It was a dark and stormy night when Tom Anderson
wrote in article ...
Afternoon all,

I was at West Croydon station recently, and i noticed that the platform
layout is a bit funny. I can't find any good aerial photos of it, so i'll
draw a diagram (lines are lines, #s are platforms):

----------------\
############### +-\
X ######### \ \
---------------------X-+---- up Wallington
----------------------+------ down Wallington
###############

So you've got two through lines and a bay off on the up side, with an
island platform in between the bay and the up, and a normal platform (a
mainland platform?) on the down.

The funny bit is the shape of the island: where it has faces on both
tracks, it's very wide, but it is't so all along - where i've put an X,
there's quite a long bit where it's narrower, standing well back from the
through line. Specifically, apparently exactly far enough back to fit
another track in between it and the existing track.

Any idea of there's a reason for this? Was there ever a third track there?
With the present platform layout, it would have to have been a bay
platform, but one which would have received trains from the Sutton
direction, which seems unlikely. Was it the case that the island platform
was narrower, and there were three through tracks? Was this line ever
four-track? Looking out of the train window further to the west, i thought
there probably would have been room for that - some of which is now taken
up by a tram track, but most of which is empty.

Bonus Croydon query: apparently, on the tram line west of Church Street,
which splits into branches to West Croydon and Reeves Corner, the junction
is right after the stop, with a stretch maybe 100 metres of interlaced
track before the branches diverge. Any idea why?

You've answered your own question. The trams from Croydon to Wimbledon
used to be a full-scale rail line, and ran into the now-empty bay
platform at West Croydon.

Grebbsy
--
Grebbsy McLaren