Hampden Park railway station serves Hampden Park in the northern areas of the seaside town of Eastbourne in East Sussex. It is on the East Coastway Line, and train services are provided by Southern. The station is sometimes used as an interchange to avoid travelling into Eastbourne itself.
Opened on 1 January 1888, it was originally called Willingdon, but was renamed Hampden Park for Willingdon on 1 July 1903. The name became Hampden Park under British Railways.[1] It is one of two stations serving Eastbourne, the other being Eastbourne railway station
The station is located on a spur line originally termed the Eastbourne Branch.[2] There was a rarely used triangular junction between Polegate and the now-closed Stone Cross which allowed trains to bypass the Branch; the track has now been lifted. Services along the coast have almost invariably served Eastbourne, and as Eastbourne is at the end of the spur line, the trains pass through Hampden Park station twice - once on the way to Eastbourne, and once on the way out of Eastbourne - although not all trains stop on both occasions.
Because of this arrangement, some connections are advertised to allow passengers on the Victoria-Eastbourne service to use Hampden Park to pick up the stopping service to Hastings and vice versa.[3]
The level crossing at Hampden Park is thought to be one of the busiest in the country,[4] with an average of sixteen train movements an hour off-peak, and this can lead to significant traffic congestion on adjacent roads. The signal box which controlled the crossing was abolished in February 2015 when the controls were transferred to Three Bridges Regional Operations Centre.
The typical Monday-Friday off-peak service pattern is:
Change at Hampden Park for stations towards Brighton