Norwood Junction railway station is in South Norwood in the London Borough of Croydon in south London, in Travelcard Zone 4.
The station is managed by London Overground and trains are operated by London Overground (since 23 May 2010) and Southern.
The station has occupied two sites under three different names.
In 1839 the London and Croydon Railway opened Jolly-sailor station — "Jolly-sailor near Beulah Spa" on fares lists and timetables — at the north end of the High Street, adjacent to the Portland Road level crossing. From 1841 the lines through Norwood were used by the London and Brighton Railway and from 1842 the South Eastern Railway, but neither of these companies used the station.
In 1844 the L&CR was given parliamentary authority to test an experimental atmospheric railway system on the railway. A pumping station was built on Portland Road to create a vacuum in a continuous pipe located centrally between the rails. A piston extended downwards from the trains into a slit in the pipe, with trains blown towards the pumping station by atmospheric pressure. The pumping station was in a Gothic style, with a very tall ornate tower that served both as a chimney and as an exhaust vent for air pumped from the propulsion tube.
As part of the works for the atmospheric system, the world's first railway flyover was constructed beyond the south end of the station to carry the atmospheric line over the conventional London & Brighton Railway steam line. At the same time the level crossing at Portland Road was replaced by a low bridge across the road.
In July 1846 the L&CR merged with the L&BR to form the London Brighton and South Coast Railway, and the station was renamed Norwood in the same year - it became Norwood Junction by 1856. The LB&SCR abandoned atmospheric propulsion in 1847 but the flyover remained in use as part of what is sometimes known as Windmill Bridge Junction.
Following construction of lines to Crystal Palace the station closed on 1 June 1859 and was replaced by the current station on the south side of the A215 road. The original station building was used as a private house until the 1960s, when it was demolished.
The Norwood Junction railway crash occurred on 1 May 1891, when the cast-iron bridge over Portland Road fractured under an express train from Brighton to London.
It is from this station that the villain Jonas Oldacre takes his train to London Bridge in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.
There are seven platforms but only five are in use. Ticket barriers control access to all platforms.