of 4 McDonald's which all seem to be in close proximity to each other. When I think of the metro though, I think of an underground train network, not a tram line, of which this one was. With its green and purple interior, I rode the entirety of the line to Wolverhampton, St George's, but there's some major extensions coming to the network, one of which I saw at Grand Central as it's being extended beyond that current terminus. It was a little strange as there was no ticket machines on the platforms, of which I was expecting, so I could only buy a ticket when a member of staff came up to me on the tram  A quick look around the town centre of Wolverhampton, before returning on the line all the way to The Hawthorns, an interesting name, to connect back up with the national rail network. There was actually a working permit to travel machine here, and after I payed a small amount for one, I jumped on a delayed West Midlands Trains to Stourbridge Junction, calling at some good station names like Smethwick Galton Bridge and Rowley Regis, to change for another train that only runs one stop, back and forth all day, to Stourbridge Town. The train which runs on this line is a rather interesting one as it's the smallest train that runs on the entire network. It can't even be considered to be one carriage long, as it's a shorter than a standard carriage, and only has one door on one end with only a handful of seats with a view into the driver's cab. It runs every 10 minutes as the journey time is rather short between the two stations, and I'm not sure if I'm too fond of it because it does feel rather claustrophobic. At Stourbridge Town, it was a rather small affair of a station with a broken permit to travel machine, right next to an open ticket office, and a little look around caused me to find a Romino's Pizza place, which feels very similar to another pizza chain I'm very familiar with. Returning all the way to the Hawthorns, I ticked off the last two stations of the day called Jewellery Quarter and Birmingham Snow Hill, both good names too. I got to use two of the three stations with Birmingham in its name, apart from the busiest one, and I was a little bit disappointed that I didn't go to have a look at the abandoned tram platforms which you can see from this station, which I didn't know existed at the time. Visiting Birmingham for the first time was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed my first trip up to the West Midlands, and would like to do another soon. Grabbing a slushie, I jumped back on the train to London from Moor Street.

I had previously travelled on the North Downs Line that runs out of Redhill towards Guildford, and I was back again now to travel out to Tonbridge on another line, that's operated by Southern and not GWR. That like runs through Edenbridge, of which I've travelled through before on the Uckfield Line that stops at the nearby Edenbridge Town. I stayed on to the end of the line to explore Tonbridge, walking up the High Street to go and see the castle. It seemed like there was some sort of event on, but I was still allowed to roam the grounds of the castle, which was pretty cool. I walked back to the station afterwards, to switch over to Southeastern, as there didn't seem to be a whole lot to explore around the stations on the Southern line. I got off the next station from Tonbridge, which was High Brooms to take a walk through to Tunbridge Wells, which is interestingly pronounced the same as Tonbridge, and is even in close proximity to each other, but spelt differently. There was a rather nice park that I walked through to get to the town, and then made my way down to the common south of the station. This was a rather interesting place to explore as it had some large rocks that you could climb up and walk over which of course, I was going to do. I really wish that I knew about Tunbridge Wells West, which is the station at the other end of the heritage Spa Valley Railway line that runs from Eridge, which I saw before, as it would have been good to see as I think it's a rather nice station building. I returned on the trains back to Redhill after this after a pretty good explore around the towns of Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells, even though it wasn't the most exciting day, as I more came out here just to tick off the line from Redhill.

I mentioned at the beginning of the station blog posts that I had already travelled on most of the London Overground network, however, there was one small section of it remaining. I guess you could call this part of the network my local Overground section, which may explain why I've never used it as I would normally get a bus to these areas, so it was finally time to go and tick it off. It's a lot quicker for me to get the bus to Enfield Town Station anyways, and I even did it to board the train there. These lines out of Liverpool Street to Enfield, Cheshunt and Chingford were the last to be added to the London Overground network, along with the Romford - Upminster line, and the eastern section of TFL Rail being transferred from Greater Anglia on the same day. However, strangely, these lines never got the cheaper TFL fare for oyster, and I'm not entirely sure why. These lines both got Class 315 trains from Greater Anglia, but were refurbished to have an orange interior for the Overground lines, and a blue interior for the TFL Rail line. Since TFL Rail started to get the new Class 345 trains, which will run entirely on the whole Crossrail network when it opens, I was surprised to find that my train from Enfield Town actually had the blue interior so it got transferred over. It did have the Overground line diagram and an orange roundel stuck over the blue one on the outside of the train. I stayed on the train to Edmonton Green, to switch platforms to run up the final stretch of the network to Cheshunt, with my very last Overground station being Theobald's Grove, which originally had incorrect signs up spelling the name wrong when it first got transferred to TFL. This train wasn't actually a Class 315, but a 317, of which only a few of these were transferred from Greater Anglia, and are actually a whole lot better in my opinion, as the seats are more comfortable, and look nice with the orange interior. I jumped out at Cheshunt to take a rather nice walk right up along the River Lee Navigation all the way to Broxbourne, spotting a rabbit when I started off, which was rather secluded throughout and I think at some point I saw a fox far ahead on the towpath. The meadows at the end of this stretch I had been at before, as I have family who live close to Broxbourne, so it was cool to see it again, and to use the station for the first time without seeing family. Switching over to Greater Anglia now, I got on a train that took me to the very end of the Hertford East branch line, which was all weirdly in the oyster zone, despite the fact I'm rather far away from London. Also, Hertford North wasn't in the oyster zone, where I travelled through a few months prior on the way up to Stevenage, and I didn't get an opportunity that day to explore the town of Hertford, so it was great to do it now. I went down to check out the castle and the playing fields nearby, before going to take another walk alongside the River Lea back to the previous station on the line called Ware, passing where the New River meets its confluence with the Lea, which was another lovely stretch to walk along. There was still one more station I needed to tick off today from the mystical sounding place name of Ware, and that station was Meridian Water, back in London. This was London's, and therefore, the country's newest railway station that had opened only a couple of weeks earlier, and replaced Angel Road Station that had closed on the same day. On the approach to the new station, I could still see the remains of Angel Road's platforms, but all other remnants had disappeared like the footbridge, and the permit to travel machine. Meridian Water was a much better placed station than Angel Road, as it was a rather grim affair and was nowhere near probably the main reason why people come here, and that's the large Tesco and IKEA. The service pattern was never the greatest for Angel Road, and the same services changed to now stop at Meridian Water, named by the way, as it sits close to the Meridian Line. However, the services were sit to increase with a frequent half hourly service all day from Stratford, terminating at a new bay platform built specifically for this reason. Strangely, this bay platform was numbered 2, with the other two through platforms being numbered 3 and 4, so there was no 1. I believe the intention for this is if Crossrail 2 ever happens, a new platform will be built here and that will be numbered 1, but I don't know how this will work as there's a main road right where that platform will probably be built, so it's strange that they've numbered it this way, especially as Crossrail 2 might not even happen for decades. I also found it weird that there was no barriers put in at the station, and it actually took several months for them to actually put some in. This was a very good replacement for Angel Road though, and I enjoyed finally getting to do the last section of the London Overground, as well as the Hertford East branch and Britain's newest station.

