Balham station



Balham station consists of two adjacent stations (a London Underground station and a National Rail station) located in the Balham area of south London, England. The station is located on the A24 Balham High Road in the London Borough of Wandsworth, and is in Travelcard Zone 3.

The two stations are interconnected, albeit owned and operated separately, with separate ticket-issuing facilities and gatelines.

National Rail
The National Rail station at Balham, which is managed by Southern is located on the Brighton Main Line, four stops south of London Victoria. Although on a north-south route, the tracks pass through Balham on an approximately east-west axis, with Victoria towards the west.

The tracks are on an embankment and access to the platforms is via an underpass beneath them. There are four tracks and four platforms, although only two are regularly used in service. Just beyond the south/east end of the station, the line divides into two branches. One branch is the Brighton Main Line, continuing towards East Croydon, with the other heading towards Crystal Palace. Further south, there is another branch which heads towards Mitcham Junction and Sutton. Between Balham and Mitcham Junction, a new station at Mitcham Eastfields was opened in 2008.

History


The station was opened in 1863 by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, replacing another station nearby which opened in 1856. It was known initially as Balham and Upper Tooting. Following the 1921 Railways Act, the LBSCR was absorbed into the Southern Railway, which electrified the tracks through the station.

When sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s, the national rail lines were served by Network SouthEast until the privatisation of British Railways.

Upon privatisation in the 1990s, the national rail lines came under the Connex South Central franchise, which was replaced by the current operator in 2000.

Services
All services are operated by Southern. While the station is physically on the Brighton Main Line, train services form part of the South London Lines and the Sutton & Mole Valley Lines. To the north, trains operate to London Victoria via Clapham Junction; and Milton Keynes Central via Kensington (Olympia) and Watford Junction.

To the south and east, typical destinations include via Crystal Palace, Croydon stations (West Croydon and East Croydon), Caterham, Epsom Downs and Sutton.

London Underground
Balham is located on the Northern Line between and  stations. It has entrances on the east and west sides of Balham High Road linked by a pedestrian subway. The surface buildings were designed by the architect Charles Holden. It is the only station on the Morden branch of the Northern line with an interchange to a National Rail station of the same name.

History
The station opened on 6 December 1926 as part of the Morden extension of the City & South London Railway (although the line had opened slightly earlier, on 13 September 1926), which later became part of the Northern Line.

World War II
During the Second World War, Balham was one of many deep tube stations designated for use as a civilian air raid shelter. At 20:02 on 14 October 1940, a 1400 kg semi-armour piercing fragmentation bomb fell on the road above the northern end of the platform tunnels, causing a large crater into which a bus then crashed. The northbound platform tunnel partially collapsed and was filled with earth and water from the fractured water mains and sewers above, which also flowed through the cross-passages into the southbound platform tunnel, with the flooding and debris reaching to within 100 yards of. according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), sixty-seven people in the station were killed - although some sources report 68 - and more than seventy injured. The damage at track level closed the line to traffic between and, but was repaired rapidly with the closed section and station being reopened on 12 January 1941. In October 2000 a memorial plaque was placed in the station ticket hall commemorating this event. It stating that 64 lives were lost, which differed from the CWGC register at the time, and other sources. On 14 October 2010 this was replaced with a new plaque commemorating the event, but without giving the number of fatalities.

In popular culture
The video for the single Missing by Everything But the Girl repeatedly uses the same shot from a moving vehicle passing between the two tube entrance buildings, while in another shot Tracey Thorn is seen walking down the side of one of them.

The flooding of the station during World War II is briefly portrayed in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, and in the film based on the book. Both the novel and the film date the event incorrectly, with the novel placing it in September 1940 rather than October, and the film dating it as 15 October rather than the previous day.

Transports links
London Bus routes 155, 249, 315, 355 and Night routes N155 serve the station and its surrounding area.