There is no way of getting on to the platform other than by someone getting off releasing the gate for you and you then getting on before the train doors close!
Yes, interesting, I double-checked both the working timetable and the public timetable and 2N99 is booked to pick up at Bushey but clearly reality means that it can't when it's using platform 3, I wonder if anyone has ever turned up for the 22:35 to Watford and Northampton and been unable to catch it?
The reality is that you would be unlucky not to make it, but it would be fraught!
There are signs on the platform saying it's forbidden to wait there. It's all very strange. You'd think a short platform would be a problem for setting down, not for picking up. According to wikipedia, a gun fortification was built between platforms 2 and 3, so it's probably best not to push our luck.
Ah yes I can see from Bing maps that a section of the platform has been reinstated since I last travelled on that line, havng moved away some years ago. Certainly for many years it was overgrown and damaged - I assumed (wrongly) that it would probably never be repaired. Fairly difficult to see why it would be reinstated but difficult to access.
Oops! General (the only General that hasn't become a Central!).Given it's a terminus, I should hope not!
Ah, but there's an Up Loop, so it looks like a classic "3+1" layout. I agree it's not a 4-track railway.
It might (just) be said about Earlsfield as well, as the remains of the up fast platform can be seen as an overgrown hump. I have a feeling that this platform was closed when the Wimbledon flyover was built and the configuration of the lines between Wimbledon and Earlsfield was changed so that the up slow was now the up fast: perhaps someone can confirm this. Even so, I don't know why this platform was removed, it would have come in handy when the slow lines were blocked for p/w work, etc.
Although I am a senior citizen I remember the up fast platform at Earlsfield being situ during the late 1960s so estimate it was removed late 1960s or 1970s.
Yep Purley Oaks P1 and 2 are used during engineering works. I have departed from/arrived at both twice on Sundays in the last year.
Platform 2 is no longer usable though - the new footbridge was built close to that side of the platform and the rest of the platform face was fenced off permanently. Thus, I suppose it's still there, sort of, but not sure how much it counts as being a platform any more.
Only 5/3 through the station, the northern track is a bay platform. Tonbridge doesn't count for this thread though as the 'four-track line' through the station only has platforms on 2 of the lines, the 3rd platform being a loop off the slow lines.
It is, sadly, a necessity where you have a 4-track layout "paired by use" (so FFSS) which applies to the majority of main lines.
No, there are just three running lines.
It's on a 2-track line though, so it's actually 2 lines with a passenger loop and goods loop. Mind you, plenty of other suggestions have been made of stations that are only on 2-track lines.
And has a platform available to train on any line, which isn't really what the OP was after. Otherwise we're just on 'any station with a non-platform line' territory.
Fair enough.