My very first major Great Western Railway adventure took me all the way out of London Paddington to Bath Spa, a beautiful city which is well worth an explore. My original intention was to actually stay on the fast train to Bristol Temple Meads, but I realised if I got off and changed for a slow train behind, I can tick off Oldfield Park and Keynsham. I did spend a little bit of time exploring Bath Spa however, climbing an extremely steep hill to a lookout spot above the city, with incredible views. I was tired when at the top though, as I wanted to rush up there in the time I had to see the viewpoint. A quick look at the river and some of the beautiful buildings, before rushing back to the station to catch my train to Bristol. I wished I had more time exploring though, as I could probably spend all day there as there's so much to see, including multiple abandoned railway paraphernalia. Bristol Temple Meads, a nice name, was a rather good looking station, and on a small bay platform at the edge of the vicinity is where I caught my next train, which I was surprised to find still had the First Great Western blue and pink livery, in comparison to the Great Western Railway green livery. Whilst sitting on the train, waiting for it to depart, I noticed one of the old High Speed Trains pull into the platform next to me, which was another surprise for me. That's because recently before this, these trains ran out of London Paddington for the last time, and I thought that was the very last day they would run ever, so I didn't know that they still run on services down in the West Country. Apparently, these trains will continue to run down here for a while, but the old slam door and the slide down windows will be transferred to electric slide doors with no openable windows. The train I was on took me all the way up to Severn Beach, passing by a very industrial area near to Bristol's least used station of St Andrew's Road, and providing some nice views over the River Severn before the final station. Severn Beach was a rather quiet affair, and isn't like a seaside town at all, despite what the name must suggest. There was incredible views however, across the river to Wales, a place I had been to for a week during a school trip years ago, but had never been back since, so it was great to see. Taking a walk beside the expansive river was also amazing to do, seeing the M4 bridge stretch right over to a different country, and even another one further down. Some road walking next took me all the way to Pilning Station, a really interesting one that has a lot of story. It's a very quiet station, with hardly any passenger usage, and is the very first stop on the line when you cross over the English border. When the line through here was electrified, they had to take the footbridge down that linked the two platforms together, so that they could put the wires up, but once the work was complete, the second platform never reopened. Therefore, this is a very strange and probably extremely rare occurrence, where if you were travelling to this station from the Bristol direction, you have to enter a different country, to change trains to return back to the origin country. The abandoned platform still remains, and the one remaining platform had a rather unstable shelter, but did have some brilliant leaflets about the history of the railways in the area. There is a strong campaign group trying to get a more frequent services back to the station, with the reintroduction of the second platform, which may be hard to do with the electric wires in the way now, and I actually managed to meet one of the people in charge of this group, which was great as we got to have a conversation about the station. They also asked me whether Meridian Water Station had opened yet, so I could definitely give the right answer as I was only there very recently. It would be great to see a better service at this station, or even it being resighted closer to the town of Pilning, as there's hardly anything around the current site. For such a small little station, I was yet again surprised to find that my train from here was one of the High Speed Trains I mentioned, which I didn't think was running, and considering I had actually been on one of these trains, it was great to catch from such a strange station that only gets 2 trains a week on a Saturday, one of the more infrequent stations in the country. The doors hadn't been switched for electric ones yet, so I hung out around the door with the window down, as I passed Filton Abbey Wood, which just solely reminded me of the Abbey Wood in London, which is the first station alphabetically in the list of all the country's stations. Back at Bristol Temple Meads, I had actually had a chance to explore the city now, checking out the river, a nearby park, what looked to be a large abandoned building, and making sure to get some McDonald's before returning to the station. Again, it would have been great to explore more of the city, as there is just so much to see, but I was happy with my first explore in this area of the country, so far from London. Sitting on the actual platform, not a bench, eating my nuggets waiting for the train home, a train coming out of London was considerably delayed, so it was terminated early at Bristol, and returned almost immediately to London, so that my train ran on time.