The Oxted line is a railway in southern England and part of the Southern franchise. The railway splits into two branches towards the south and has direct trains throughout to London termini. It was opened jointly by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the South Eastern Railway in the late 19th century. The line branches from the London to Brighton Main Line (which has two diverging northern branches) at South Croydon in Greater London. The line then passes under the North Downs in two tunnels, and then splits into two branches at Hurst Green, adjoining Oxted in Surrey. One of these branches ends at East Grinstead, the other at Uckfield, both market towns in Sussex. The line between and is double-track throughout, as is all of the branch, and all this route is electrified. The branch has two tracks as far as ; the rest of the line is mostly single-track, but with two short double-track sections (a passing loop at , and a short distance between and just north of ). History Conception A line was proposed in 1864 from Croydon to Tunbridge Wells via Oxted by a group of former LB&SCR directors. Their proposal for the Surrey and Sussex Junction Railway (S&SJR) was to have the scheme underwritten and then operated by the LB&SCR. However, the South Eastern Railway (SER) saw the S&SJR, and particularly the involvement of the LB&SCR chairman Leo Schuster, as a significant incursion into its territory. In addition to creating a rival to its own line to Tunbridge Wells, the SER saw the LB&SCR's direct involvement as contravening an 1849 agreement between the two companies. In retaliation, the SER put forward proposals for a 'London, Lewes and Brighton' railway together with the London Chatham and Dover Railway. As a result of these difficulties and the financial crisis of 1866–7, the LB&SCR signed a new agreement with the SER in which it withdrew support for the S&SJR, and the SER abandoned its scheme. Work on the S&SJR immediately ceased, but the holding company remained in existence until 1869, when it was merged with the LB&SCR and then closed. On 10 March 1884, the LB&SCR and the SER formed a joint venture company, the Croydon, Oxted & East Grinstead Railway. Surveyed and engineered by the LB&SCR's Chief Engineer Frederick Banister, the proposed route in part used trackbed constructed for but never used by the