I hope my review of Angmering isn't Angering you…read more This is not too far from Brighton, about 15 miles away in the countryside, and it's right next to a secondary school so Aletta (not Aletta but I'm in love with Aletta so)... a lot of... students use it to get to their little country houses and whatnot. How nice it must be to be middle class or rich in the suburbs of Sussex. Looking at you, Keane. It's a cute little station in the middle of nowhere with a nice dark brown house with a couple of chimneys on top of it. There's a level crossing right at the station which adds to the beauty for a nice element.

Angmering is a small station situated on the outskirts of Littlehampton, serving the suburb of East…read morePreston and the pretty village of Angmering to the north. It is on the 'West Coastway' line between Brighton and Chichester. The station was opened on 16 March 1846 when the London, Brighton & South Coast railway line was extended from Worthing to Ford Junction, before its extension onwards to Chichester. The present building was built in the 1860s. The station has a traditional but rather plain brick-built building with a generous awning on the eastbound platform (to Brighton/London). Facilities include a staffed ticket office, ticket machine, and a privately-run food outlet selling sandwiches, snacks, confectionery and hot and cold drinks. (NB No toilets). There's a decent sized car-park with two disabled parking bays, and cycle racks behind the building and also on the westbound platform. There's a privately run taxi-office just behind the main station building as well. There is level access to both platforms, via the road level crossing at the west end of the station. Off-peak, it's served by the half-hourly London-Littlehampton service, as well as the hourly Brighton-Portsmouth and Brighton-Southampton services. In the evenings there are also some local Littlehampton to Brighton all-stations services.

It's a surprise to find a station serving as a small village as Balcombe, especially on a main…read moreline. However, the lack of good roads to and from the village, and its proximity to London, ensures a healthy flow of commuter traffic, with Balcombe acting as a rail-head for several villages around - it is used by just over 100,000 passengers a year. It's an attractive small station, the east side nestling in a cutting, and surrounded on all sides by mature trees and shrubs, and is very popular at week-ends with walkers exploring the surrounding woodlands. The station opened on 12 July 1841 as an intermediate station on the then London and Brighton Railway, later amalgamated into the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. The 1841 census shows that there were 550 railway labourers living in the village at the time - which must have been challenging for the locals! The station has been rationalised over the years, but retains a small building on the down (Brighton) platform, complete with Victorian canopy, ticket office and toilet. The office is only open at peak times (the toilet is also closed when the office is shut). If this is the case, you need to buy a 'permit to travel' from the machine and buy a ticket on board. The up platform (for London) has a small waiting shelter with step-free access from the car park, and there are car parking spaces and a cycle rack on this side of the station. A footbridge provides access between the platforms, and also provides the exit to London Road at the top of the cutting. Note that there is no step-free access to the Brighton platform. An oddity is the extension of the Brighton platform under the small tunnel at the south of the station: this is only used to board and alight from trains, and a sign warns not to enter the tunnel when a through (ie non-stopping) train is approaching which they do, at some speed. The service is fairly sparse: off-peak, Monday to Saturday there is one train an hour in each direction, on the First Capital Connect service from Bedford to Brighton via London Bridge. On Sundays, an hourly service is provided by Southern on the Brighton to London Victoria line. Additional services stop during rush hours in both directions. To the north of the station is Balcombe tunnel, 800 yards long, and to the south the famous Ouse viaduct, the first long railway viaduct in southern Britain. At 1,475 ft (450m) long, faced with Caen stone and with four Italianate pavilions at each end, it is regarded as one of the most attractive in the UK.

Southwick is a small suburban station on the West Coastway Line between Portslade and…read moreShoreham-by-Sea. It was opened in 1840 on the original line between Brighton and Shoreham, but of the original station, only the walls and platform canopies survive: the ticket office is housed in a small modern brick bulding just by the entrance. Facilities are minimal: there are no toilets, just sheltered seating on either platform, although thanks to the provision of ramps they are both accessible by step-free access. There is a ticket machine for when the ticket office is closed. There is also a small cycle rack, and a set-down area for cars, but no parking. Off-peak, Southwick is served by the half-hourly all stations service between Brighton and West Worthing, and the hourly Semi-fast services from Brighton to Portsmouth and Southampton respectively, giving 4 trains per hour. All trains go to Brighton in the other direction (4 per hour).

