History
The first railway station in Wimbledon was opened on 21 May 1838, when the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) opened its line from its terminus at Nine Elms in Battersea to Woking. The original station was to the south of the current station on the opposite side of the Wimbledon Bridge.
On 22 October 1855, the Wimbledon and Croydon Railway (W&CR) opened the West Croydon to Wimbledon Line to West Croydon via Mitcham and on 1 October 1868 the Tooting, Merton and Wimbledon Railway (TM&WR) opened a line to Tooting Junction (now just Tooting station).
On 3 June 1889, the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now London Underground's District Line) opened the extension of its line from Putney Bridge, making Wimbledon station the new terminus of that branch and providing Wimbledon with a direct connection to the developing London Underground system. The station was rebuilt on its current site for the opening of this service.
District Line steam-hauled services were replaced by electric services from 27 August 1905. Mainline suburban services were gradually replaced by electric rolling stock either side of World War I although long distance journeys continued to use steam-haulage until much later.
The station was rebuilt again with its current Portland stone entrance building by the Southern Railway (SR, the post Grouping successor to the L&SWR) in the late 1920s as part of the SR's construction of the line to Sutton. Parliamentary approval for this line had been obtained by the Wimbledon and Sutton Railway (W&SR) in 1910 but work had been delayed by World War I. From the W&SR's inception, the MDR was a shareholder of the company and had rights to run trains over the line when built. In the 1920s, the London Electric Railway (LER, precursor of London Underground) planned, through its ownership of the MDR, to use part of the route for an extension of the City and South London Railway (C&SLR, now the Northern line) to Sutton. The SR objected and an agreement was reached that enabled the C&SLR to extend as far as Morden in exchange for the LER giving up its rights over the W&SR route. The SR subsequently built the line, one of the last to be built in the London area. It opened on 7 July 1929 to South Merton and to Sutton on 5 January 1930.
On 2 June 1997, the West Croydon to Wimbledon Line was closed by Railtrack for conversion to operation as part of the Tramlink tram operations. Part of platform 10 was utilised for the single track terminus of Tramlink route 3 and rail tracks and infrastructure were replaced with those for the tram system. The new service opened on 30 May 2000. The other part of platform 10 is currently used as a terminus for First Capital Connect services.
Read more about this topic: Wimbledon Station
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