Hampton Court

Well located station with fairly frequent connections to Waterloo station. As the station is open it provides only limited protection from the elements.
The staff is friendly and the station is clean.

Hampton Court Rail Station is literally five minutes away from Hampton Court Palace and is RIGHT in the middle of the area, so it’s perfectly placed for every major attraction.
Set in zone 6, it’s also got that leafy quality you start to see the further out from Central you get, yet it’s just one train from Waterloo and so retains its excellent connections.
Yet despite all these good points, the station itself is set out a little weirdly.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fantastic that it has large and easily located toilets, a couple of café carts so you can grab a packet of crisps and a cup of tea while you wait and a nice sheltered area if it’s raining, but all these things are crammed into the very entrance of the station.
If you want to wait on the platform, then you’ll be standing because there are no seats anywhere along it. It’s also one of those ones with a bit of concrete in the middle and two train tracks either side, so not great for people like me who have a strange but very real fear of falling onto train tracks and need a wall to stand against to feel safe.
If you’re normal, it’s probably a good four stars. But the inherent feeling of peril I feel standing on it leads me to knock a star off.

At the end of the line from Waterloo, Hampton Court rail station is a short walk (not even a quarter of a mile) from what is probably the main reason that people come to this part of the world — the Hampton Court Palace. The station has a coffee bar (that makes their own sausage butties!) with a good selection of nibbles.
There are no ticket barricades here, but there are Oyster readers and ticket vending machines. There’s also a staffed ticket booth with hours into the early evening and a decent sized (and cheap!) parking lot.
Tip: If you have an Oyster Card, you can use it here. Your daily maximum charge for Zone 6 is going to be cheaper (by maybe £5) than a round trip train ticket from Waterloo Station, even if purchased in advance.