Though only sixteen miles separate these two towns plans for no fewer than six routes between them had been made by 1845. The Great Western countered the Richmond, Staines & Newbury Junction Railway, the nearest to the one existing today, with a London, Staines, Ascot & Reading Junction Railway from Old Oak Common to Reading via Hounslow, Staines and Wokingham. Of the 1845 proposals the Reading, Guildford & Reigate Railway, authorised in 1847, opened between Farnborough and Reading in July 1849, Wokingham station being commissioned shortly afterwards. And the London & South Western Railway planned a branch from Weybridge to Staines via Chertsey and Thorpe, terminating on the south side of the Thames close to Staines bridge: the WeybridgeChertsey section opened in February 1848.
The Windsor, Staines & South Western Railway appears in 1847. It included branches from Staines to Wokingham and from the Wokingham line at Knowle, east of Longcross, to Brookwood, as well as making a triangular junction at Virginia Water (then Trotsworth) and a line thence to join the LSWR at Chertsey.
Richmond had been reached on 27th July 1846, the independent Richmond Railway veering away from the Southampton line at Battersea. (Clapham Junction did not open here until 2nd March 1863.) The small company was inevitably soon swallowed up by the South Western. The WS&SWR line opened to Datchet from Richmond on 2nd August 1848, though none of the other authorised routes proceeded. The WS&SWR line crossed the Thames from Datchet to the pretty little terminus at the riverside in Windsor on 1st December 1849.
In 1851 the Staines & Woking Railway proposed a line between these two points via Virginia Water but in 1852 the present line from Staines to Wokingham reappeared as the Staines, Wokingham & Woking Junction Railway, the line from Knowle ignoring Brookwood and making an east-facing junction at Woking instead. The South Western offered to work the line following agreement for running powers into the South Eastern’s Reading terminus. Authorisation was received in July 1853.
John Hawkshaw was appointed the Staines company’s engineer in July 1855, arousing the wrath of Staines’s residents, easing the curving approach to the bridge over the Thames by moving the site of its eastern abutment. To this day the B376 Laleham Road in Staines narrows appreciably where it passes under the line. Public services between Staines and Ascot began on 4th June 1856 and to Wokingham on 9th July.
The close association between the Staines, Wokingham & Woking Junction and the London & South Western became more formal in July 1856 when the LSWR took a 42½-year lease on it, absorbing it in 1878. Meanwhile, plans drawn up by Hawkshaw for the Egham & Woking Railway route from the junction at Knowle were deposited in November 1859 but nothing came of them.
In 1863 the Surrey Gazette intimated the LSWR was about to complete the Weybridge– Chertsey branch but to Virginia Water rather than Staines. The SW&WJR Board decided to oppose this and yet another Staines, Egham & Woking Junction Railway but later agreed to the Chertsey branch on the understanding that “traffic passing through Virginia Water would pay mileage as though it has passed via Staines”. The extension from Chertsey to Virginia Water was sanctioned in 1864 and opened on 1st October 1866.
An 1883 promotion, the Staines, Chertsey & Woking Railway intended to have an independent terminus at Staines but connect with the Great Western’s branch then under construction from West Drayton. It would then have struck southward via Thorpe and Chertsey to join the South Western line east of Woking.