This station is inevitable. You take the train from London to Brighton and end up here. It's not…read morethe greatest station but it's a necessity. The surrounding areas of this station aren't they great either. Occasionally you're welcomed by some druggies sitting outside on the benches. An upgrade is overdue but alas.

The UK National Railway system is a cheap, fast, efficient way to travel the UK. Forward facing and…read morequad stalls, comfortable seats, full bathrooms and wifi! Covers all of the UK and regional airports. We took the Gatwick express from London (Earls Court transfer @ Victoria ) landing in Brighton Beach area in 1hr. Wonderful location.

Not to be confused with Hermann Goring By Sea, which is a town full of fascists, I suppose. Might…read morebe at home in America then? This is one of five stations in Worthing, and it's one of the tiny ones, with a the tiny little brown building on the platform with a blue overhang. It's cute and doesn't have too many people manning it day or night, and it's just a cute little place with a cute little bridge over it, and not much going on.

A small station serving the seaside town of Goring-by-Sea, between Worthing and Littlehampton on…read morethe West Coastway line. It is used by just under 0.5m passengers a year. The station was opened on 16 March 1846 when the London, Brighton & South Coast railway line was extended from Worthing to Ford Junction, before its extension onwards to Chichester and Littlehampton. The main station building looks original, although the canopy has been renewed. Facilities include a part-time ticket office, cycle storage (part sheltered), a small car park and a platform shelter on platform 2 (westbound). There are neither toilets nor a taxi rank. There is level access to both platforms, via the road level crossing at the west end of the station. Train services are operated mostly by Southern (http://www.southernrailway.com) . Off-peak, it's served by the half-hourly London-Littlehampton service, as well as the hourly services to Southampton (daytime) or Portsmouth (late afternoon/evening) and Brighton. In the evenings there are also some local Littlehampton to Brighton all-stations services.

Haywards Heath is one of the principal stations on the main line between London and Brighton,…read moreserving the commuter town of the same name which has grown up around it. It's not an architectural gem, but it's functional and has a good range of train services. The station opened in July 1841 as the temporary southern terminus on the London to Brighton Railway, and became a through station when the line to Brighton opened in its entirety in September of that year. In 1847 a line was opened from Wivelsfield, just south of Haywards Heath, to Lewes, providing direct lines to Newhaven and Hastings, and 1864 another line opened, to the north, towards Horsted Keynes on the Lewes to East Grinstead line. The line to Horsted Keynes closed in 1963. The station was rebuilt with two long, spacious island platforms in 1933, when the Brighton line was electrified. The street-level buildings are in an unremarkable version of the Modernist style, of brick with concrete canopies. The platforms level buildings are similarly functional and have deep awnings. Since electrification the station has become an important station for dividing trains heading respectively on the lines east towards Lewes and west to Hove and the 'West Coastway' line (avoiding Brighton) and for the same trains joining when heading north. Indeed, it is now the busiest station for this practice in the UK. The station has a regular off-peak service each hour as follows: Northbound Bedford via London Bridge and St Pancras 4 per hour London Victoria 2 per hour Watford Junction - hourly Southbound Brighton 5 trains per hour Littlehampton via Hove and Worthing 2 per hour Eastbourne 2 per hour (one extended to Hastings and Ore) Note: the half-hourly fast Victoria-Brighton trains do not stop here in the off-peak. In the peak hours all Brighton trains call here, providing an intensive service. All northbound trains stop at Gatwick Airport. The station is staffed 24 hours a day, and has a ticket office, waiting rooms, toilets and a large buffet, and step free access is available across the whole of the station (via lifts). There is also storage for over 60 bicycles and a 630-space car park. A limited number of local buses call at the station: see http://www.compass-travel.co.uk .

Whilst I may be living in Haywards Heath, I spend much of my time in Brighton for study,…read moresocialising and shopping. Hence, I am a frequent user of the station. It's one of the main connectors of the south, so is a featured stop for fast services as well as the stop at every station trains. This makes it handy for getting to Gatwick, Brighton and London and you end up waiting less time for a train than at other stations in the area. I think that this is a reason why Haywards heath has become such a popular commuting town and the large station car park attests to this claim! Being a busier station, you also find coffee/snack bars and waiting rooms that are actually open. Now whilst not a fault of the station I do find that a higher percentage of trains get delayed than I would like, so these waiting features are really appreciated. The station staff are helpful for any traveling inquiries or suggestions of cheaper way to get from a to b (sadly, I never seem to qualify for such savings). There are also 3 self service ticket machines if you want to save some time or are cutting your arrival a bit fine before your train departs. There is also a covered area to store bicycles if you are feeling like a healthy commute. All in all, you could do far worse if you have to kill 15-20 minutes waiting for a train than Haywards Heath!

