EPW006480 ENGLAND (1921). The town centre, Epsom, 1921

High Street/Waterloo Road, Epsom, 19/06/2016

Lots of past and present Epsom pubs visible here.

Just discovered EPW025148 which shows the station during reconstruction in 1928. (see previous comments on this image.)

If you follow the footpath between the shops with awnings from the clock tower northwards one comes to the broad station forecourt. Here we find a station with two long platforms for the trains of the London and South Western Railway. Running through the middle of the station are two tracks of the London Brighton and South Coast Railway. These cross the down line from Waterloo coming in from the top of the picture, curving away to the east side (right-hand side) and Epsom Town Station. On the amalgamation of the railways in 1923 (eighteen months after this picture was taken) Epsom became an example of how the new Southern Railway made some relatively simple efficiency savings and improvements to connectivity by building one station at the junction of its two constituent railways. This was also repeated at Leatherhead - see image EPW001718.

In Epsom the stations were at opposite ends of the High Street, the ‘Brighton’ station being found in EPW006486 and EPW006487. The new station, built about four years after the picture was taken, required the creation of two island platforms, one for up trains and one for down services, connected to a street level booking office by lifts and stairs. The timetable was arranged so cross platform connections could be made in either direction. Trains often left simultaneously to Waterloo and Victoria or London Bridge and followed as closely as possible going south, the Dorking train departing first. Passengers for Ashtead or Leatherhead would jump off an Effingham train from Waterloo to arrive three minutes earlier on the train that had come from Victoria. Later in the 1950s and 1960s this move was often accompanied by the station announcement that the train was for “As’tead, Leather’ead, Box’ill, Dorking, ’Olmwood, H-Ockley, Warn’am and ’Orsham.”

The arrangement seen in the photograph was the result of competition in the building of the railways, while the arrangement today benefits from the coordination, planning and cooperation with the ensuing efficiency of the network.