please empty your brain below
Knockholt station is very convenient if you want to see Badgers Mount or Pratts Bottom... (local joke).

Waterhouse | 04.05.20 - 7:04 a.m. | #

Upping the train content since Mr Marshall gave you a shout out on Saturday :)

The London boundary around the Woodford-Hainault loop is a very odd one, though I kinda expected Grange Hill to come before Roding Valley. How interesting.

PVR | 04.05.20 - 8:07 a.m. | #

Banstead station may be a bit grim nowadays, but at least until the 1960s it had BANSTEAD STATION painted in large letters on its roof to help pilots find their way - see here. Presumably that postdated WW2, otherwise it would have been assisting the wrong sort of pilot.

Betterbee | 04.05.20 - 8:11 a.m. | #

Used to get the train to secondary school from Knockholt station, travelling into London briefly to leave it, bound for Tonbridge. Many memories.

In the photo you see the station building on the right (London-bound platform) and a much older shelter on the Kent-bound platform. One day during the 1980s, I arrived at the station for the normal journey to school to find the old station building (of the same ilk as the Kent-bound shelter) burned down. This was the only day that ticket checkers descended on the station as the normal ticket issuing facilities were not available. Usually, with a "Scholar's Pass" (issued by Kent CC) we didn't have to bother showing tickets/passes.

mushroomcounter | 04.05.20 - 8:13 a.m. | #

The week before lockdown I managed to time a hospital visit to catch one of the infrequent trains from Belmont on my return journey, and we still had to wait outside Sutton, the next stop. I had previously only ever used this line to go to Epsom Downs for the races.

My destination was Cheam, and it was only three days ago that I discovered that my daughter's ex-school, Nonsuch, was in Surrey when looking at the Sutton borough map, so a bit of a coincidence there too.

Ken | 04.05.20 - 8:24 a.m. | #

Fascinating stuff.
Some strange ticket oddities here too. Although neither Grange Hill or Roding Valley are inside London, they're in ticket zone 4

IslandDweller | 04.05.20 - 9:13 a.m. | #

Reading this interesting list made me look up the 60+ Oyster Card and Freedom Pass maps (which are not quite the same).

Obviously free travel is allowed Tfl operated lines outside London (even to Reading in the case of the Freedom pass), but it is also allowed (after 9.30am) on Network rail lines which go to stations outside London on your list and even beyond.

They are mostly in South London and enable free travel to Dartford, Swanley and right to the end of the Caterham, Tattenham Corner, Epsom Downs and Chessington South branches among others.

Martin | 04.05.20 - 9:34 a.m. | #

The bizarre nature of the London border is shown by some of those numbers, e.g. Belmont being just outside London but Banstead, 1 mile further out ALSO being just outside the London boundary, due to that bit of Cuddington sticking out which you visited!

Mikey C | 04.05.20 - 10:16 a.m. | #

The oddity that is Epsom & Ewell being in Surrey makes for some head-shakers. I hadn't realised that Stoneleigh wasn't in London (or that Worcester Park is so close to being that way), and likewise hadn't realised that Woodmansterne is!

Chz | 04.05.20 - 10:18 a.m. | #

and some people thought yesterday's post was niche ??? what percentage of the population are train buffs

Caz | 04.05.20 - 10:44 a.m. | #

What about Purfleet?

Hary | 04.05.20 - 10:45 a.m. | #

A sort of train buff here... though not currently getting my fix.
I thought some the stations on the London Loop would be in your list. Banstead is the only one I but did change at Hainhault when going to Chigwell.
I called the London Loop the Zone 6 walk as the start/end stations were mostly as far as you could travel on a Z1-6 travel card.

davews | 04.05.20 - 11:28 a.m. | #

Purfleet is about 1km from the nearest point of Greater London, which is actually on the other side of the Thames as London extends a little further downstream on the Kent side.

Martin... Chessington South is in London.

timbo | 04.05.20 - 12:13 p.m. | #

90s indie legends Saint Etienne wrote a song called, and about, Whyteleafe. (Such a lonely, lonely leaf.)

Dan | Homepage | 04.05.20 - 2:18 p.m. | #

Yet Epsom is resolutely outside the Freedom Pass area along with some other lines but not the stations that are served by TfL valid services and also served by other TOC services

Andrew Jarman | 04.05.20 - 2:55 p.m. | #

Is this entry about trains though?
As I read it, it's about geography. And local government. And stations. All of which interest me more than trains.

Frank F | 04.05.20 - 3:30 p.m. | #

Maps, geography, London, stations, countryside, musings... what’s not to like?

Herbof | 04.05.20 - 3:59 p.m. | #

Dan, never heard that Saint Etienne song before, I never thought I'd hear a song mention Whyteleafe and Caterham in the lyrics!

Mikey C | 04.05.20 - 4:55 p.m. | #

Growing up (in Scotland), it was easier to say to friends that my grandparents were in London rather than explain the weirdness of Stoneleigh being somewhere that looks like London, feels like London by every right should be London but isn't

Al | 04.05.20 - 4:55 p.m. | #

If we take the centre of London to be Trafalgar Square, is the area just to the south of Worcester Park station (The Avenue) the closest place which isn't in Greater London?

dg writes: Yes.

Paul | 04.05.20 - 5:07 p.m. | #

It's interesting to see which fare zone the stations outside Greater London are in. Zones 1-6 are the 'historic' Greater London fare zones so you might expect them to fall outside zone 6. The results are surprising, especially as in some cases the next station down the line is also in a 'historic' Greater London fare zone.

Roding Valley - 4
Grange Hill - 4
Banstead - 6
Whyteleafe - 6
Hampton Court - 6
Kempton Park - outside
Waltham Cross - 7
Swanley - 8
Stoneleigh - 5
Upper Warlingham - 6

Waltham Cross is interesting as there is a TfL run bus station a short distance away and, I suspect, further from the Greater London boundary than the railway station.

Hadders | 04.05.20 - 9:23 p.m. | #

Just so, although I feel the need to mention that Thames Ditton (Zone 6), not Hampton Court is the first station beyond the GLA boundary on that branch.

timbo | 04.05.20 - 9:48 p.m. | #

Some of these zonal discrepancies are because the station is so close to the London boundary that their catchment area includes residential parts of London, although this didn't seem to be a completely consistent principle. For example it's my recollection that both Stoneleigh and Hampton Court were in Zone 6 by the mid 1990s but Banstead was outside.

Others seemed to get into the fare zones for operational convenience or to encourage more traffic. The whole Hainault loop has always been in the fare zones, because trying to bar travelcard users from going through Chigwell would have required a great amount of effort for no real return. In the mid 2000s Southern extended Oyster usage to the end of a handful of branches that finish just outside London (Epsom Downs, Tattenham Corner and Caterham plus some nearby stations on through lines) and that accounts for several of the zone 6 entries on your list.

Tim Roll-Pickering | 05.05.20 - 10:07 a.m. | #

East Ewell Zone 6 first station past Cheam.
Two Pairs on the list; Worcester Park - Stoneleigh & Belmont - Banstead.

Mike | 05.05.20 - 1:37 p.m. | #











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