Overview

Richmond Station is fully wheelchair-accessible and has mainly friendly staff, though many of the staff are negligent in ramp deployment and are often putting the safety of wheelchair users at risk. There are some accessible toilet annoyances. From here you can take: - South Western Trains services - District Line - London Overground

Transport & Parking

Zillions of buses stop outside the station. I don't know about parking in this area.

Access

Two lifts make this station fully wheelchair-accessible on all platforms. It is also possible to reach all platforms except platform 1 from the street, by taking the slip-road on the left-hand side of the station (as you face it) and entering the station via a side entrance. If you're a wheelchair user & you want to travel on South-West Trains services, or on London Overground services, speak to any member of staff and they will organise someone to help you with a ramp, or show you where to find someone to help. If you're a wheelchair user & you want to travel on the District Line, you can board the trains without a ramp. But BEWARE - the horizontal gap between train and platform varies greatly along the length of the District Line platforms. Move towards the front of the train until you find the smallest possible gap: there is an optimal area where it's easy to board the train. My picture below shows how, looking along the length of the train, the gap narrows as you get nearer to the front of the train.

Toilets

There is a wheelchair-accessible toilet near the ticket-gates. It's spacious. You can gain access using a RADAR key. If you don't have a RADAR key you may have trouble finding staff to unlock the door for you. On the day I visited, the red emergency cord had been thoughtlessly tied up around a grab-rail. This is a very silly thing to do. See my picture below. The red emergency cord must hang freely all the way down to the floor, so that it can be reached by anyone who might fall to the floor and need to summon assistance. Two stars lost for this. I spoke to a member of staff who had been cleaning the toilet, and explained why the red cord must hang free, but he didn't get the point and wasn't in any case at all interested. You will sometimes find soap and paper towels missing from this toilet.

Staff

Most staff are friendly and helpful. Some are grumpy but get on with being helpful all the same. One member of staff is relentlessly gloomy and pessimistic. Staff who deploy the ramps for South Western and London Overground services, despite extensive and thorough training, often deploy the ramps in a dangerous, incorrect and non-compliant manner, not engaging the ramp lugs in their slots to make the ramp firmly attached to the train while you are using it. This is putting people's safety and even their lives at risk, as the ramp could slide off the train while you are on it, causing serious injury or even death. Sometimes staff will even deploy the wrong type of ramp for the train, which means that it's impossible to engage the lugs because they do not fit. This is a MAJOR safety issue and shows a shocking level of negligence at all levels of the company.

Anything else you wish to tell us?

There is a good branch of M&S (Food) opposite the ticket barrier. Richmond is a really good place to go shopping.

Photos