Teddington Station has a good enough service into London Waterloo - with around six trains every hour.

However travelling away from the capital is more tricky with the branch line to Shepperton your only real option.

That's because Teddington is on the Kingston Loop line - meaning trains start and end in Waterloo going via Richmond and Twickenham one way and Kingston and Wimbledon the other.

However if you want to get to the countryside of Surrey and Hampshire or even the coast you are out of luck without changing at least once.

However things could've been very different back when the railways were first built.

Two major factors meant that the mainline to the south was built through Surbiton rather than Kingston.

Had the line been built through Kingston itself rather than Surbiton then Teddington could have been on the route west and south.

So what are the two reasons that Surbiton was chosen as the location for the mainline railway station?

Firstly the organisation who ran the coaching business in Kingston (The Kingston Corporation) feared the railway would impact on their business.

Therefore the station was built a mile and a half south of the town centre.

The station was initially called Kingston on opening in 1838 but was renamed Surbiton when a town started to develop around the station.

The second reason why Teddington is not on the main line is because of the people of Kingston!

Yes the station was built in Surbiton instead because the rich Kingston residents thought that the town was too high-class to have a railway.

So using their influence the mainline was built south of the town.

As the railway become more and more important the Kingston residents would live to regret their decision and a station in the centre of the town would open in 1863.

Had this been the main line station Teddington would be a lot better connected.

But we will always have to go via the likes of Norbiton or North Sheen to get to Waterloo.

If you would like us to dig into more historical facts about Teddington email us on [email protected]