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The Battersea Tangle is a complex set of railway lines and junctions in Battersea, south of the River Thames in London. It grew up around the lines built to reach and Victoria stations (and earlier termini) by several competing and cooperating railway companies. It has included a number of goods depots, as well as engine sheds, carriage sidings, and larger railway workshops. It is sometimes referred to as Clapham Junction, after its principal station.

Most of the routes were established between 1838 and 1867, after which time the development of the surrounding area made new lines impractical. New goods depots were added after this date, and the track alignments and junctions were adjusted to meet changing requirements. A new flyover, above existing tracks, was added in 1990 to allow Eurostar trains to reach Waterloo.

Definition
Architectural historian Priscilla Metcalf records 'The Battersea Tangle' as a railwaymen's term for the 'fortuitous concourse of railway lines northeast of Clapham Junction', Tim Sherwood describes it as 'the maze of lines between Clapham Junction and Nine Elms' in his history of railways in that area, while Andrew Saint and Colin Thom, in the Survey of London, use the phrase to describe the outcome of four railway companies trying to interconnect with each other in Battersea while protecting their own assets and business.

Railway historian Edwin Course gives a definition equivalent to this: the Battersea Tangle is the confluence of seven railway lines coming from five directions. From the south, clockwise, they are
 * the Brighton, Basingstoke and Reading lines through Clapham Junction station (and its predecessors)
 * the West London line across Battersea Railway Bridge
 * the line from Victoria across Grosvenor Bridge
 * the line from Waterloo through Vauxhall station
 * the South London line through Wandsworth Road station

This is the area covered by the Sketch map of the Battersea 'Tangle' in Sherwood's book.

Development
[[File:Battersea Fields, looking north to Chelsea, in 1848 - watercolour by Robert Westall.jpg|thumb|upright=3|centre|The north-eastern portion of Battersea Fields in 1848, seen from Pavilion Terrace, on the north edge of Battersea New Town. In the future: • The WELCPR low-level lines will come from behind the artist's right and cross to Pimlico Station to the left of the ponds

• The LCDR high-level lines will come from the artist's left and continue between Pimlico Station and the ponds, to cross the river

• Battersea Dogs & Cats Home will be built immediately in front of the artist

• Battersea Power Station will be built where the ponds are]] In the early years of the ninteenth century, the area between Clapham Common and the Thames was mostly open fields. Among them were found Long Hedge Farm, the market gardens of Samuel Poupart, Lavender Hill and the Falcon brook, all of which left their names to later railway features.

Market gardens lay below Lavender Hill. "This was dairy-farm and market-garden country, supplying food for London." Longhedge Farm's northern border was the long hedge on the line of what is now Battersea Park Road (A3205)

Nine Elms and Waterloo lines

 * Steamer connection to Old Swan Wharf. (Jackson)
 * Latter 1850s: "...steamboats for the City left Nine Elms Pier ... every ten minutes all day."

The Royal Station
Queen Victoria purchased Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in 1845, and thereafter she and Prince Albert regularly took the train from Nine Elms to Gosport. When Nine Elms closed to passengers in 1848, becoming only a goods depot, the Queen still found Nine Elms more convenient than Waterloo, and the LSWR continued to make it available to her by special arrangement. However, hosting royalty in a goods depot was impractical, so in 1854 the LSWR created a private station on a siding to the south of the lines to Waterloo. The station was approached by a carriage drive off Wandsworth Road, and at first had only an awning, but in 1857 a luxuriously appointed waiting room was built for her Majesty and her guests. After the Prince Consort's death in 1861 the station was used less. It finally closed and was removed when the viaduct was widened in 1891.

London Necropolis Railway
In 1854, the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company started a train-based funeral service, running from its own station beside Waterloo Station, out to Brookwood Cemetery, where a short branch allowed trains to deliver both coffins and mourners direct to the mortuary chapels. Renamed the London Necropolis Railway in 1927, it continued operating until its Waterloo terminus was destroyed by bombing on 16 April 1941. In practice, the trains were composed of LSWR (later SR) locomotives and rolling stock (apart from the specially-built hearse carriages), run by those companies, and the LNR owned no track except at Waterloo and Brookwood, running through Battersea on the Waterloo–Basingstoke line.

West London lines and junctions
WLER opened 2 Mar 1863; 8 trains each direction daily Southall - Victoria; BG services withdrawn Sep 1866; by 1897 svcs between Victoria and Windsor, Reading, Uxbridge; from 16 April 1905 railcars ran to Victoria and Claphma Junction, until 22 March 1915; passenger svcs to Victoria ceased 12 July 1915.

LCDR Stewarts Lane
, closed 1970

GWR South Lambeth

 * Purchase of land by GWR
 * Account of depot; xfer to Southern Region 5 Feb 1968; closed 1 Nov 1980

LBSCR New Wandsworth Goods Station and Coal Depot

 * opened with station? survived at least to 1894 (OS map)
 * lasted to 1950s
 * OS map 1938
 * opened 1858 with station, closed 1968

LSWR Nine Elms
Nine Elms history, maps and pictures

Eurostar
High Speed 1 terminating at Waterloo International, with coaching stock stabled at North Pole Depot, Old Oak Common, via WLER lines using Sheepcote Lane Junction (formerly West London Jnc)


 * Nine Elms to Waterloo Viaduct - part of the LSWR 1848 extension

In popular culture
The British Transport Commission proposed, in 1951, that a museum for larger railway exhibits should be established at the disused Nine Elms station, which then still had its 1838 facade. However, British Railways would not release the building; the exhibits were moved to a bus garage in Clapham, and eventually to the National Railway Museum in York.

In 1961, the artist Terence Cuneo was commissioned by British Railway's Southern Region to paint a poster of Clapham Junction. "Here was a veritable Grand Canyon of railway impedimenta. A vast area of tracks, points and crossovers, signal gantries, bridges and station platforms and out of this tangled medley I had to pick a view which would display the Junction to best advantage." Cuneo chose the gantry supporting 'A' signal box as the viewpoint for a painting of the trains and tracks spreading out through Clapham Junction station to the west. He added a variety of trains and locomotives to the picture as they passed, but when he submitted his initial efforts to the scrutiny of the men in the signal box, he found he had to rearrange all but two of them to comply with the railwaymen's professional regard for regulations and timetables.

The tracks and warehouses of the ex-GWR South Lambeth goods depot appear in the foreground of the cover picture of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals.

Related topics

 * London Pneumatic Despatch Company - a pneumatic railway whose equipment was tested on Battersea Fields in 1861.
 * The Metropolitan Board of Works' sewage pumping stations at Falcon Brook, Battersea, and Effra Creek, Vauxhall, were powered, from 1878 to possibly the early 1900s, by two GWR Broad Gauge locomotives converted to stationary engines.
 * The Battersea Park rail crash on 2 April 1937 happened just south of Battersea Park station.
 * Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway - a miniature railway in Battersea Park from 1951 to 1975.
 * The Clapham Junction rail crash on 12 December 1988 happened just south of Clapham Junction station.
 * Northern line extension to Battersea - the London Underground line serving the area, opened in 2021. It has no connection to the overground lines in this area.