Darlington Railway Station

Hi. I live in the Darlington area so have used the station a few times. You need to make sure you go to the Victoria Road entrance - a taxi can drop you off there if you ask them to. There are also car parks nearby on Park Lane. From the Victoria Road entrance it is step-free all the way and throughout the station. The sloping ramps do look a little steep but they are fine - my basic mobility scooter goes up and down them no problem (and it's only supposed to do a 6 degree gradient!). It's not as bad as it looks. It was quite hard work with a manual wheelchair however, but doable. I have booked passenger assist from here a few times. You need to go to the information desk (a kiosk in the open platform area) half an hour before the train is due. Touch wood, ramps have always been provided when booked! Staff are helpful and will sort you out. After checking in at the info kiosk, you're usually asked to go and wait in the waiting room and a staff member will find you before the train comes, and take you and any baggage to the train, set down the ramps etc. It's best to travel in Coach A (if going to London or Edinburgh) which has a wheelchair space and also enough space for luggage as well. Parking can be an issue - the closest car park is the Park Lane one. There are disabled spaces there, but it can often be full unless you go early in the morning. However there is meter parking on the road opposite, so if you have a blue badge you can park there. Car parks can't be pre-booked so best option is to go early. There is another car park "Park Place" further down Victoria Road, but that is also often full unless you go early.

When travelling by train I always use the "Passenger Assist "Service. In my experience it works very well and is "tailor made" to suit your own requirements. Accessibility for a disabled person at Darlington Train Station is not good. If you arrive at the station by taxi or can be dropped off by a friend then it is level access to the booking office and to the trains, but if you arrive in your own transport the surrounding car parks are useless as the route from one car park involves a steep incline which, in my opinion, will beat most wheelchair users, and the other car park is connected to the station by steps!

Darlington rail station has frequent train services that connect to most metropolitan cities in England. For example, to the South; London, Sheffield, York and to the north; Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The train station has decent adaption to allow easy access for wheel chair users. However, a critical look of the the entire station after the visit made me discover some shortfall in adaptability. For example, when coming through the train station from the North entrance, there are stair cases and no provision for wheel chair access. This, in my view makes wheel chair users to ambulate almost three times the distance an able bodied person would walk from the new fee paying car park. Secondly, facing north as one exits the train station, there is an underground subway on the left side. This subway is looked really steep for wheel chair ambulation. It could be very hard to ambulate the wheel chair up the steep or even impossible for most wheel chair users.