Like New Cross and New Cross Gate, southeast London sees both a Catford and Catford Bridge station in the immediate vicinities to one another. This complication seems a bit pointless from a modern perspective. And indeed it is.
NOTE: Apologies in advance for all the forthcoming railway company initials here – this was a complicated story.
The Mid Kent line, including Catford Bridge station, was built by the Mid Kent and North Kent Junction Railway and was opened on 1 January 1857. After opening, the line was worked by the South Eastern Railway (SER). The remaining interests of the Mid Kent company were taken over by the SER in August 1866. Services from the station ran all the way into London, terminating at Charing Cross or Cannon Street. This was typical of a pattern in the story of Victorian railways – a small local company (with long initials) built a local line which was taken over and absorbed into a larger local company, merging the small lines together into a regional network.
Passengers of services to the south east of London and into Kent were some of the unluckiest in the country – many lines but terrible customer service. This was due to much of the SER’s early history seeing attempts at expansion scuppered by feuds with its railway neighbours. Money which could have been spent on rolling stock, decent stations and sensible timetables was spent instead on politics.
One of the feuds was with the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR). This was a railway company created on 1 August 1859 when the former East Kent Railway was given Parliamentary approval to change its name. The LCDR had ultimately originated through the dissatisfaction felt by the inhabitants of north and east Kent with the services provided by the SER.
The reason for two next-door stations in Catford started when both SER and LCDR completed rival routes to Dover by 1861. The SER refused to accept the terms of the contract for the cross-channel carriage of mails in 1862, as this stipulated the use of Dover rather than Folkestone. This enabled the LCDR to secure the contract much to the chagrin of the SER.
Cudworth 0-4-4 tank No. 241
So as not to use any SER permanent way, the LCDR then decided to expand its service into central London and gained parliamentary approval for this idea, despite there being SER services into London from stations which were near to the proposed LCDR ones. It was quite easy to get a railway built and parliamentary approval in Victorian times if you knew the right MPs. Parliament would approve railways which were not necessarily in the national interest. It would also not approve railways which were in the national interest if your pockets weren’t deep enough or you had no way to earn an MP’s favour.
The LCDR and another company – the London Brighton & South Coast Railway – decided to pool their resources and put money into the Victoria Station & Pimlico Railway. The latter had been authorised by parliament to build an extension of the line from a station at Battersea to a new station at Victoria Street, just a few hundred yards from Buckingham Palace.
By July 1863 the LCDR had its own independent route to Victoria to rival and mirror the SER service, and in 1864 its own terminus on the edge of the City of London at Ludgate Hill. Catford railway station was built within a few years as part of this new route.
Catford Bridge and Catford railway stations are separated only by the site of the former Catford Stadium. There were rival ticket offices just 100 yards apart offering two ways into London.
The bitter rivalry involved the two sets of management and directors. The pointless duplication of services caused a drop in revenue in both LCDR and SER and many a financial scandal, which we won’t go into here. However, one nickname for the SER from its customers was ’The Rattle and Smash Railway’. ’The Chatham’ was often criticised for its lamentable carriage stock and poor punctuality.
Portrait of Sir Edward W. Watkin by Augustus Henry Fox now in the National Railway Museum
The period of destructive factionalism eventually ended with the appointment of Edward Watkin – also Chairman of the Metropolitan Railway – as SER Chairman in March 1866. The LCDR went bankrupt through mismanagement and was taken into administration on 12 July 1866. Watkin’s appointment was quickly followed by the 1867 UK financial crisis. This had a severe effect on expansion plans of several railways including the SER. Watkin had his own issues with bitter rivalry elsewhere but, due to him, it halted in south east London and north west Kent.
In 1898 the South Eastern Railway and the London Chatham and Dover Railway agreed to work as one railway company under the name of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway and Catford Bridge became an SECR station. The two Catford stations escaped the Beeching cuts and Catford is now a Thameslink station. Interchange on one ticket is now allowed between the two stations.
There is a fascinating 1955 book on the SER/LCDR spat: “The Rivalry and Working Union of the South Eastern and London, Chatham & Dover Railways” by Philip S. Bagwell. This is also available online (with access limitations): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002252665500200201?journalCode=jthc
