About 55years ago, my friend and I had been in the area of the station "conkering". we eventually "strayed" into the station behind the shelter on the down (to Redhill) line and proceeded to knock down a few conkers from the tree that was there. We were caught by a railway worker who promptly marched us to the Station Masters Office.

(now a taxi office). The Station master threw all of our conkers into a waste bin and threw us off the premises with a "Flea in our ear". we thought that he was most unfair !!

Hya Ken, Sounds like you're about the same age as me (slightly over 21!) At about the time you're describing (c.1958) I was 13, and a pupil at the nearby Royal Alexandra & Albert school at Gatton Park. It was a boarding school, and if we'd been 'good' during the week, we were allowed out on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. As a keen train spotter, on summer Saturdays I'd go to Redhill station to indulge myself with the many extra steam passenger excursions, usually heading for the south coastal resorts, 'snapping them with my Kodak 'Brownie 127' camera, and on Sundays I would head for Merstham station and goods yards, for the freight trains, which were also steam. At that time I was also getting the taste for smoking, and there was an old-fashioned (to us now) tobacconist nearby who quite knowingly sold us packets of 5 cigarettes ("Park Drive" mostly) for I think 10d or so, plus a box of Bryant & May's matches. I/we used to congregate on the footbridges over the tracks where the engines were shunting where we lit up, the idea being that should we be observed, it might be passed off with the shunting engine's emissions! Maybe it was different during the weekdays, but Merstham on those quiet Sundays always seemed like a sleepy backwater, where nothing much happened between us lot arriving at start of school term, and leaving at the end for holidays. Oh to go back those 55 yrs again!