Balham station consists of two adjacent stations (a London Underground station and a National Rail station) in the Balham area of south London, England. The station is on the A24 Balham High Road in the London Borough of Wandsworth, and is in Travelcard Zone 3.
The two stations are connected, though owned and operated separately with separate ticket-issuing facilities and gatelines.
The National Rail station at Balham, which is managed by Southern, is 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.
The West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway opened a station named Balham Hill on 1 December 1856, at which time the line ran from Crystal Palace to Wandsworth Common. From the outset the line was worked by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, which purchased the line in 1859 after it had been extended to Battersea Wharf. The station was resited by the LB&SCR to its present location in 1863 as part of works to widen the line, and improve the route between East Croydon and Victoria. The new station was named Balham. Further remodelling of the line was undertaken in 1890 and 1897 to increase capacity. It was renamed Balham and Upper Tooting on 9 March 1927, reverting to Balham on 6 October 1969.
The lines through the station to Crystal Palace were electrified in 1910, by means of the LB&SCR 'Elevated Electric' overhead system. Work on electrifing the remaining services through the station had begun in 1913 but was interrupted by the First World War and not completed until 1925. By this time the LB&SCR was absorbed into the Southern Railway following the 1921 Railways Act.
In 1925 the Southern Railway decided to adopt a third rail electrification system and the lines through the station were converted between June 1928 and September 1929.
When sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s, the national rail lines were served by Network SouthEast until the privatisation of the 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.
London Buses routes 155; 249; 255; 315; 355 and N155 serve the station.