London and South Western Railway - Suburban Lines

Suburban Lines

The L&SWR was the second British railway company to begin running what could be described as a modern 'commuter' service after the London and Greenwich Railway which opened in 1836. In 1838 the L&SWR had built a station on its original Southampton main line to serve Kingston upon Thames. The corporation of Kingston objected to the railway and so the station was sited 1.5 miles (3 kilometres) from the town itself. The success of the railway and the easy and fast travel into London that it offered meant that new housing developments began to spring up, first around the station and then on the road between the station and Kingston proper. The new settlement was named Surbiton (after a farm that had previously been in the area) after a brief period of being known as Kingston-on-Railway. This new settlement attracted affluent workers from The City who could live outside the city centre (with its attendant noise, pollution and overcrowding) and yet easily travel to work. The traffic from Surbiton grew to such an extent that the L&SWR soon provided a branch into Kingston itself, thus forming Britain's first suburban railway network on a mainline railway. Soon special trains and ticketing arrangements were being put in place to cope with the heavy twice-daily traffic from the London outskirts to Waterloo.