Shepperton branch line


The Shepperton branch line is a railway line in the south west of London and north Surrey. It is also known as the Shepperton line and connects to the Kingston loop by a triangular junction between, and stations.

History

The line opened on 1 November 1864 briefly named The Thames Valley Railway with access only from the Twickenham direction. The line was originally intended to reach a terminus on the north bank of the River Thames immediately east of Chertsey Bridge and the town itself but this plan was abandoned in 1862.
The line's optional curve linking and Teddington initially opened only to freight on 1 July 1894 and first carried passengers on 1 June 1901. The line was electrified by the L&SWR using 630 V DC third rail on 30 January 1916.
Demand and population in the area increased after the railway's relatively late introduction. Hampton station is the line's busiest with more than 1.2 million journeys made in the 2014-2015 financial year Its recorded use was 0.7 million ten years before. The total of journeys per year of the six stations on the line has reached 2.848 million recorded journeys. Hampton station has formally been assigned C2 status as its station category.

Stations

Stations on the line are:
Service on the line is half-hourly to via Kingston. Monday to Friday, four additional early morning rush-hour trains to Waterloo are routed via Twickenham and Richmond. Three additional evening rush-hour trains from Waterloo arrive via that route.
In common with the 16 hourly off-peak commuter services to/from London Waterloo, trains must stop at every intermediate station. There are no mid-track destinations using sidings there. The long travel time of this pattern gives overcapacity at Shepperton and Sunbury where commuters are three miles from faster track stations. It gave overcrowding to these 16 "stopping service routes" during their inner-city phases in the ultra-peak hours due to the great number of stations each service "must" serve per service, much abated by 10-car trains.
Stopping-only formats contrast to most patterns of other historic railway operators in the region.