Coulsdon Town railway station serves the northern part of Coulsdon, in the London Borough of Croydon. It is on the Tattenham Corner line 16 mi from Charing Cross and opened on 1 January 1904. Until 22 May 2011 it was called Smitham.

History

The station was opened as Smitham on 1 January 1904 and was briefly closed (between 1 January 1917 and 1 January 1919) during the First World War. It lies on a sharp curve, where the line swings away westwards from the Brighton Main Line. It is immediately adjacent to the closed Coulsdon North station on the main line, whose passenger traffic was diverted here when the latter closed on 3 October 1983. Some Tattenham Corner line trains terminated at Smitham before returning to London. Still, nowadays the usual off-peak service is two trains per hour in each direction between London Bridge and Tattenham Corner. An hourly shuttle service used to operate during weekday off-peak hours between Purley and Tattenham Corner, but this was withdrawn in February 2015. Services to London Victoria were withdrawn in 2021 due to the pandemic The Coulsdon relief road, opened on 18 December 2006 as part of the A23, passes underneath the station, requiring some rearrangement and refurbishment of the platform access routes. There is no direct access to the London-bound platform now; access is via the down platform and a new footbridge or lift. Network Rail constructed a new modular station building on the downside of the line and a standard-pattern accessible footbridge, which opened in 2010. There is no PERTIS self-service 'Permit to Travel' ticket machine. As part of the retender of Southern's franchise in 2009, the Department for Transport requested that, in response to lobbying by Croydon Council, the new company look into a better name for the station, as "Smitham" is no longer used as the name of the local area. Coulsdon Town was chosen after a public vote. The change took place on Sunday ,22 May 2011. Evening services to the station were improved in December 2010.

Services

All services at Coulsdon Town are operated by Southern using EMUs. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: On Sundays, the service is reduced to hourly and runs between Tattenham Corner and Purley only. Passengers for London Bridge have to change at Purley. It was initially proposed that from 2018, when the Thameslink Programme is completed, services on this line would be operated with larger 12 car trains offering all day direct services to Cambridge via London Blackfriars. However, in September 2016, these proposals were dropped; instead, services on the Tattenham Corner line are to "remain as Southern South London Metro services with increased capacity as compared to today".