Coulsdon Town railway station

Coulsdon Town railway station serves the northern part of Coulsdon, in the London Borough of Croydon. It is on the Tattenham Corner Line and opened on 1 January 1904. Until 22 May 2011, the station was known as Smitham.

History
The station was opened on 1 January 1904, and briefly closed 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 used to terminate at Smitham before returning to London, but nowadays the usual off-peak service is two trains per hour in each direction between London Bridge and Tattenham Corner, and one train per hour in each direction acting as a shuttle between Purley and Tattenham Corner.

The Coulsdon relief road, opened 18 December 2006 as part of the A23, passes underneath the station and meant that some rearrangement and refurbishment of the platform access routes was required. Consequently, no direct access to the London-bound platform now exists; access is only via the other platform and a new footbridge or a lift.

A new modular station building on the down side of the line, and a standard-pattern accessible footbridge were constructed by Network Rail and opened in 2010. There is no PERTIS self-service 'Permit to Travel' ticket machine at Smitham.

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. The name chosen, after an exercise in local democracy, was Coulsdon Town. The change took place on Sunday 22 May 2011. Evening services to the station were improved in December 2010. Despite the having been renamed, tickets issued from Coulsdon Town are still displaying "SMITHAM".