Not to be confused with HOV which is Jay Z for some bizarre reason, or Hoover, which is basically…read morewhat they call me when I'm pleasuring men. This is a little station that is the polar opposite of Brighton, because it has just a little dark red brick building in front with a nice little overhang, and it does look pretty, but it's much smaller than Brighton, and sort of like a miniature version. And although it does have a nice little look to it, it is also very different from the main station, including its futuristic-looking roof and whatnot. It's right in the middle of the neighbourhood, so you'll be almost in someone's backyard when you stop here. It's only 50 miles away from London, and it's a nice station to come to, and has been since 1840 when it opened in the same year as the Brighton station did.

Hove's railway station is the smaller and quieter counterpart of that in Brighton, but still has a…read moreregular and reasonably frequent train service to London (direct), to Brighton and along the Sussex coast to Southampton, Eastbourne, Portsmouth and (less frequently) Bristol and South Wales. It's a busy commuter station in its own right, used by over 2 million passengers a year. Opened in 1865, the original station on the site was named West Brighton and Cliftonville. This building still survives, adjacent to the present station: painted in Southern's colours of white and mint green, it was designed in a pleasant, almost domestic, Victorian villa style. The forecourt is now used by a car-washing business. In 1893 a new and larger station building was provided slightly to the West, and this more utilitarian red-brick affair is the main station today. This was called 'Hove and West Brighton' until 1895, and then just 'Hove'. It's main feature is a generous porte-cochere, which is great when it is raining! It also shelters a florist stall Monday to Friday. The station has a small buffet on the London/Brighton platform, a newsagents in the concourse, and a small ticket office. There's only usually a single ticket window open, so if your journey is starting here, get there with a few extra minutes to spare. The three platforms are long and have generous canopies, and while you are waiting you can look across the sidings to the old 'Dubarry' soap and perfume factory - an attractive art nouveau building, now used as offices. I sometimes use the services to and from Hove rather than Brighton, as it is almost as convenient for me and, while it has a less frequent service, the trains tend to be a little less packed. As well as a taxi rank outside, and buses on the frequent 7 route (Hove-Brighton Marina) stop here too. The bus will take you to Hove's main shopping area (or it's a 10 minute walk), but is nowhere near the sea!

I've been here before Corona, but not "Durring" Corona…read more This is basically a suburb of Worthing in a little town called Durrington by the English Channel, and it's a really nice station with a typical brown brick building, which is standard for the train stations of the area, but it looks totally different, sort of like a town hall or Cathedral - or even a prison or school or something. It's odd and someone just told me that it's the modernist style. It's 12 miles from Brighton and in some ways totally different to a lot of the other stations around here. I gave this station the extra star for its weird originality.

Durrington-on-Sea is a station on the West Coastway Line from Brighton to Chichester, Portsmouth…read moreand Southampton; and serves the suburb of Worthing of the same name, which is also home to the headquarters of West Sussex Primary Care Trust, Worthing College and various central government offices. It handles over 650,000 passengers a year and is managed by Southern. The railway line was first opened in 1846, but the present station was built by the Southern Railway in a restrained, red-brick version of the Art Deco style as late as 1937, a year before the line was electrified. The main building on the northern (eastbound) platform survives in almost its original condition, albeit in need of some refurbishment. It has a square, central tower and a recessed entrance porch, reached by a wide flight of steps down to the spacious station approach. The tower has decorative relief pattern in brick. When built, the station approach side had a large clock on the tower, with the words 'Southern Railway' and 'Durrington Station' arranged symmetrically on the frontage. It is served by three trains an hour in each direction, off-peak: westbound, two to Littlehampton and one to Southampton; and eastbound, two to Victoria and one to Brighton. There is step free access from street outside main entrance to platform 1 (to London/Brighton) via a side gate, which also provides step-free access to the ticket office, via the platform. There is a footbridge with steps to platform 2 (to Littlehampton/Chichester), which can also be reached by a ramped footpath, available until 9.30pm (exit over third party land to Barrington Road). There is no level access within the station between the booking hall and platform 2; the route via external roads requires at least a 10 minute walk.