Oxted railway station serves the commuter town of Oxted in Surrey, England. A relatively busy interchange station and terminus, all rail services are provided by Southern. The station is the busiest suburban station on the Oxted Line and is a terminus for some services on the Uckfield branch of the Oxted Line. Trains depart to London Victoria via Clapham Junction, London Bridge via East Croydon Station, East Grinstead and Uckfield in East Sussex.
Oxted was built as a joint London, Brighton and South Coast Railway/South Eastern Railway station when the South Croydon to East Grinstead line opened on 10 March 1884. The three platforms are connected by a subway which runs under the track. In addition, a lift is provided for entry to Platforms 2/3. There are tunnels at each end of the station:
- Oxted Tunnel 1 mile 23 chains (2.07 km)[1] at the London end
- Limpsfield Tunnel 551 yard (501 m) at the country end
In 1951 the station had a train every thirteen minutes of the day, services running to Victoria and London Bridge in the up direction and to Tunbridge Wells, Eastbourne and Brighton in the down. Locomotives using the station on an average weekday would be of the following classes: BR4 2-6-4T's (14), C2X 0-6-0 (2), H 0-4-4T (12), L 4-4-0 (1), LM2 2-6-2T (5), LM4 2-6-4T (38), N 2-6-0 (2), Q 0-6-0 (8), U 2-6-0 (1) and U1 2-6-0 (2). In addition, diesel 10800 was a regular visitor to the station four times a day between 1952 and 1954.
The station was the scene of a bomb attempt by suffragette sympathisers in 1913 - Harold Laski (later a Professor at the London School of Economics and chairman of the Labour Party) and a friend placed the device in the men's toilets. Although it did detonate the damage was limited as the fuse failed to ignite the petrol contained in the device. A similar device (containing some pieces of metal and a watch in addition to the explosive charge) was planted at the Bank of England on 13 April 1913, which was successfully defused.