Purley railway station is in the London Borough of Croydon on the Brighton Main Line, measured from ( from ), in Travelcard Zone 6. It is a junction, with branches to Caterham and Tattenham Corner. History Purley station has been known by three different names. Godstone Road The station was opened by the London & Brighton Railway on 12 July 1841 as Godstone Road. Due to low passenger traffic, this was closed on 1 October 1847 by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LB&SCR), which had opened the new Stoat's Nest station away at Coulsdon. Caterham Junction In 1855 a proposal by a local company to connect the sandstone quarries at Caterham to the main line railway became embroiled in a long-running dispute between the LB&SCR and the rival South Eastern Railway (SER), which resulted in the reopening of the station as Caterham Junction. The proposed line was in the territory of the SER, and was to be operated by that company. It would have to join the railway system on a section of the LB&SCR, where the SER had running powers but no stations. The new railway had to sue the LB&SCR to force it to allow the junction with its line and to reopen the station. On 5 August 1856 the station reopened with the opening of the single track Caterham branch. Purley The station was renamed Purley on 1 October 1888, and rebuilt between and 1899 during the widening of the main line between East Croydon and the beginning of the new Quarry Line at Coulsdon North in 1899. The SER built a line from Purley to Kingswood, extended to Tattenham Corner between 1897 and 1901. By the latter date it had become the South Eastern & Chatham Railway. The main station building facade reads 1899 as the year of construction. Accidents and incidents On 22 September 1873, John Cunliffe Pickersgill-Cunliffe, a former member of Parliament, was struck by a train at the then Caterham Junction station. He died two weeks later at Guy's Hospital. On 22 December 1894, a collision between a light engine and a passenger train injured six people. The Purley station rail crash on 4 March 1989 occurred just to the north of the station, and left five dead and 94 injured. A memorial garden was created at the station to commemorate this. On the night of 5 July 2002 a fire