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Herne Hill railway station is in the London Borough of Lambeth, South London, England, on the boundary between London fare zones 2 and 3. Train services are provided by Thameslink to London Blackfriars, Farringdon, St Pancras International and St Albans on the Thameslink route and by Southeastern to London Victoria (via Brixton) and Orpington on the Chatham Main Line. It is 3 miles 76 chains (6.4 km) down the line from Victoria.
The station building on Railton Road was opened in 1862 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Initial service was only to Victoria, but by 1869 services ran to the City of London, King's Cross, Kingston via Wimbledon, and Kent, including express trains to Dover Harbour for continental Europe. The arrival of the railways transformed Herne Hill from a wealthy suburb with large residential estates into a densely populated urban area.
Herne Hill railway station sits at the bottom of the hill that gives the area its name and is close to Brockwell Park. The section of Railton Road outside the station is mixed usage for pedestrians and vehicles.
The Chatham Main Line and Sutton Loop railway lines through Herne Hill are elevated above road level on a brick viaduct that runs north–south. The station's 1862 Gothic, polychrome brick building is on the western side of the viaduct, with access the station also from the east via a foot tunnel from Milkwood Road. The building houses a ticket office and newsagent, and was Grade II listed in 1998: the listing notes the station's arched doorways, Welsh slate roof and decorative brickwork. It was described by Cherry and Pevsner as a "handsome group" and featured on the cover of a book about London's railway architecture. The station entrance canopy (which had been shortened and altered in the mid 20th century) was removed in 2015 due to its disrepair and a new one installed in July 2016 with a new timber valance design and cornice based on the original Victorian one.
The four tracks are served by two island platforms; northbound trains call at the western platform and southbound trains the eastern platform, providing cross-platform interchange between the two routes.
There are flat junctions at each end of the station: Herne Hill North Junction, where the lines to Loughborough Junction and Brixton diverge; and Herne Hill South Junction, where the lines to West Dulwich and Tulse Hill diverge. Thameslink and Southeastern services cross each other's paths at the junctions, constraining capacity on both routes. The station also has a turnback siding on its eastern side, adjacent to Milkwood Road.
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