Aylesford railway station


Aylesford railway station is on the Medway Valley Line in Kent, England, serving the village of Aylesford. It is down the line from London Charing Cross via and is situated between and. The station opened on 18 June 1856.
The station and all trains that call are operated by Southeastern.

History

Aylesford was opened by the South Eastern Railway, which merged with local rival London, Chatham and Dover Railway on 1 January 1899 to form the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. The station became part of the Southern Railway during the Grouping of 1923, and passed on to the Southern Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948.
When sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s, the station was served by Network SouthEast until the privatisation of British Railways.
The ticket office, in a building on the northbound platform, closed in September 1989 and an Indian restaurant—now incorporating a fried chicken takeaway—was subsequently established in the building, which had been extensively renovated in a prizewinning scheme in 1988. In 2007, a PERTIS ticket machine was installed just inside the entrance to the station, on the northbound platform. In early 2016 the Permit to Travel machine was removed with plans to replace it with a ticket machine.

Services

The typical off-peak service from the station is two trains per hour to Maidstone West, with alternate trains extended to Paddock Wood and, and two trains an hour to Strood, for connections to London.

Station Building

The section of the line surrounding Aylesford Station passes through what was part of the Preston Hall Estate, the then home of Edward Betts, the railway contractor who built this part of the Medway Valley Line. Consequently, the station building is much grander than other country stations along the line. The station buildings are gabled and highly decorated, built in Kentish ragstone with Caen stone dressings, in part reflecting a simplified version of the style of Preston Hall. Windows replicate those at Aylesford Priory.
Following restoration and refurbishment, the station building received an Ian Allan award in 2001, commemorated by a plaque in the waiting room/booking office, which is now in use as an Indian Takeaway Restaurant.