Dorking West railway station serves the town of Dorking in Surrey, England. It is the quietest of the three stations in the town, the others being Dorking and Dorking Deepdene. It is situated on the North Downs Line.

In 2004-05, statistics show that tickets sold to Dorking West are the fourth lowest on the entire UK network, after Gainsborough Central, Barry Links, and the temporarily-closed-for-a-decade Watford West, although this is a function of how tickets are allocated as most tickets are for "Dorking stations".

History

The station's original name (Dorking) was changed by the Southern Railway in 1923 to Dorking Town to avoid confusion with Dorking North station on the line Epsom to Horsham line. In 1987 it was renamed again by Network SouthEast, becoming Dorking West.

The staggered platforms are typical of stations built by the SER where no footbridge was provided. The arrangement of the platforms enabled passengers to cross behind trains if two were at the station simultaneously.

The goods yard here closed in 1963 and the station became unmanned in 1967. Signalling on this part of the line is controlled from Reigate.

The SER originally ran trains from here to Charing Cross via Redhill. In 2004 First Great Western took over the former Thames Trains franchise and run services to Reading and Gatwick Airport using Class 165 and Class 166 Turbo Diesel Multiple Units. Typical weekday off-peak service is one train every two hours to Reading and one train every two hours to Redhill.

Location

Location: 51.236N, 0.340W. Access is from Station Road (to the south) through the industrial estate car parks, down an unlit unsignposted footpath.

Services

The typical off-peak service (from December 2006) is one train every two hours between Reading and Redhill.

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