St Johns railway station

St Johns railway station is in the London Borough of Lewisham, in south-east London.

History
The station was opened on 1 June 1873 by the South Eastern Railway. In 1923 it was taken over by the Southern Railway.

The line was electrified in February 1926.

In 1948 the station passed to British Railways.

In the mid 1970s the station was re-modelled when the fast line island platform was closed and demolished. This provided space to build a flydown from the Lewisham-Nunhead line to the up fast line.

The booking office at street level was destroyed by fire in the late 1970s.

Accidents


On 21 March 1898, two trains collided in thick fog, killing three people, when a signaller allowed a train to enter the station while another train was at the platform.

On 4 December 1957, two trains collided just south-east of the station on the main line bypassing Lewisham, bringing down the Lewisham-Nunhead railway bridge and killing 90 people. Further disaster was averted as a train about to cross the bridge was halted by its driver.

Layout
The station is reached by a footbridge from St Johns Vale - there is no direct road access. There is a single island platform with two platform faces, on the slow lines.

South of the station the Greenwich Park branch crossed over before closure in 1917, connected to Lewisham in 1929. The remains of the embankment can be seen on the eastern side of the line. There was a signal box at the south end of the station that closed and was demolished when the area was resignalled in the mid 1970s. The flydown was built at this time and commissioned on 3 April 1976.

In the early 1990s the original bridge carrying St Johns Vale was replaced. This allowed the platforms to be extended towards New Cross to allow longer trains to call.

It was proposed to double the flydown line under the Thameslink Programme. Work started in 2012 with cranes and civil engineering plant on site on 8 April; it was completed over Easter 2013.