Alton Line - Passenger Services

Passenger Services

There are two trains per hour in each direction between Waterloo and Alton on Mondays to Saturdays. On Sundays, the service is hourly until the early afternoon when its becomes half-hourly. Peak time trains take between 67 and 71 minutes for the whole journey; off-peak trains take between 75 and 78 minutes for the journey and Sunday services take 79 to 85 minutes.

Passenger trains that serve this line during off-peak hours also stop at the following stations (from north to south):

• Clapham Junction
• Surbiton
• West Byfleet
• Woking

Peak hour trains skip Surbiton; some peak trains also skip Clapham junction, West Byfleet or Brookwood. On Sundays, the service also calls at Wimbledon.

Although timetables show the line as "Suburban", it is in practice a regional line, and for the purposes of South West Trains Passenger Charter discounts and Void Day refunds for season tickets it is a Mainline route. All journeys from Alton, Bentley and Farnham are Mainline journeys. Journeys from Aldershot and Ash Vale to London Terminals (i.e. all London stations) and Zone R1256 Zones (a journey to London with Underground included) are Mainline. All other journeys from these two stations are suburban.

Historical timetable perspective: From 1937 to 1967 Alton trains ran fast from Waterloo to Surbiton and then ran all stations to Alton. They formed the front (country) end of an 8 car train that split at Woking with the rear 4 cars running to Portsmouth. The trains ran throughout the day and left Waterloo at 27 and 57 minutes past the hour and took exactly 80 minutes to reach Alton. Additionally, there were trains in the rush hours that ran fast to Woking and then all stations - at 16:17, 18:14, and 18:17 (also stopping at Surbiton) to Farnham, and at 16:47, 17:17, 17:47 to Alton taking between 72 and 76 minutes. Trains from Waterloo to Alton from 05:25 to 08:25 left two minutes earlier than the standard departures and called at Wimbledon. All trains took the fast line from Waterloo to Surbiton. The last train in the evening was the 22:57 to Farnham - it ran to Alton on Wednesday and Saturday nights only arriving at 00:17. On Sundays there was a 23:27 that only ran to Farnham. On weekdays the 17:27 and 19:27 had connections at Bentley to Bordon with a five minute connection at Bentley and a journey time to Bordon of 15 minutes. Interestingly, there was a very regular service on Sunday nights from Bentley to Bordon - presumably for servicemen returning to barracks.

On the upline the pattern was similar, with several departures from Farnham to Waterloo starting at 06:05 and then from Alton at 06:54, then every 30 minutes till 22:54 with three extra rush hour services in the morning. In those days the line from Farnham to Alton was double track.

In the 1980s the pattern was somewhat different - the off-peak trains ran half-hourly and stopped at Surbiton, Woking then all stations, being detached from the Bournemouth (hourly) or Basingstoke (hourly) stopping services. Around 1985 Alton lost its half-hourly service, with half the trains terminating at Farnham. Peak services were approximately every 20 minutes until 1985, half-hourly thereafter, generally going fast Waterloo to Woking, occasionally stopping at West Byfleet or Surbiton

In 1989 the service changed again with three trains an hour as far as Farnham: a fast train (Clapham Junction, Woking and all stations to Alton), a semi-fast (Surbiton, certain stations to Woking, then all to Farnham) and a slow (Clapham Junction, Wimbledon, Surbiton and all stations to Farnham).