Sanderstead - May 1983

The last station before Uckfield trains join the Brighton line at South Croydon is Sanderstead. This is the view towards South Croydon -- as seen from the locomotive hauled 17.20 London Bridge - Uckfield service one sunny spring evening.

The presence of the third rail at this station, over four years before the East Grinstead electrification was inaugurated, is worth commenting on...

Rather than an early start on that scheme, it was part of a much earlier electrification project that had brought electric trains to the route as long ago as 1935 -- and which was in its last days at the time of this photograph.

The scheme in question was the Southern Railway's Woodside - Sanderstead project, which initially offered regular trains to Charing Cross and Cannon Street, running via Lewisham. To do this they branched off the South Croydon route at Selsdon, a now closed station between here and South Croydon, bypassing Croydon altogether.

By the time of this photograph, the service had been cut back to a 2-car peak-hour shuttle to Elmer's End only -- hence the '2' visible above the 3-car stop sign on the opposite platform -- and was awaiting final closure.Traffic had suffered both from the lack of a Croydon stop and an unattractive timetable.

At the time, few people expected the line might be revived, and one long forgotten pro-road lobby even suggested converting the track into a short road as a prototype for the rest of the rail network!

But 17 years after it was closed, all but a small section of the route was successfully revived as part of Croydon's Tramlink network. Thanks to a new stretch of street-level route, it now carries an intensive tram service from both Beckenham and New Addington into the heart of Croydon.