Swale railway station is in north Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England, on the Sheerness Line

Sheerness Line

The Sheerness Line connects Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent with Sittingbourne on the mainland, and with the Chatham Main Line for trains to London and elsewhere in Kent. It opened on 19 July 1860....

 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Sittingbourne

Sittingbourne railway station

Sittingbourne railway station is on the Chatham Main Line and the Sheerness Line in north Kent. The station is 44 miles 1260 yards from London Victoria according to the mileage sign on the footbridge. Train services are provided by Southeastern...

 at the southern end of the Kingsferry Bridge

Kingsferry Bridge

The Kingsferry Bridge is a combined road and railway vertical-lift bridge connecting the Isle of Sheppey to Kent in the South East England. It was designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson, and built by John Howard, with Dorman Long and Sir William Arrol...

 which connects the Isle of Sheppey

Isle of Sheppey

The Isle of Sheppey is an island off the northern coast of Kent, England in the Thames Estuary, some to the east of London. It has an area of . The island forms part of the local government district of Swale...

 to mainland Kent. The nearest settlement is Iwade

Iwade

Iwade is a small village on the north side of Detling Hill, close to the town of Sittingbourne in Kent, England. With quick access to the M2 & M20 motorways, as well as within a short driving distance to Maidstone, and further Canterbury & Faversham....

. Train services are provided by Southeastern

Southeastern (train operating company)

London & South Eastern Railway Limited, trading as Southeastern is a train operating company in south-east England. On 1 April 2006 it became the franchisee for the new Integrated Kent Franchise , replacing the publicly owned South Eastern Trains on the former South East Franchise...

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History

The station was opened in 1913 as a staff halt, possibly then called Ridham Dock. In December 1922 a ship collided with the Kingsferry Bridge, rendering it unfit for rail traffic, and the station was renamed Kings Ferry Bridge South Halt, and opened to the public, who were able to walk across the bridge to a temporary station at to continue their journeys. This arrangement continued until 1 November 1923, when the bridge reopened to traffic and the North halt closed. The station was renamed Kings Ferry Bridge Halt on this date. The name was changed to Swale Halt in 1929. With the building of the new Kingsferry Bridge in 1960, a new station was constructed, opening on 20 April 1960.

In 2005 the idea of closing Swale station, or at least replacing its train service with a token service

Parliamentary train

A Parliamentary train or Parly is, nowadays, a British English term for a train that operates a Parliamentary service - that is to say a token service to a given station, thus maintaining a legal fiction that either the station or, in some cases, the whole line is open, although in reality the...

 (e.g. one train a week in either direction), was proposed by the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) but rejected.

Services

The typical off-peak service from the station is two trains per hour to Sheerness-on-Sea

Sheerness-on-Sea railway station

Sheerness-on-Sea railway station is on the Sheerness Line in north Kent, and serves the town of Sheerness. Train services are provided by Southeastern.The only platform now used is platform 1.-History:...

 and two trains per hour to Sittingbourne

Sittingbourne railway station

Sittingbourne railway station is on the Chatham Main Line and the Sheerness Line in north Kent. The station is 44 miles 1260 yards from London Victoria according to the mileage sign on the footbridge. Train services are provided by Southeastern...

, for connections to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

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