Strood railway station serves the town of Strood in Medway, England. It is on the North Kent Line and is also a terminus of the Medway Valley Line. It is down the line from . Train services are operated by Southeastern and Thameslink. History The South Eastern Railway (SER) had reached Strood in 1845 as the terminus of the line from Gravesend. In 1856, this line was linked to the existing Maidstone branch from , which had opened in 1844. The new line left the line from Gravesend between Strood Tunnel and the original Strood terminus; a new Strood station was provided on the Maidstone line, and it opened with the line on 18 June 1856. The station became a junction with the opening of the first section of the East Kent Railway (EKR) between Strood and on 29 March 1858. The London, Chatham & Dover Railway (which the EKR had become in 1859) soon opened their own route from towards London, the first portion as far as opening on 3 December 1860. The curve connecting the LCDR line with Strood station fell into disuse (apart from one goods train in each direction per day), but passenger services over this line were reintroduced in early 1877 at the insistence of the Mayor of Chatham. The Mayor's name was Toomer, and the line then became known as the "Toomer Loop". Although Strood station was the property of the SER, the Toomer Loop, together with the stations at Rochester and Chatham, was LCDR property. A second junction at Strood was bought into use on 20 July 1891, when the first section of the Rochester & Chatham Extension was opened, by which SER trains reached their own stations at Rochester and, from 1 March 1892, Chatham. This line was to the north-east of, and largely ran parallel to, the LCDR line; it had its own bridge over the Medway. On 1 January 1899 the SER and LCDR entered into a working union which traded as the South Eastern & Chatham Railway (SE&CR) and set about eliminating duplicated facilities. In 1911, a connecting line was put in between the SER and LCDR on the south-eastern side of the SER's Rochester Bridge; this allowed trains from Strood to reach the LCDR stations at Rochester and Chatham from October 1911. In 1927 (after the SER & LCDR had merged with other railways to form the Southern