Morden South railway station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Morden South
Location
Place	Morden
Local authority	Merton
Operations
Managed by	First Capital Connect
Platforms in use	2
National Rail
Station code	MDS
Annual entry/exit	0.023 million *
Transport for London
Zone	4
History
Key dates	Opened 1930
Transport for London List of London stations: Underground | National Rail
* based on sales of tickets in 2004/05 financial year which end or originate at this station. Disclaimer (PDF)
UK Rail Portal

Morden South railway station is in Morden in the London Borough of Merton. The station is served by First Capital Connect trains, and is on the Thameslink loop. It is in Travelcard Zone 4.

The typical off-peak service from the station is 2 trains per hour to Wimbledon (clockwise around the loop) and 2 trains per hour to Sutton (anticlockwise).

[edit] History

How Morden South might have appeared on the London Underground Map today if the continuation of the Northern Line from Morden to Sutton had been built.

Permission to construct a railway line from Wimbledon to Sutton through what were then undeveloped rural areas had been obtained by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) in 1910. World War I prevented any work taking place and when, in the 1920s, the Underground Group planned the extension of the City & South London Railway (C&SLR, now part of the Northern Line) from Clapham, it initially hoped to continue the line south of Morden to Sutton using this unused permission. The route would have seen Underground trains running on surface tracks from Morden past the nearby tube train depot and on to the Network Rail alignment close to Morden South station.

The Southern Railway (SR, successor to the LB&SCR) objected to this encroachment into its area of operation and the loss of its passenger traffic to a more direct route. The two companies agreed that the SR would withdraw objections it had made to the extension of the C&SLR south from Clapham if the CS&LR line would stop at Morden and that the SR would build the Wimbledon to Sutton Line. The new line, one of the last lines built in the London area, opened on 5 January 1930.

The station ran parallel to a small branch line that served the [Express Dairy] bottling plant. During the 1950's and 1960's milk trains pulled by [Bulleid] 0-6-0 steam engines delivered milk to the plant for bottling and distrinbution. The station staff(1 person) were responsible for handling the switching points to enable these trains to depart from the main line.

[edit] External links

• Train times and station information for Morden South railway station from National Rail
• Street map and aerial photo of Morden South railway station from Multimap.com

• London Borough of Sutton - Sutton Wimbledon Line