Kensington (Olympia)
Kensington (Olympia) station in West London is managed and served by London Overground and also served by London Underground.

On the Underground it is the terminus of a short District Line branch, built as part of the Middle Circle, from Earl's Court; on the main-line railway it is on the West London Line from Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction, by which many trains bypass Central London.

A station was opened by the West London Railway as its southern terminus on 27 May 1844 as Kensington, just south of Hammersmith Road; it closed at the end of November 1844 due to the losses made. A scant and erratic goods service continued, the line re-opened to passengers with a new station called Addison Road on 2 June 1862, to the north of Hammersmith Road. Great Western Railway trains started serving the station in 1863, with London & North Western Railway trains arriving in 1872. A link to the Hammersmith & City Railway enabled the Middle Circle service to operate via Paddington to the north and South Kensington to the south. From 1869, the London & South Western Railway operated trains from Richmond to London Waterloo via Addison Road, until their branch via Shepherd's Bush closed in 1916. By 1907 the Middle Circle had been replaced by four Hammersmith & City line trains an hour.

The station appears on the first 'London Underground' map in 1908 with Metropolitan and District Railway services.

In 1940, Addison Road and the link to the Metropolitan line at Latimer Road closed along with the other West London Line stations, In 1946 it was renamed Kensington (Olympia) and became the northern terminus of a peak-hour shuttle service to Clapham Junction, which was mainly for workers at the Post Office Savings Bank (later National Savings Bank) in nearby Blythe Road. There was also a District line shuttle to Earl's Court.

The current District line bay platform opened in 1958, but the 1872 connection between the District and the main line south of the station was not finally lifted until 1992.

For many years the passenger service was only a few peak-hour main-line trains to and from Clapham Junction, with Underground trains only during exhibition times. The West London Line has always been a main freight route from north of London to the south-east of England.

Between 1979 and 2008 the Clapham Junction service was supplemented by a Cross Country route from Brighton to Birmingham New Street extending to Derby, Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Central, Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Piccadilly. Cross Country services also called at Kensington Olympia on services from the north to Eastbourne, Folkestone Central and Ramsgate at various times.

There were two bay platforms on the south-eastern side mainly used by services from Clapham Junction. In the early 1990s these were filled in and the southbound platform loop closed, with a shorter platform on the sothbound main line built over the loop - longer southbound trains now cross to the northbound loop to stop. The land behind the southbound platform was sold for redevelopment.

There were an Express Dairies creamery and milk bottling plant close to the station served by milk trains from the Great Western Railway from Old Oak Common to a siding adjacent to the station.

In the event of nuclear war seeming imminent, the station was the designated London muster point for staff in transit to the Central Government War Headquarters (Codenamed Burlington).

In 1994, a full passenger service between Willesden Junction and Clapham Junction was reinstated after a gap of 54 years.

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