Crowthorne is a stop on the North Downs Line in Berkshire between Wokingham and Sandhurst.
GWR 165 117 departs bound for Reading
Information
Type:
National Rail
(North Downs Line)
Station code:
CRN
Opened:
1859
Platforms:
2
The station was opened in 1859 by the South Eastern Railway following pressure (and a financial contribution) by the nearby Wellington College. The station was called Wellington College for Crowthorne, the name became just Crowthorne in 1928 [1]. The main station building was repurposed for commercial use when the station became unstaffed in 1967. The station was given new platform shelters in the 1980s including a brick built shelter with a pleasing BR symbol made out of bricks! Access between the platforms is via the road bridge which crosses the tracks.
Crowthorne's goods yard closed in 1964, a signalbox for the yard closing in 1967. Crowthorne is managed by Great Western Railway with an hourly service in each direction between Reading and Redhill or Gatwick Airport, there are some extra services in peak hours.
Crowthorne shelter
Main station building, now disused
View down the platform
Station entrance
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Reading to Guildford (Middleton Press, 1988) Fig. 43
The station was opened by British Rail in 1988 to support and eastern expansion of Bracknell. Next to the station is a Tesco supermarket, the access road and car park of the station being on Tesco owned land. The main station building is a brick chalet type affair. The building contains a booking office and a waiting room. The other platform has a shelter. Access between the platforms is via a footbridge.
The platforms were extended in 2016 to be able to accomodate ten-car trains. The station is managed by South Western Railway with a usual train frequency of every half hour in both directions.
Reading is one of the busiest stations outside of London. It is a major transport interchange at the junction of a number of busy lines such as the Great Western Main Line to London Paddington and lines to London Waterloo and Oxford, with an adjacent bus station too.
Reading has AC and DC electric services, on the latter is SWR 450 117
Information
Type:
National Rail (Great Western Main Line and others)
Station code:
RDG
Opened:
1840
Platforms:
15
The station was originally opened by the Great Western Railway in 1840 [1] and was the a terminus of the Great Western Main Line for a few months until the line was continued onto Bristol.
The station was renamed Reading General in 1949 to distinguish it from Reading Southern however the name reverted back to Reading when the other station closed and was merged into Reading General in the early 1970s.
The station has had a number of redevelopments over the years, the latest was finished in 2014, this added five new platforms, new footbridges and access routes and some track layout modifications including flyovers to try and alleviate the bottleneck the station had become by the 2000s.
Over twelve million people use Reading per annum on services (16 million pre Covid) operated by Great Western Railway, Cross Country and South Western Railway. Reading has also become the Western terminus of the Crossrail Elizabeth Line.
GWR 165 110 on one of the bay platforms, it will soon depart for Basingstoke
GWR 387 157 waits at Reading
GWR 802 109 arrives with an express
A Cross Country service arrives at Reading
GWR 166 202 prepares to head down the North Downs Line
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Reading to Guildford (Middleton Press, 1988) p. 2
National Rail
(London Waterloo-Reading Line & Ascot-Guildford Line)
Station code:
ACT
Opened:
1856
Platforms:
3
The station was opened by the Staines, Wokingham & Woking Junction Railway in 1856, for a about a month it was the terminus of the line before construction continued onwards towards Wokingham. The station was renamed Ascot & Sunninghill in 1857 and kept this name until 1921 when it reverted back to just Ascot.
A line toAsh Vale from Ascot was opened in 1870. The station was taken over by the London & South Western Railway and later the Southern Railway who electrified the line to Ascot in 1939. The work involved track layout realignment and station rebuilding [1].
Ascot now has three platforms which are all bi-directional, platform 1 used to have platform faces either side of the single track but one side has been fenced off now. The track layout at Ascot was once much more intricate with four signalboxes but these were closed in the 1960s. The station is managed by South Western Railway.
A SWR train waits at Ascot
View down the platform under the canopy
Platform canopy
Platform 1
View down the platforms
[1] David Brown, Southern Electric Volume 2 (Capital Transport, 2010) p. 36
Sandhurst is a stop on the North Downs Line in Berkshire between Crowthorne and Blackwater.
GWR 165 108 departs for Reading
Information
Type:
National Rail
(North Downs Line)
Station code:
SND
Opened:
1909
Platforms:
2
Although there was a temporary station in Sandhurst between 1852-53 [1], a permanent station called Sandhurst Halt was not opened until 1909. The station did not have a goods yard, there were proposals to build a replacement station north of Sandhurst with a goods yard at the end of the First World War but these proposals came to nothing.
The station is on an embankment and had wooden platform buildings. These have now been replaced by the usual bus shelter type accommodation. Access to the platforms is via ramps to road level. The station is managed by Great Western Railway who also run an hourly (most days) service in both directions on the North Downs Line.
Platform shelter
View down the platform
The two access ramps are either side of this bridge
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Reading to Guildford (Middleton Press, 1988) Fig. 51
Wokingham in Berkshire is near the junction of the North Downs Line to Redhill and the Reading-London Waterloo Line, the junction is about four hundred metres to the South of the station.
Information
Type:
National Rail
(North Downs Line &
Reading-London Waterloo Line)
Station code:
WKM
Opened:
1849
Platforms:
2
The station was opened in 1849 by the Reading, Guildford & Reigate Railway. The section including Wokingham was part of the first section of the line (which would eventually be the North Downs Line) to be opened. The line was quickly bought by the South Eastern Railway.
The Staines, Wokingham & Woking Railway reached the town in 1856 and gave Wokingham a direct link to the capital with services through to London Waterloo. The line was worked by the London & South Western Railway. Both lines became part of the Southern Railway with the line through Wokingham being electrified in 1939 as electrification was extended from Virginia Water to Reading.
The original station building was replaced by a modern (and standard design) British Rail one in 1973, the platforms were extended in 1987 to serve eight-car trains [1]. The signal box built by the Southern Railway, which replaced two earlier boxes, in the early 1930s remains in place and controls part of the line and a level crossing at the Southern end of the station [2]. The station is served by South Western Railway (who also manage it) and Great Western Railway.
GWR 166 202 arrives at Wokingham
Looking up towards Reading
Also looking up towards Reading but from the other platform
Two GWR services cross
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Reading to Guildford (Middleton Press, 1988) Fig. 38 [2] Ibid. Fig. 40
Upton and Blewbury is a closed station that once served the Berkshire villages of Upton, Blewbury and West Hagbourne (which became part of Oxfordshire after 1974).
Information
Type:
National Rail
(Didcot, Newbury &
Southampton Railway)
Opened:
1882
Closed:
1962
Platforms:
2
The station was opened by the Didcot, Newbury & Southampton Railway in 1882 as Upton, it mostly served military camps in the area. Later it became part of the Great Western Railway and was renamed Upton and Blewbury in 1911.
Despite also serving the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell after the Second World War Upton and Blewbury was closed in 1962.
Upton and Blewbury had two platforms with a station building and one and a shelter on the other. To the North of the station were a couple of sidings and a signalbox. The main station building survives today as a residential property.
