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 serve the station are operated by Southeastern. History. Aylesford was opened by the South Eastern Railway, which merged with local rival London, Chatham & Dover Railway (LCDR) on 1 January 1899 to form the South Eastern & Chatham Railway (SECR). 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 (Permit to Travel) 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. All services at Aylesford are operated by Southeastern using EMUs. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: Additional services between Strood and Maidstone West call at the station during the peak hours, increasing the frequency to 2 tph in each direction. 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.